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Case studies examining the archaeological record of an overlooked mineral

Salt, once a highly prized trade commodity essential for human survival, is often overlooked in research because it is invisible in the archaeological record. Salt in Eastern North America and the Caribbean: History and Archaeology brings salt back into archaeology, showing that it was valued as a dietary additive, had curative powers, and was a substance of political power and religious significance for Native Americans. Major salines were embedded in collective memories and oral traditions for thousands of years as places where physical and spiritual needs could be met. Ethnohistoric documents for many Indian cultures describe the uses of and taboos and other beliefs about salt.

The volume is organized into two parts: Salt Histories and Salt in Society. Case studies from prehistory to post-Contact and from New York to Jamaica address what techniques were used to make salt, who was responsible for producing it, how it was used, the impact it had on settlement patterns and sociopolitical complexity, and how economies of salt changed after European contact. Noted salt archaeologist Heather McKillop provides commentary to conclude the volume.
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Illuminates the early American period in the upper Caribbean

Scourge of the Caribbean explores the mysterious and dramatic life and career of Charles E. Hawkins, a relatively unknown naval figure in early national America. Hawkins’s action-packed life at sea in his brief but accomplished career reveals much about an era when the rules of the maritime world, especially in the Caribbean, were in flux. For the US Navy and its commanders, the Caribbean presented an untold number of ambiguities: revolutionary juntas, privateering, piracy, and deadly disease, all within some of the most beautiful landscapes and waterscapes on earth.

Hawkins, from a well-connected family, took to the sea as a midshipman in the US Navy. Stalled promotion, economic setbacks, and blunted opportunities stymied the young officer, but ambition, combined with varied experiences and maritime pursuits, presented other prospects. At a time when individual agency mattered most, Hawkins stepped outside traditional boundaries of conduct on numerous occasions. Hawkins followed a mentor into the Mexican navy and became the most successful and feared raider of Spanish ships, earning the sobriquet “scourge” because of his raids along Cuba’s northern coast. In 1835, Hawkins joined the Texas independence movement against Mexico. Within the historical narrative are lurid accounts of adultery, affairs of honor, a bloody assassination, and complicated maritime legal battles. Based on prodigious research, this lively tale will appeal to those interested in maritime and early American history and the upper Caribbean in the Age of Sail.

Skin and Starch traces the movements and meanings of manioc, also known as cassava or yuca, across the Atlantic world to show how this tropical plant sustained both colonial exploitation and assertions of Black and Indigenous humanity. Isabel Bradley follows manioc from Caribbean forest gardens to slaving ships, from plantation provision grounds to maroon subsistence networks, to reveal how transplantations of this tuberous root helped to shape human projects of subjugation and self-making. Drawing from an extensive archive of natural histories, plantation records, printed images, material culture, and francophone Caribbean literature and art, Bradley argues that embodied encounters between manioc and its growers informed modes of perception and possibility for subjects navigating colonial modernity. Skin and Starch presents a dynamic study of the diverse knowledges produced in the orbit of manioc cultivation and the generative forms of resistance and worldmaking that emerged within and against colonial monoculture and its violence.

Skin and Starch traces the movements and meanings of manioc, also known as cassava or yuca, across the Atlantic world to show how this tropical plant sustained both colonial exploitation and assertions of Black and Indigenous humanity. Isabel Bradley follows manioc from Caribbean forest gardens to slaving ships, from plantation provision grounds to maroon subsistence networks, to reveal how transplantations of this tuberous root helped to shape human projects of subjugation and self-making. Drawing from an extensive archive of natural histories, plantation records, printed images, material culture, and francophone Caribbean literature and art, Bradley argues that embodied encounters between manioc and its growers informed modes of perception and possibility for subjects navigating colonial modernity. Skin and Starch presents a dynamic study of the diverse knowledges produced in the orbit of manioc cultivation and the generative forms of resistance and worldmaking that emerged within and against colonial monoculture and its violence.