SANTO DOMINGO – The Caribbean’s most prominent academic gathering focused on unlocking the history of the region’s Indigenous societies and centuries of colonial rule has officially opened its doors in the Dominican Republic, with the 31st International Congress of Caribbean Archaeology (IACA/AIAC) kicking off in the capital city of Santo Domingo.
Running through July 18 in Santo Domingo’s iconic Colonial City district, the week-long event has drawn 237 archaeological specialists from 23 countries and territories around the world. The congress serves as a platform for these scholars to share groundbreaking new findings, debate evolving interpretations of the Caribbean’s pre-Columbian societies and viceregal era, and foster cross-border collaboration. All core academic sessions are being hosted at the auditorium of the Dominican Telecommunications Institute (Indotel) Cultural Center.
The 2024 congress is organized by the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic, in formal partnership with four leading regional cultural and research institutions: the García Arévalo Foundation, Centro León, the Guahayona Institute, and the Casa del Cordón Taíno Cultural Center. Additional institutional and financial support comes from a wide network of public and private entities, including the Dominican Ministry of Culture, Vice Ministry of Cultural Heritage, General Directorate of Museums, the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic, and Banco Popular, among other cultural organizations.
The academic program is structured across 15 specialized thematic symposia, featuring a total of 97 individual presentations that showcase cutting-edge methodological advances in the field. Research topics span a diverse range of modern archaeological techniques, from ancient DNA sequencing and isotopic analysis to starch grain studies, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, underwater archaeology, and digital heritage documentation using photogrammetry and 3D modeling. Participating researchers hail from many of the world’s top academic and research institutions, including Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Minnesota, and Leiden University, bringing diverse global expertise to the regional conversation.
Beyond formal lecture hall sessions, the congress has planned a full slate of complementary cultural and field-based activities for attendees throughout the week. These include public academic lectures hosted at the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic, guided tours of the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, a hands-on skills workshop at Centro León in the city of Santiago, and a guided on-site archaeological survey at prehistoric sites located within the Cabo Samaná Natural Monument.
Event organizers emphasized that hosting the congress carries broader strategic and cultural significance for the Dominican Republic. Beyond providing a space for scientific exchange, the gathering strengthens the country’s position as a leading regional hub for archaeological research and international collaborative work, while also raising global awareness of the need to preserve and study the Caribbean’s extraordinarily diverse and understudied cultural heritage.