Telephone number:	+31 (0)71 527 6472
E-Mail:	j.l.j.a.mans@arch.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department:	Faculteit Archeologie, Caribbean and Amazonia
Office Address:	WSD Reuvensplaats 3-4 2311 BE Leiden Room number 118
Personal Homepage:	www.archaeology.leiden.edu/​graduate-school/​phd-programme/​jimmy-mans.jsp

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PhD Research

Caribbean Roots: A diachronic perspective on perishable material culture in the Caribbean.

Research
This PhD-research will elucidate the perishable in pre-colonial Caribbean material culture, with emphasis on botanical material. Caribbean archaeologists are dazzled when confronted with the abundance of ephemeral culture in present South-America. But how can you research that which has perished? A top-down, diachronic approach is adopted, with visual ethnographic research as its starting point.

Fieldwork
Fieldwork will be conducted in the Guyanas and in the island Caribbean. Traditional crafting using perishable materials will be documented in action (manufacture, use, discard etc.) in the Caribbean islands. To redress the lack of an embedded approach in terms of Amerindian conceptualisation, fieldwork will also be conducted in the Guyanas in which material culture is bound up in an Amerindian social framework. Reasoning will start from the ethnographic data, and a dialogue will be created between ethnography, ethnohistorical sources and scarce archaeological evidence.