IACA symposium honours the legacy of Dr Andrzej T. Antczak
Argonauts of the Southern Caribbean
From 12 to 18 July 2026, the XXXI International Congress of Caribbean Archaeology (IACA) took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, bringing together archaeologists and researchers from across the Caribbean and beyond. As part of the IACA, a special symposium took place honouring the legacy of the late Dr Andrzej Antczak.
Symposium
On 16 July, the symposium Argonauts of the Southern Caribbean: Beings and Archaeologies on the Move. In Honor of Dr Andrzej T. Antczak, organised by Dr Marlena Antczak, gathered colleagues, collaborators and friends to honour the life, work and scholarly legacy of the late Dr Andrzej T. Antczak. Held before a full auditorium of more than 140 participants, it was moderated by Dr Jay B. Haviser, then President of IACA.
Beings, knowledge and island worlds on the move
Conceived both as a tribute and as a space for new research, the symposium’s title, Argonauts of the Southern Caribbean, evoked the long history of voyagers connecting the region’s islands and mainland—from precolonial Indigenous navigators and later maritime travellers to the archaeologists who continue to move between and study these worlds.
The programme was organised around three interconnected themes: Genealogies and Knowledges on the Move, Beings on the Move, and Living Island Worlds. Together, the contributions explored the circulation and transformation of knowledge, people and other-than-human beings, images, materials and ritual practices, as well as changing island and maritime worlds from the precolonial past to the present. Moving between Indigenous and intellectual legacies, marine resource exploitation, historical archaeology, heritage and contemporary communities, the symposium connected archaeological pasts with contemporary concerns and new directions for Caribbean research.
The symposium brought together an international and intergenerational group of researchers and collaborators, creating a dialogue between different academic trajectories and perspectives on the archaeology and heritage of the Southern Caribbean.
A shared life in archaeology
Marlena Antczak opened the symposium with Andrzej T. Antczak: A Shared Life on the Move, explaining the personal and intellectual origins of the title Argonauts of the Southern Caribbean and reflecting on more than four decades of an archaeological journey connecting Venezuela, the Caribbean and Europe. Later, she presented research on Indigenous human and other-than-human imagery moving between the South American mainland and the Caribbean islands.
For Andrzej and Marlena, archaeology developed through movement between islands, countries, disciplines and communities, becoming both a shared way of life and a way of understanding connections across the Southern Caribbean. The symposium carried this idea forward, approaching legacy not as something fixed in the past, but as something that continues through research, ideas, communities, friendships and new generations of archaeologists.
In this spirit, its motto was: “In memory of a shared life in archaeology, mobility, friendship, and island worlds.”
Marlena Antczak’s participation as organiser and presenter was supported by partial travel funding from Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology.