The late Pleistocene snake fossils from Sawmill Sink (Abaco, The Bahamas) represent five taxa: blind or thread snake (Scolecophidia indet.: either Leptotyphlopidae or Typhlopidae); Abaco boa (Boidae: Chilabothrus cf. exsul); rat snake (Colubridae: Pantherophis sp.); water snake (Natricidae: Nerodia sp.); and Cuban racer (Dipsadidae: Cubophis cf. vudii). Scolecophidia, Chilabothrus exsul, and Cubophis vudii still exist on Abaco and have been previously recovered in fossil deposits in the West Indies. In contrast, no forms of Pantherophis or Nerodia have been reported as fossils anywhere in the West Indies until now. This is the first evidence of any indigenous species of Pantherophis (living or extinct) in the Caribbean, whereas the only other indigenous Nerodia in the West Indies is the extant N. clarkii along the northern coast of Cuba. In being present on Abaco in late Pleistocene but not Holocene contexts, Pantherophis sp. and Nerodia sp. resemble 17 species that apparently did not survive the dramatic changes in climate, habitat, and land area associated with the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition in The Bahamas. It is likely that Pleistocene fossils of both Pantherophis and Nerodia will be found eventually on other Bahamian islands. With the discovery of these two snakes, the vertebrate fauna of Sawmill Sink now stands at 97 species, by far the richest in the West Indies.

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During the period between Slave Emancipation in 1834, and the publication of the Report of the Royal West Indian Cormrission in 1897, important changes took place in the economies of the British West Indian Islands. A predominantly monetary economy replaced the pre-Emancipation system of exchange, in which money had not played a substantial role. The planters continued to barter their production for imports forwarded by English marchants, but after 1834 labour had to be paid for in cash and expressed its consumption demand in monetary form. This labour which was required by the planters was now subject to market supply and demand since in most islands there were alternatives to work on the plantation. [...]

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It is widely accepted that the home environment may act as a socio-geographic focus of both disease transmission and of learned health behaviour. Households also appear to be units of convergence for factors identified in the literature as relating to the utilization of health services. This thesis is devoted to an examination of the role of the home environment, as well as of personal characteristics and accessibility, in the utilization of health services in Grenada, West Indies. The theoretical framework that informs this work is a holistic systems-orientated Socio-Ecological Model of Utilization. The empirical analysis draws upon the results of a detailed household survey conducted in five communities on the western portion of the island. Visits to homes containing children less than eight years of age isolated socio-demographic characteristics and information pertaining to residential mobility, household physical and behavioural environment, accessibility, self-reported morbidity and self-reported utilization. Records of patient visits over the previous two years for non-trauma events were abstracted from the medical records of area clinics, hospitals and physicians attending to the sample communities. Bivariate analyses between components of variables were conducted at both household and individual service use levels. These indicated that 1) service utilization was highly clustered around "high user" households and individuals; 2) considerable discrepancies emerged between self-reported and actual utilization; 3) the complexity of relationships between elements of the home environment was highlighted; and 4) there was a consistency with which certain elements of the home environment were statistically associated with health service use across a wide spectrum of illnesses. These observations were further confirmed in multivariate analyses, in which a small number of variables were able to retrospectively predict the presence or absence of service use by both adults and children with a high degree of model specificity and sensitivity. The implications of this work for development and health care planning in Grenada is discussed. The meaningful application of this work in Grenada is seen to hinge upon the extent to which relevant variables are amenable to change or act as proxy variables whose underlying nature of association with utilization remains to be adequately explored. A number of suggestions are advanced concerning the manner in which the study of health service utilization might be approached in the future. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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This thesis explores visual representations of British West Indian sugar in relation to the African slave trade practiced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During this time, sugar played a vital role to the lives of both European and non-Europeans as it was a source of great wealth for many and became transformed into one of the most demanded and widely consumed commodity. From the earliest days of British colonization, the cultivation and production of sugar in the Caribbean has been inextricably linked with the trade in African slaves to provide free labor for plantation owners and planters. This thesis considers how European artists visually represented sugar in its various forms---as an object for botanical study, as landscape and as consumable commodity---and in so doing, constructed specific ideas about the African slave body and the use of African slave labor that reflected personal and imperial agendas and ideologies.

Many researchers of gender studies and colonial history ignore the lives of European women in the British West Indies. The scarcity of written information combined with preconceived notions about the character of the women inhabiting the islands make this the "final frontier" in colonial studies on women. Over the long eighteenth century, travel literature by men reduced creole white women to a stereotype that endured in literature and visual representations. The writings of female authors, who also visited the plantation islands, display their opinions on the creole white women through their letters, diaries and journals. Male authors were preoccupied with the sexual morality of the women, whereas the female authors focus on the temperate lifestyles of the local females. The popular perceptions of the creole white women seen in periodicals, literature, and caricatures in Britain seem to follow this trend, taking for their sources the travel histories.

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