Towards an Art Historicization of Pre-Columbian Caribbean Archaeology

Zoom lecture, 6 PM EST. Registration link below.

Almost all of the scholarly specialists working on the pre-Columbian Caribbean are archaeologists. These researchers have generated over a century’s-worth of data from hundreds of islands which no art historian has tried to pull together until recently. Archaeologists and art historians, of course, have different sets of concerns, but on the topic of pre-Columbian culture, both share a desire to probe the lives of the ancients. Unlike in the Caribbean, art historians and archaeologists in Mesoamerica and the Andes rely upon each others’ research. So, after briefly addressing the puzzling absence of, and keen necessity for, art historians in pre-Columbian Caribbean studies, this presentation will propose some key pathways towards converting the considerable and increasingly fine-grained body of archaeological knowledge into art history. The presentation will also identify some unique types of physical and other evidence that art historians must either collect on their own or in partnership with archaeologists to expand our collective understanding of Caribbean antiquity.

Biography

Lawrence Waldron

Queens College, City University of New York

Lawrence.waldron@qc.cuny.edu

Lawrence Waldron is Assistant Professor of Art History at Queens College of the City University of New York. He holds an MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts and a PhD in Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture from The Graduate School and University Center of CUNY. He has taught art history at various universities and colleges, including Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, Montclair State University, New Jersey, and six different CUNY campuses. Waldron has presented and published papers on the art and architecture of the pre-Columbian and colonial Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Islamic Africa. His 2016 book, Handbook of Ceramic Animal Symbols in the Ancient Lesser Antilles, was followed by Pre-Columbian Art of the Caribbean in 2019, both published by the University Press of Florida. He is currently working on several books about the art, music, and folk medicine traditions of the pre-Columbian through modern Caribbean and has recently completed a book on the development, meaning, and ritual lives of “three-pointer”cemís, perhaps the most enigmatic class of pre-Columbian Caribbean artifacts.