First People of the Islands (detail) - John Swogger, 2010 (digital)
Just had someone email me and ask what “First People of the Islands” was all about. This was a project started by Quetta back on Carriacou in 2008. She thought that it would be a good idea to find out whether there was anything the Carriacou Archaeological Project could offer the incoming government in terms of education about archaeology on Carriacou, and ideas for linking education with tourism, culture, etc. She suggested that we might be able to write a basic text book on Caribbean archaeology aimed at 12-16 year-olds and tie it in with summer workshops in archaeology field work and tourism. The idea was to eventually persuade the government to create “Wardens” educated in fields such as archaeology, history and environmental studies whose role would be to act as liasons between the local community, the ecological, historical and archaeological resources on the island, and incoming researchers or specialist tourists from Europe and the Americas.
The idea hasn’t really taken off yet – the incoming government has had many more pressing issues to address in its first years in administration – but I think it’s something which we will still pursue. The textbook idea has now developed into a general basic textbook on Caribbean archaeology, again aimed at that 12-16 year-old age group. Although several publishers have expressed interest in the idea, no one is willing now to commit to such a project in the current economic climate.
So Quetta and I have decided to press on with the text regardless, using the time now to create a more or less finished, illustrated draft. I’ve been working on the cover recently; between now and Christmas we hope to have more of the illustrations finished and a greater portion of the text finalised.
It’s a “back-burner” project, that’s for sure – nothing will come of this for some time, we know that. But it’s a good way to keep focused on how we, as a small European/American archaeological project, might be able to do some wider good on the less-developed islands where we work.
Leave a Reply