Telephone number:	+31 (0)71 527 6472
E-Mail:	r.s.duin@arch.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department:	Faculteit Archeologie, Caribbean and Amazonia
Office Address:	WSD Reuvensplaats 3-4 2311 BE Leiden Room number 118
Personal Homepage:	archaeology.leiden.edu/​organisation/​staff/​duinrs.html

---

Renzo S. Duin is a postdoctoral researcher in Amazonian archaeology and anthropology, with a regional focus on the Guianan frontier zone of Suriname, French Guiana, and Brazil. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in archaeology (1992) and subsequently his master’s degree in archaeology and cultural history of indigenous America at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands (1998). His MA thesis was based on archaeological research conducted at Anse à la Gourde, Guadeloupe, historical research of the Caribbean and Guiana, and ethno-archaeological research conducted in French Guiana (Chair: Corinne L. Hofman).

Since 1996, Dr. Duin has conducted fieldwork among the Wayana in Guiana, where he observed an integrated and ranked regionality grounded in a ritual economy. This in-depth ethno-archaeological fieldwork provided data that, at times, did not adhere to the standard model of tropical forest cultures. An interdisciplinary approach and multi-scalar theoretical framework—in conjunction with a shift of the unit of analysis from the village to the relations between settlements—was necessary to recognize the recorded patterned processes. Renzo Duin obtained his doctorate at the University of Florida, the United States of America (2009. Chair: Michael J. Heckenberger, Co-Chair: Robin M. Wright).

Dr. Renzo S. Duin worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the NWO-VICI-research project Communicating Communities (Dec. 2010 - March 2011). 

In November 2010 Dr. Renzo Duin was awarded a Veni grant by NWO. The NWO-VENI project "Beauty and the Feast" examines the role of feasting for regional cohesion in non-complex societies. Archaeologists and anthropologists often regard the villages of the indigenous peoples of the Guiana Highlands as autonomous units. As a result, historical and regional processes of socio-political cohesion remain underexposed.

Research interests: four-field anthropology; interdisciplinairy research of the socio-political landscapes in Amazonia; myth, history, and social memory; indigenous peoples of South America; materiality of identity & religion; visual anthropology (particularly ethno-cinematography); museology.  

More information on Renzo Duin...