Anse à la Gourde: Echoes on Pointe de Châteaux

Along the exposed promontory of Pointe de Châteaux, Anse à la Gourde preserves shards, hearths and burial contexts that speak of sustained Ceramic-period settlement on eastern Guadeloupe. Archaeological data indicates pottery styles and tempered ceramics consistent with broader Ceramic traditions that spread through the Lesser Antilles. Radiocarbon-calibrated contexts associated with the sampled individuals fall between 775 and 1384 CE, situating these people in the later phases of the regional Ceramic sequence rather than the earliest arrivals.

The landscape itself shaped human choices: a narrow peninsula offering maritime vantage and resource-rich littoral zones. Excavations recovered domestic refuse and funerary features suggesting seasonal or year-round occupation. Limited evidence suggests continuity with earlier Ceramic ceramics while also reflecting local adaptations in vessel form and coastal subsistence. Material culture points to connections—both cultural and economic—across nearby islands, but the precise pathways of migration and cultural transmission remain uncertain.

Because only four ancient individuals have yielded genetic data from this site, models of origin and migration should be treated as provisional. Archaeological context nonetheless provides a vivid backdrop: coastal settlements where pottery, food remains and burial rituals converged to form lasting human landscapes on Guadeloupe.

The genomic profile from four individuals at Anse à la Gourde aligns with Pan-American Indigenous lineages. On the paternal side, identified Y-chromosome haplogroups include Q and Q1b (observed in one individual each where preservation allowed assignment). Haplogroup Q is characteristic of many Native American paternal lineages and supports deep ancestral connections to continental populations that colonized the Americas.

Mitochondrial DNA (maternal lineages) from these samples includes D1 (two individuals), C1b (one individual) and C1c (one individual). These mtDNA clades are among the primary founding maternal lineages observed across the Americas and are consistent with long-standing regional continuity in maternal ancestry through the Ceramic Period. Taken together, the Y and mtDNA results corroborate archaeological interpretations of an Indigenous Caribbean population with roots tracing back to earlier continental migrations.

Caveats are essential: the sample count is four—below ten—so population-level inferences are preliminary. Genetic diversity at Anse à la Gourde may be undersampled; rare lineages could be missing and allele frequency estimates are unstable. Nevertheless, the concordance of typical Native American haplogroups with Ceramic-period material culture paints a coherent picture: local communities on Guadeloupe were composed primarily of Indigenous-descended people whose maternal and paternal lineages connect them to broader Pan-American ancestries. Future sampling across the Lesser Antilles will be critical to refine migration models and kinship patterns.