F.w.m. Keehnen Ma

Biography

Floris Keehnen holds both a Bachelor (2008) and Research Master (2012) degree in Caribbean archaeology from Leiden University. He wrote his thesis Trinkets (f)or Treasure? about the exchange of goods between the Greater Antillean ‘Taíno’ Indians and the Spanish in the first decades after contact. In 2012, Floris was awarded the Volkskrant-IISH Thesis Award for the ‘best master thesis written at a Dutch university, in the field of national or international history’. In 2013, he was nominated for the Leiden University Thesis Prize. In September 2013, Floris started as a PhD student at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, where he became member of the Caribbean Research Group. His PhD project Values and valuables in the early colonial Caribbean (see below) is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) within their program ‘ PhDs in the Humanities’.

Research Interest

Values and valuables in the early colonial Caribbean. The role of material culture in encounters between Amerindians, Europeans and Africans, 1492-1800. Main research interests include: pre-Columbian and historical archaeology of the Caribbean, colonial encounters, cross-cultural interactions, trade, exchange, social valuables, cosmovision, value systems, material culture theory, ethnohistory.