Banwari Trace: Archaic settlement of the Antilles
Banwari Trace: poblamiento arcaico de las Antillas
- Date
- c. 5500 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Banwari Trace, Penal-Debe, Trinidad and Tobago
- Credited to
- Archaic hunter-gatherer-fishers (Ortoiroid tradition); excavated by Peter Harris (1969)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Roughly 7,000-year-old shell middens and burials in southern Trinidad, among the oldest settlements of the Antilles and the first solid proof that Archaic groups of South American origin crossed the sea to the islands. It documents human arrival in the Caribbean long before pottery and agriculture.
The earliest route of settlement is debated: other sites in Cuba and Hispaniola (Casimiroid tradition) date to about 4000 BC and point to an entry from Central America or Yucatan. Radiocarbon dates at Banwari Trace vary by laboratory.
What it led to
- later settlement of the Antilles by Archaic fishing and foraging peoples
- archaeological basis of the hypothesis of entry from South America via Trinidad
- background to the later arrival of agriculture and Saladoid pottery