c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Puerto Rico builds stone courts where Hispaniola builds plazas

Neighbouring islands in constant contact made different architecture for a related purpose.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

A Jamaican midden of turtle and grunts, and no mangrove at all

The habitats these people ignored say as much about their choices as the ones they worked.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Villages in the northern Lesser Antilles get smaller and hide

Fewer settlements, sited for shelter and warning, several centuries before any European sail.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Small islands join a Caribbean wide prestige economy

Objects, rites and people moved along the chain, and local rank was rebuilt around them.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Barbados has no volcanic stone and goes its own way

Drewett finds local styles and imported goods together on an island of coral limestone.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Plaque on ancient teeth shows far more maize than expected

Mickleburgh and Pagán-Jiménez read the diet from the mouth instead of from the midden.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Carvings at springs and caves map a sacred geography

Dubelaar's survey finds the same bound figures and cemí faces across hundreds of kilometres.

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c. 1000 to 1450 · Indigenousspan

Saba is isolated on the map and connected in the evidence

Mol, Hoogland and Hofman call it remotely local: out of the way, thoroughly networked.

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c. 1000 to 1500 · Indigenousspan

Soil chemistry recovers the street plan of a Lucayan village

Roth mapped cooking areas, middens and house floors on Middle Caicos through phosphorus.

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around the year 1000 · Africanapproximate

Ghana grows rich as the market between the desert and the goldfields

Salt from Tatental, gold from below the Senegal, and a dynasty that had already lasted seven centuries.

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eleventh century to the 1890s · Africanspan

The Mossi empires last eight hundred years on ancestor worship

Ouagadougou and Yatenga survive every neighbouring collapse and fall only to France.

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around 1050 · Africanapproximate

The Mandingo turn to Islam and go on to build Mali

Leo Africanus dates the first royal conversion to a prince from Marrakesh's founding family.

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1076 · Africanyear only

A Muslim prince asks Rome to send north Africa another bishop

By then the old church of Carthage and Augustine was down to one surviving bishop.

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c. 1100 to 1200 · Indigenousspan

A bead workshop on Grand Turk eats nothing but fish heads

The fillets were smoked and shipped home while the work party lived on what was left.

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c. 1100 to 1200 · Indigenousspan

Clam shells prove Grand Turk was worked only in the dry season

Tiger lucine grows in increments, so a midden of them says what months people were present.

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c. 1100 to 1300 · Indigenousspan

A fish camp on Grand Turk with no fish bodies left in it

Heads stayed as refuse and the rest went to Hispaniola, which makes this a processing station.

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around 1130 · Caribbeanapproximate

Old French invents a verb that can only mean killing

The old noun could still name a healing draught, and the new verb never could.

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1154 · Africanyear only

A Moroccan cartographer draws the world with the south on top

Before the compass fixed north at the head of the page, orientation meant facing sunrise.

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