Event: Weds Talks: Native Raizal Heritage: Landscape Utilization and Cultural Patrimony on Old Providence and Santa Catalina Islands, Colombia (1629-present)

ABSTACT: The islands of Old Providence and Santa Catalina, located 130 miles off the coast of Nicaragua and around 8.5 square miles in size, have been a center of global trade, resource extraction, and military action since 1629, when the English Puritan venture capitalists of the Providence Island Company —whose shareholders also held stakes in the Virginia Company. The Virginia Company was one of the first to enter the American slave market, beginning in 1619, when their ship, the Treasurer, docked in Virginia several days after the first slaves arrived on the White Lion. The Islands are still occupied by descendants of the original English Puritan colonists, enslaved Africans, and self-emancipated Africans, who established a coterminous Maroon colony that included peoples of Indigenous and European descent fleeing the colonial industrial complex; and who now identify collectively as Raizal. In her presentation, Dr. Mayfield explores Native Raizal heritage —both tangible and intangible— through the lens of enduring forms of landscape utilization and discrete types of cultural patrimony.

BIO: Dr. Tracie Mayfield is an anthropological archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and teaching professor with research specializations in the archaeologies of colonialism, zooarchaeology, ceramics, heritage studies, and community-led research. She is the Principal Investigator of the Old Providence and Santa Catalina Island (Colombia) Archaeological Project and Co-Director of the San Pedro, Ambergris Caye (Belize) Archaeological Project.