Istwa Nou

The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos were settled by people coming north out of Hispaniola and Cuba, and those settlers are known as Lucayans. The pottery they made is called Palmetto Ware, thick walled and tempered with crushed burnt shell. The recipe was forced on them. These are low limestone islands without the fine clays of the Greater Antilles, so potters worked the carbonate soils available and found a temper that would hold a vessel together through firing. That is a technical solution reached on the ground, in a place where the familiar materials were missing. The Lucayans did not lose touch with the islands they came from. Chicoid and Meillacoid sherds made in the south turn up in Bahamian sites beside the local ware, which means canoes kept crossing and goods kept moving. A colony on poor ground stayed tied to its parent communities and engineered around everything it could not carry.