Becki at La Poterie

Becki’s work enables the provenancing of ceramic objects in the field, whilst working on Grenada. Her current role on the NWO Island Networks project is to continue developing this methodology, and to expand the work to cover other islands in the Lesser Antilles. She also hopes to develop a baseline to allow the comparative pXRF study of ceramics from across the Caribbean, with a particular focus on the Dominican Republic. Recently she wrote about her research, explaining the methods and objectives.

Currently Becki is in Grenada working as part of an excavation team with Leiden University. The team is currently on a fieldwork campaign, excavating a site called La Poterie, where they are looking for evidence of indigenous populations. The site was used in the Colonial and Post-Colonial periods (post 1492), this research is focused on the continuation of the indigenous population across the Pre-Colonial to Colonial divide. They are looking for evidence of cultural interactions and exchange, and want to know the extent to which Amerindians interacted with Europeans and how much indigenous interactions occurred between the islands of the Lesser Antilles. This is the second season that Leiden have been excavating here. Last year, a series of benchmarks were set up which meant that the different parts of the excavation could all be tied into the same co-ordinate system. It was important to (re)locate these same points, so that any work that will be done this year, will be accurately located in relation to last year.

Becki is writing a daily blog on the excavation at La Poterie and her own research on Grenada, visit her blog page to read about this fieldwork campaign!