RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

South­ern Trinidad’s for­got­ten his­to­ry is be­ing brought to light through ar­chae­o­log­i­cal re­search that is un­cov­er­ing ev­i­dence of the lives of In­dige­nous peo­ple, in­den­tured labour­ers and the com­mu­ni­ties they built, while train­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of lo­cal re­searchers to pre­serve the coun­try’s her­itage.

Dr Shad Gob­ins­ingh, Field Di­rec­tor of the Re­search­ing the En­vi­ron­ment through Ar­chae­ol­o­gy and Com­mu­ni­ty Her­itage (REACH) project, said the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­chae­o­log­i­cal field school was help­ing to ad­dress gaps in re­search on south­ern Trinidad while equip­ping uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents with prac­ti­cal skills to in­ves­ti­gate and pre­serve the coun­try’s past.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia, Dr Gob­ins­ingh said the 2026 field school rep­re­sent­ed an im­por­tant step in de­vel­op­ing lo­cal ex­per­tise in ar­chae­ol­o­gy and her­itage con­ser­va­tion.

“So we are here for two rea­sons, first to equip a new gen­er­a­tion of grad­u­ates with es­sen­tial hands-on field tech­niques, from ex­ca­va­tion, sur­vey­ing, tran­sects and map­ping, to metic­u­lous preser­va­tion and con­ser­va­tion of the arte­facts,” he said.

The sec­ond ob­jec­tive, he ex­plained, was to un­cov­er sto­ries that had re­mained large­ly un­doc­u­ment­ed.

“We want to un­cov­er the hid­den sto­ries of our past that gen­er­al­ly go un­told for far too long,” Dr Gob­ins­ingh said.

He added that South­ern Trinidad re­mains an area that is large­ly un­der-re­searched.

“This field school of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­duct ground­break­ing re­search, men­tor stu­dents and pro­vide the pub­lic with a deep­er and more mean­ing­ful un­der­stand­ing of the is­land’s ear­ly in­hab­i­tants.”

He said the REACH project be­gan its first field sea­son in 2025, fo­cus­ing on Palmiste Park, Puz­zle Is­land and Pood­hai La­goon. Its sec­ond field sea­son re­turned to Palmiste Park in Au­gust 2026, with field­work con­duct­ed from Au­gust 10 to 22 and lab­o­ra­to­ry train­ing at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine.

“The project brings to­geth­er the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go, UWI and North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty in Chica­go, with sup­port from lo­cal part­ners in­clud­ing the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety,” he said.

Led in­ter­na­tion­al­ly by Dr Mark Hauser of North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, the ini­tia­tive com­bines ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ex­ca­va­tion with archival re­search, oral his­to­ries and knowl­edge shared by res­i­dents to ex­am­ine how peo­ple lived, worked and es­tab­lished com­mu­ni­ties across south­ern Trinidad.

Re­search dur­ing the 2025 field sea­son demon­strat­ed the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal po­ten­tial of these land­scapes, doc­u­ment­ing ma­te­r­i­al as­so­ci­at­ed with the his­toric es­tate and its labour­ing com­mu­ni­ties at Palmiste Park, along­side ev­i­dence point­ing to a much longer In­dige­nous his­to­ry, he not­ed.

The find­ings are sig­nif­i­cant, Gob­ins­ingh said, be­cause the project ex­am­ines the his­to­ry of in­den­ture­ship and the post-in­den­ture­ship pe­ri­od be­yond the for­mal sys­tem of labour, look­ing at how peo­ple built homes, cul­ti­vat­ed land, man­aged wa­ter, prac­tised re­li­gion and de­vel­oped a sense of be­long­ing.

Dr Gob­ins­ingh not­ed that the col­lab­o­ra­tion of re­searchers and her­itage pro­fes­sion­als was es­sen­tial to ad­vanc­ing this work and pro­tect­ing ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

The project al­so draws on the ex­pe­ri­ences of peo­ple who con­tin­ue to live in these his­toric land­scapes. At Pood­hai La­goon and Su­chit Trace, Pe­nal, re­searchers have en­gaged res­i­dents in con­ver­sa­tions about set­tle­ment pat­terns, farm­ing prac­tices and changes in the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment, he added.

Dr Gob­ins­ingh said oral his­to­ries have helped doc­u­ment the cul­ti­va­tion of rice, lentils, bo­di and oth­er crops, as well as the re­la­tion­ship be­tween hous­es, agri­cul­tur­al fields and wa­ter sources. Res­i­dents have al­so shared ac­counts of flood­ing and re­lo­ca­tion that in­flu­enced how com­mu­ni­ties de­vel­oped.

This ap­proach places lo­cal res­i­dents at the cen­tre of the re­search, recog­nis­ing that their mem­o­ries and knowl­edge can help ar­chae­ol­o­gists in­ter­pret the phys­i­cal ev­i­dence found in the land­scape.

More on REACH

The field school al­so gives UWI His­to­ry stu­dents op­por­tu­ni­ties to gain prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in his­tor­i­cal ar­chae­ol­o­gy, a dis­ci­pline that us­es ma­te­r­i­al re­mains and doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence to un­der­stand past lives.

Stu­dents re­ceive train­ing in ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sur­vey­ing, ex­ca­va­tion, record­ing, map­ping, arte­fact pro­cess­ing and in­ter­pre­ta­tion, work­ing along­side prac­tis­ing ar­chae­ol­o­gists and her­itage pro­fes­sion­als.

The pro­gramme is in­tend­ed to con­tin­ue over sev­er­al years, al­low­ing suc­ces­sive groups of stu­dents to con­tribute to orig­i­nal re­search while de­vel­op­ing skills that are not typ­i­cal­ly ac­quired through class­room in­struc­tion alone.

Dr Gob­ins­ingh said the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive was to strength­en the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to safe­guard its ar­chae­o­log­i­cal and her­itage re­sources.

Through con­tin­ued re­search, train­ing and com­mu­ni­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion, Dr Gob­ins­ingh said REACH aims to build a stronger un­der­stand­ing of south­ern Trinidad’s past and en­sure that the his­to­ries of the peo­ple who shaped its land­scapes are doc­u­ment­ed and pre­served.