Description
For more than 25 years Denis Williams, one of Guyana’s most accomplished scholars, travelled from one end of the country to the other conducting surveys and excavations. The result is the first comprehensive reconstruction of the history and characteristics of human settlement of the Guianas. In this work of painstaking scholarship, Denis William integrated a wide variety of evidence from original research with previously published archaelogical, geological, ecological, ethnographic, climatic and even nutritional data to develop the first major synthesis of the prehistory of Guyana.
Prehistoric Guiana includes over 250 sketches, photographs, maps and tables as well as an extensive bibliography.
About the Author
Denis Williams (1923–1998) worked as an artist, art historian, novelist, anthropolgist, and archaeologist in South America, Africa and Europe. His other publications include Giglioli in Guyana 1922-1972; Images and Idea in the Arts of the Caribbean; Habitat and Culture in Ancient Guyana; Petroglyphs in the Northern Amazonia and the Antilles; Ancient Guyana; Amazonia Petroglyphs and Prehistoric Culture of the Iwokrama Rain Forest Reserve.
Contents
Message from the Government of Guyana
Denis Williams – A Biographical Note
Foreword by Dr Betty Meggers, Smithsonian Institution
Editor’s Preface by Mark G. Plew
Preface
INTRODUCTION
The setting
Sources for the study of prehistory
History of Research
THE PALEO-INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Introduction
The Andean Heritage
PEOPLES OF THE TROPICAL FOREST ARCHAIC
Demography
Settlement pattern
Economy
THE FIRST FARMERS
Introduction
The Formative
The transition to horticulture on the Western Guiana Littoral
Mabaruma; origin, characterization, chronology
Domestication of the land on the Aruka River
Recharacterization of the Mabaruma phase
Periodification of the Mararuma phase
Iconogrpahy
The Formative interaction sphere
The Protohistoric Mabaruima interaction sphere
The Proto-Eastern Maipuran Arawak migrations
Mound dwellers on the Eastern Guiana Littoral
The Proto-Northern /Proto-Eastern Arawo convergence
The demise of the Orinoco-Amazon interaction corridor
The Carib migration
The Akawai disposal
Belief, magic, death and the forms of art
The woman potter in sacred and secular art
Inter-ethnic frontiers
ORIGIN AND DISSEMINATION OF TROPICAL FOREST CULTURE IN THE GUIANAS
Introduction
The principal migrations
LITERATURE CITED
