Whispers from Abaco Caves

The Abaco Ceramic assemblage occupies a narrow but luminous corner of Caribbean prehistory. Within the sampled window (772–1398 CE) archaeological contexts from Hopetown, Prophet's Cave (Moore's Island), Bill Johnson's Cave, and Lubber's Quarters preserve ceramics, shell tools, and cave-associated deposits that speak to long-distance seafaring and island-focused lifeways. Archaeological data indicates these peoples participated in the broader Ceramic Period expansion that brought Arawakan-speaking communities across the Greater Antilles and into the Bahamian archipelago.

Material culture — thin, stamped ceramics, ground stone and shell adzes, and coastal midden layers — suggests a maritime adaptation with strong cultural ties to the Greater Antilles. Caves on Abaco appear to have been used for multiple purposes: shelter, storage, and sometimes funerary deposition; stratigraphic sequences in some caves contain charcoal and ceramic fragments that anchor radiocarbon dates within the sampled range.

Genetic results, while extremely limited in number, provide tantalizing complements to the material record by indicating paternal and maternal lineages consistent with Indigenous American origins. However, with only four ancient genomes available, any model of migration or local emergence remains provisional. Future excavations and responsibly-sourced ancient DNA will be required to transform these tentative connections into a robust narrative of arrival and adaptation in the northern Bahamas.

Four ancient DNA samples from Abaco caves (dated between 772 and 1398 CE) yield a concise but important set of uniparental markers. On the paternal side, haplogroup Q appears in two samples. Q is broadly associated with Indigenous peoples of the Americas and its presence in Abaco aligns with an American-origin paternal ancestry. Maternal lineages are dominated by haplogroup B variants: two samples carry B2e, one carries B, and one carries B2. Haplogroup B and its subclades are widely distributed in northern South America and the Caribbean in ancient and modern datasets, consistent with archaeological links to Arawakan-speaking expansions.

These uniparental markers support an interpretation of Indigenous American ancestry for the sampled individuals, in agreement with the archaeological Ceramic-period context. However, important caveats apply: uniparental markers represent only single ancestral lines and cannot alone resolve population structure, admixture, or the dynamics of migration. Critically, the sample count is four—below the threshold for broad generalizations—so patterns observed should be regarded as preliminary signals rather than definitive population portraits.

Future work integrating autosomal genomes, additional samples across the Bahamas and Greater Antilles, and careful radiocarbon dating will be necessary to test models of continuity, demographic change, and the degree of connectivity between Abaco and neighboring islands.