Papers by Scott Fitzpatrick
Journal of Archaeological Science, 2022
The Caribbean Sea is the most species-rich sea in the Atlantic, largely due to its vast coral ree... more The Caribbean Sea is the most species-rich sea in the Atlantic, largely due to its vast coral reef systems. However, its high biodiversity and endemism face unprecedented anthropogenic threats, including synergistic modern pressures from overfishing, climate change and bioinvasion. Archaeological data indicate initial human settlement of the Caribbean ∼7000 years before present (yr BP), with regionally variable human impacts on fisheries through time based on standard morphological identification of fish bone. Such studies, however, are challenged by the low taxonomic resolution of archaeological fish bone identifications due to high species diversity and morphological similarity between members of different families or genera. Here, we present collagen fingerprinting (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry; ZooMS) as a method to overcome this challenge, applying it to 1000 archaeological bone specimens identified morphologically as ray-finned fish (superclass Actinopterygii) from 13 circum-Caribbean sites spanning ca. 3150–300 yr BP (years before present). The method successfully identified collagen-containing samples (n = 720) to family (21%), genus (57%), and species (13%) level. Of the 209 samples that were morphologically identified below superclass, collagen fingerprinting verified the taxonomic identity of 94% of these, but also refined the identifications to a lower [more precise] taxon in 45% of cases. The remaining 6% of morphological identifications were found to be incorrectly assigned. This study represents the largest application of ZooMS to archaeological fish bones to date and advances future research through the identification of up to 20 collagen biomarkers for 45 taxa in 10 families and 2 orders. The results indicate that refinement of ZooMS archaeological fish identifications in this study is limited not by the quality of the preserved collagen but by the extent of the available modern collagen reference collection. Thus, efforts should be directed towards expanding collagen fingerprint databases in the first instance. Significantly, the high-resolution taxonomic identifications of archaeological bone that ZooMS can offer make ancient fisheries data highly relevant to modern sustainability and conservation efforts in the Caribbean. Additionally, more precise identifications will allow archaeologists to address a variety of questions related to cultural fishing practices and changes in fish stocks through time. This study supports the use of ZooMS as an effective biochemical tool available for mass-taxonomic identification of archaeological fish bone samples spanning century to millennial time scales in the circum-Caribbean.
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Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2022
For centuries, glass money beads (udoud) have played a critical role in cultural and economic exc... more For centuries, glass money beads (udoud) have played a critical role in cultural and economic exchanges in the Palauan archipelago (western Micronesia) since their first appearance ca. AD 600-950 from East Java and mainland Southeast Asia. Later, as part of their stone money (rai) quarrying activities, visiting Yapese islanders negotiated access to quarry sites and purchased provisions using glass beads, corvée labor, and other exchange valuables. Here, we present morphological and chemical composition analysis of 38 glass beads recovered from Chelechol ra Orrak, the only quarry site where udoud have been recovered. Analysis reveals that most of the beads were manufactured in Europe, with many originating in Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) ca. AD 1830-1850. Many of these beads would have been regarded as cheldoech, a category of udoud that largely went out of circulation in the 1920s due to the ease of counterfeiting. Although this category of udoud could be easily counterfeited and beads from Yap lacked the requisite life histories associated with traditional udoud, Palauans accepted them as authentic. However, our research suggests that cheldoech may have depreciated in value well before the 1920s, with Palauans valuing and exchanging this category of udoud in new ways, including interment with burials.
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Sustainability, 2022
Humans and the diverse ecosystems we inhabit face numerous sustainability challenges due to clima... more Humans and the diverse ecosystems we inhabit face numerous sustainability challenges due to climate change, rising seas, population growth, overfishing, natural habitat destruction, accelerating extinctions, and more. As an interdisciplinary paradigm that leverages both natural and social sciences to better understand linkages between humans and the environment, sustainability science focuses on how these connections shape understandings of and approaches to sustainability challenges. Here, we argue that archaeology and historical ecology are essential components of sustainability science. We view sustainability as a long-term process where historical sciences are critical to effectively measuring where we stand today and modeling future trajectories based on the baselines from the past that archaeology and historical ecology provide. We demonstrate that islands around the world are central to this endeavor because they serve as model systems that can capture the timing of human arrival, subsequent effects of cultural behaviors on pristine environments, and how humans adapted, survived, and often thrived for centuries or millennia. These cases provide important lessons about human responses in the past to similar challenges that we now currently face. In the uncertain futures of the Anthropocene, such historical baselines will contribute significantly to scientific approaches for building more resilient and sustainable societies.
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Sustainability, 2022
The Florida Keys are currently experiencing unprecedented loss of lifeways, biodiversity, and cul... more The Florida Keys are currently experiencing unprecedented loss of lifeways, biodiversity, and cultural heritage due to sea-level rise, catastrophic storm events, unsustainable traditions of resource exploitation, and land development. Yet, these islands have a long history of human occupation and socioecological systems underlying their current sustainability crisis that date back at least 2500 years. Here we report early results of ongoing zooarchaeological research from Upper Matecumbe Key designed to explore anthropogenic engagement with vertebrate fauna between AD 800 and 1250, providing an approximately 500-year window on marine fisheries and terrestrial faunal harvesting for this small island archipelago. Focusing on one of the few remaining, nearly intact Native American archaeological sites in the region, our research contributes to critically needed long-term anthropogenic perspectives on harvest patterns relevant to regional biodiversity conservation and sustainability initiatives.
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Waves of Influence: Pacific Maritime Networks Connecting Mexico, Central America, and Northwestern South America, 2022
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The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 2021
Archaeological investigation at the Walkers sand quarry in St. Andrews, Barbados, revealed Late C... more Archaeological investigation at the Walkers sand quarry in St. Andrews, Barbados, revealed Late Ceramic A (AD 700-1000) ceramics interspersed with historic pottery, ground shell implements, faunal remains, and a historical human burial with grave goods. Observable stratigraphy was generally lacking in the investigated area with mixing of Indigenous and historic assemblages that are indicative of anthropogenic landscape and transformation most likely related to leveling activities that have taken place since the 1950s. This is the first attempt to examine cultural resources on the property, with preliminary fieldwork suggesting good potential for future research on the continuity of landscape use from Indigenous through colonial times.
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Contact between Europeans and Pacific Islanders beginning in the early 1500s was both accidental ... more Contact between Europeans and Pacific Islanders beginning in the early 1500s was both accidental and intentional. Many factors played a role in determining when contacts occurred, but some islands remained virtually isolated from European influence for decades or even centuries. We use Palau as a case-study for examining why this archipelago was free from direct European contact until 1783, despite repeated attempts by the Spanish to reach it from both the Philippines and Guam. As computer simulations and historical records indicate, seasonally-unfavourable winds and currents account for the Spanish difficulty. This inadvertently spared Palauans from early Spanish missionaries, disease, and rapid cultural change.
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International Journal of Paleopathology, 2022
To document and differentially diagnose facial pathology found in an isolated skull from St. Vinc... more To document and differentially diagnose facial pathology found in an isolated skull from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, southeastern Caribbean. To directly date this individual using radiocarbon dating. Materials: Isolated skull recovered from Petite Mustique Island. Methods: Describe facial pathology occurring in this individual and compare with known diseases or disease processes that impact the craniofacial complex. Results: Features of the rhinomaxillary syndrome are present, indicating a diagnosis of leprosy. Dating places the time of death to the late 18th or early 19th centuries. Conclusions: Analysis of the rhinomaxillary syndrome produces a diagnosis of early-stage leprosy in an individual that correlates with the apparent attempt to locate a leprosarium on Petite Mustique Island in the first decade of the 19th century. Significance: Location and time corroborate historical records of at least one attempt to locate a leprosarium on Petite Mustique Island. Only directly dated individual with leprosy in the western hemisphere and possibly the earliest yet recorded. Limitations: This is an isolated find that is archaeologically unprovenienced. Suggestions for further research: Professional archaeological survey of Petite Mustique.
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Genetics, Evolution, Variation, 2013
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The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2013
ABSTRACT The island of Carriacou in the southern Grenadines, Lesser Antilles, has been the focus ... more ABSTRACT The island of Carriacou in the southern Grenadines, Lesser Antilles, has been the focus of interdisciplinary archaeological research since 2003, focused on ceramic-associated assemblages dating between c. AD 400 and 1300. Amerindians here exploited marine foods, but patterned subsistence has not been inferred directly from recovered human remains. Here, we present the first stable isotope data from bone collagen and bone apatite of individuals (n = 14) from the Grand Bay site that date to post–AD 1000. Average δ13Cco (−12.8�), δ15N (11.1�), δ13Cap (−8.6�), and �13Cap-co (4.1�) values substantiate a marine based diet. No significant differences are observed between males and females; however, one subadult is an isotopic outlier based on its δ13Cco and �13Cap-co values. Bone collagen values suggest high marine protein at Carriacou, different from data reported for contemporaneous groups in the Greater Antilles, broadly similar to the northern Lesser Antilles, andmost similar to the Bahamas,where reef-based systems are ubiquitous. Bone apatite and bone collagen isotope results underscore the importance of shellfish on Carriacou as previously observed in the zooarchaeological record. At present, these data do not provide the interpretative power to confirmor refute the presence/absence of maize in the diet during the mid-Ceramic Saladoid inthe southern Lesser Antilles.
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Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, May 5, 2012
Results This season's project at Grand Bay produced some interesting and unexpected results.... more Results This season's project at Grand Bay produced some interesting and unexpected results. Measurements taken with the Total Station showed that erosion at Grand Bay, which had an average loss of nearly one metre a year since our first work at the site in 2003, had actually diminished since 2010 when the newly elected government outlawed the mining of sand.
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International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Sep 1, 2008
Human skeletal remains have been discovered from a variety of contexts in the Palauan archipelago... more Human skeletal remains have been discovered from a variety of contexts in the Palauan archipelago of western Micronesia. These include caves, rockshelters, earthen mounds, stone platforms, midden burials, crypts, sarcophagi, and historic period gravesites. Recent excavation of a prehistoric cemetery in a rockshelter on Orrak Island dating from ca 1000 BC–AD 200, combined with nearly contemporaneous surface finds in caves on both Orrak and other nearby islands, shed light on the earliest known burial practices in Palau. ...
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…, 2006
Page 1. Compositional Analysis of Yayoi-Heian Period Ceramics From Okinawa: Examining the Potenti... more Page 1. Compositional Analysis of Yayoi-Heian Period Ceramics From Okinawa: Examining the Potential for Provenance Study Scott M. Fitzpatrick,1,* Hiroto Takamiya,2 Hector Neff,3 and William R. Dickinson4 1Department ...
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Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, Oct 13, 2009
Results This season's work at Grand Bay and Sabazan continued to produce some interesting an... more Results This season's work at Grand Bay and Sabazan continued to produce some interesting and unexpected results. The lower levels of the two main trenches at Grand Bay produced a great deal of finely decorated and incised ceramics (Fig. 3), faunal material, charcoal and human skeletal remains (Tables 1 and 2).
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Journal of Ethnobiology, 2003
ABSTRACI-Ardlaeological excavation at two limestom, quarries in the Rock Islands of Palau, Mk: ro... more ABSTRACI-Ardlaeological excavation at two limestom, quarries in the Rock Islands of Palau, Mk: ronesia, yielded e\[tensiw shellfish assemblages. Both sites were inhabited by Islanders dUring the last several hundred years while they quarried limestone deposits for stooe money disk production, but there are considerable differences inthe preservation and types of sheUfish recovered.
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The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2021
The majority of archaeological sites in the Caribbean are under threat from various natural and c... more The majority of archaeological sites in the Caribbean are under threat from various natural and cultural processes. This is particularly true for the smaller and more vulnerable islands in the Lesser Antilles. Here we report on the 2001 rescue recovery of human skeletal remains that were observed to be actively eroding into the sea at Boiling Rock, an Archaic Age site along the southeast coast of Barbuda. Analysis of the remains, representing three individuals, included an osteological inventory, stable isotope analysis to infer paleodiet, and direct radiocarbon dating. While excavation and recording were expedited due to the need for salvaging the skeletal remains and associated archaeological material, the results are an important contribution to the early stages of settlement on the island. This includes adding to the inventory of known Archaic Age sites on Barbuda (from six to seven), providing the only directly dated Archaic individual on the island going back to 3560-3220 cal years BP, isotopic analysis revealing a reliance on endemic marine protein and terrestrial C 3 carbohydrates, and the description of grave goods, which is generally rare for burials of this age.
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Islands are useful model systems for examining human-environmental interactions. While many anthr... more Islands are useful model systems for examining human-environmental interactions. While many anthropo-genic effects visible in the archaeological and paleoecological records are terrestrial in nature (e.g., clearance of tropical forests for agriculture and settlement; introduction of nonnative flora and fauna), native peoples also relied heavily on marine environments for their subsistence and livelihood. Here we use two island case studies-Palau (Micronesia) and the Lesser Antilles (Caribbean)-and approach their long-term settlement history through a "ridge-to-reef" perspective to assess the role that human activity played in land-and seascape change over deep time. In particular, we examine the entanglement of terrestrial and marine ecosystems resulting from anthropogenic effects and cultural responses to socio-environmental feedback. We suggest that on the humanized tropical islands of the Anthropocene, mangroves, near shore and littoral areas, and coral reefs were major sites of terrestrial-marine interface chronicling and modulating anthropogenic effects.
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Scientific Reports, 2021
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The Archaeology of Island Colonization: Global Approaches to Initial Human Settlement, 2021
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Papers by Scott Fitzpatrick