With the start of the new academic year NEXUS1492 would like to extend congratulations to Noortje Wauben, Gene Shev, and Emma de Mooij for graduating from the RMA track ‘Religion and Society in Native American Cultures’ over the summer. All three students wrote theses related to various aspects of the NEXUS1492 project and received excellent grades and evaluations. Read about their research below!

The precolonial inhabitants of the Caribbean islands communicated, travelled, and exchanged objects and ideas along an expansive inter-island network. Understanding sea-based movement is a vital component to understanding inter-island networks in the Caribbean prior to and just after 1492. New methods of computer modeling shed light on these issues. Emma Slayton is set to discuss her work on this topic at her Defense on the 12th of September.

New drone footage of the Amazon has revealed Indigenous groups living isolated in the rainforest of northeastern Brasil in the Javari Valley.

Recently the article entitled "Columbus' environmental impact in the New World: Land use and change in the Yaque River valley, Dominican Republic" appeared in The Holocene. This article is the result of a joint effort by Henry Hooghiemstra, Thomas Olijhoek, Menno Hoogland, Maarten Prins, Bas van Geel, Timme Donders, William Donders, and Corinne Hofman. Read the abstract below!

CARBICA, in collaboration with the Government of Sint Maarten, the UNESCO Cluster Office for the Caribbean, Rijksdienst Caribisch Nederland and the Gerda Henkel Stiftung arranged “The Working Conference on Regional Approaches on Disaster Recovery and Heritage Preservation” in Sint Maarten to facilitate the training of international and regional policy makers and cultural heritage stewards in the above mentioned aims. Our participation in this conference was sponsored by UNESCO Netherlands and the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Gustav Heye Center in New York City is preparing an exhibition that addresses the topic of Native peoples in the Caribbean after 1492. This exhibition emphasizes the survival and contemporary vitality of Caribbean indigenous peoples.

The summer has flown by and the Nexus team in Valverde, Dominican Republic, has once again had an exciting and successful season!

The first call for proposals in 2017 drew a resounding response. Now the Prince Claus Fund, through its Cultural Emergency Response (CER) programme and the Whiting Foundation announce a second round of the Open Call for First Aid to Documentary Heritage under Threat. We invite proposals for projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to safeguard documentary heritage that is acutely threatened by recent conflict or other disaster, whether natural or man-made.

Dr. Antczak will take over the role of Departmental Head for World Archaeology in September 2018 at the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University!

Niels Koning, a Bachelor student of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, conducted a research internship on paleoethnobotany and paleoecology under the supervision of Dr. Jaime R. Pagán-Jiménez in the context of the ERC Synergy Project NEXUS1492 led by Prof. Dr. Corinne L. Hofman. His research delved into phytolith analysis of modern top soils from four plots that correspond to different forest types in the southern foothills of the Northern Range of the Dominican Republic. Niels compared modern phytolith results with vegetation currently known to grow in the selected areas. This research was aimed at assessing if meaningful correlations exist between recovered modern phytoliths and observed plant communities. The main goal was to test if ancient phytolith assemblages recovered by different means in buried contexts are reliable indicators of the past floristic communities associated with the archaeological sites studied by Nexus 1492 in the Dominican Republic.