Saladoid migration and the ceramic colonization of the Caribbean

Record summary

Saladoid archaeology became a central framework for studying ceramic-producing communities moving from the Orinoco region into the Caribbean during the first millennium BCE. Excavations and syntheses from the 1970s and 1980s used pottery styles, settlement patterns, subsistence remains, and radiocarbon dates to discuss migration, interaction, and local transformation in the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico. The lead matters because it links material style to models of maritime dispersal. The direction, scale, and social meaning of the movement remain debated, especially where stylistic similarity is treated as proof of population replacement.