I'm the dean of the School of Health,
Physical Education, I'm sorry,
Health, Physical Education, which is
really Kinesiolgy, and Recreation.
I'm going to, very briefly, talk about
the rest of the story at the end
where we're going from here. We have
a very distinguished guest with us today.
I just want to recognize Francis Soto. Would you
stand, Francis. Francis is the head of the
preservation unit, the archeological
preservation unit for the 
Dominican Republic government. He's
been very responsible for the 
exhibit that you're going to see
and also for the wonderful
relationship we at IU have had with
the Dominican Repubic government
for well over 20 years. If it weren't
for Francis' trust in the
work that we do, none of it would
have gotten done, so, Francis, thank you,
and thank you for coming. 
[applause]
I don't think he's ever coming back in February.
[laughter]
I'm going to introduce two people I want,
well, two or three people I want to recognize.
One is Mr. Charles Beeker, who is the Director 
of our Underwater Archeology progam in HPER.
He and Francis have worked together for well
over 20 years. I'm a new Dean
and I've been here for about seven months
and I had to, of course, go down to the 
Dominican Republic to see myself, because when
somebody says there's been a [inaudible]
for God and country, you have to go down and
see for yourself.
And I was just absolutely blown 
away and amazed. 
Also, Charles Beeker's collaborator of
many years
is Dr. Jeff Conrad who
will be speaking first.
Dr. Conrad is the Director
of the Mather's Museum.
He is an expert on art and culture which
you'll be hearing about tonight. 
And he is also a professor in the Department of
Archeology.
Also, I'd be remiss not to mention 
Cathy Larson. If you would just stand, Cathy
who is my partner in 
conspiracy. She is the Associate Dean
of the college and also went with us
recently to the Dominican Republic
where we met the administer of culture,
the administers of public health 
the director, the president of the university 
and I'll speak a little more about that at the end.
We're going to have a reception after
this, but I don't want to waste any more
time. It's better to listen to them than
to me, so I'm going to introduce Dr. 
Conrad. Thank you. 
[applause]
Just want to make sure our microphones 
are working.
That one's on. This one's on. Here we go.
Okay.
The first part of our title and that's 
really my
part is
Columbus and the Taino.
If you count from my first season in
the field -
first season doing archaeological field work. I've
been an archaeologist for 42 years.
I've worked in some pretty high profile places
like Peru.
I love the Taino
but everybody wants - I have not in 42
years - I have never had seen a public
reaction like the reaction to Captain Kidd.
It's just amazing
the extent
to which this has captured the public
imagination, but
I didn't set out to work on Captain Kidd.
A year ago I didn't
know he was going to enter my life,
much less take it over.
What I want to talk about is
the work that really got us to
the Dominican
Republic in the first place
which is the study
of early interactions
between Europeans and Taino -
the generic term for the native people of
the largest Caribbean island in the Bahamas.
If you look at human history and look at
sort of transformative processes or anything,
you know, what is that
eight can pick any number of
things that really changed the world
in the way we live in it.
On that list
you have to include the unification of the
old and new worlds into a single world you
can't leave it off.
It's one of the  - once that happens
then
globally
people, plants, animals, diseases, ideas start
to move, change everything for everybody.
And it's my privilege to
actually be able to study that firsthand.
In the place where it really all begins
on the island of Hispaniola
the eastern two-thirds of which are today's
Dominican Republic
we have sort of two places
where we've been working
down in the southeast here and we'll get
back there because that's Captain Kidd
but I'm going to talk a little bit about our
work on the north coast
in the vicinity of a place called La 
Isabella which was the first Spanish town in
the Americas
founded by Columbus in 1494
and more or less
abandoned by the end of 1498.
Working around La Isabella there's three
things to study - there's the ruins of the Spanish
town itself.
We don't do that - that's been done
previously.
Native Taino sites
in
the vicinity of the Spanish town -that's my part
of it
and Charlie's part - the shipwrecks and Isabella
Bay.
La Isabella itself is not a focus
of
my particular fieldwork but I can't not -
shouldn't ignore it. This is a reconstruction
of the Spanish town.
That's the powder house,
the customs house, warehouse, upper-class
housing,
church, that's Columbus's house and this is
where the bulk of the
population lived, probably in a fairly 
Taino way.
Just to show it's real. That's what's left
of Columbus's house
under a protective roof
that's a reconstruction.
Just to show you that the place is real 
and that helps to me
make the events that happened in and around
it real.
Customs house -
biggest building.
Moving on to what I
particularly am doing.
I am looking at 
the native Taino sites around
La Isabella and these are the
people to bear the first sustained
continuous interactions with Europeans. These
are the people who first feel the brunt
of the unification of the old and new worlds
and what goes on out here on Hispaniola
eventually gets transferred to Mexico and Peru
and the rest of the
the Spanish Americas.
First you got to find sites before you can
do anything else so
reconnaissance survey looking for sites is
part of what we do.
This was a promising looking place that
didn't produce anything -
wasn't a site.
This is a promising looking place
that did. There's a good
classic but somewhat dirty piece of 
Taino pottery.
So you begin to get a build-up an idea of
the distribution of
sites
where people were living across the landscape
and then
you pick the ones - you can't excavate them all
so you pick the ones that you think are
mostly going to give you the most
insight into the questions
that you're asking.
Along this ridge
which is the first ridge back -
you can see Isabella Bay there
in the background
is a site called El Tamiringo. We've
conducted excavations there twice,
most recently last summer
because it's produced data that are 
important for our purposes.
Just a shot of our
excavations.
Chris [inaudible] here is in the audience.
Jenny Riley, I don't know if Jenny's here, but another
one of our
students
who has worked
on this.
It's just
broken pieces of pottery. It's not really
glamorous. It's dirt and
broken pieces of pottery
