New Data for Old Problems: Recent Approaches to Archaeological Research at Caribbean Lowlands

The region historically and geographically considered as Caribbean Lowlands encompasses a great diversity of terrestrial and aquatic environments and diverse socio-political processes as well, from the early agricultural societies until the occupation of Spanish colonial settlements. This symposium proposes to discuss the theoretical and methodological contributions made by lithic analysis, zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, archeometry and historic archaeological studies, referring specifically to aspects such as, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, subsistence economies, and human managing aquatic environments, among others. In this context, we aim to unite a group of presentations that project specific investigations, in search of comparative patterns of the use fauna, flora and environment from the formative around 6000 yeas B.C. to 18th century. The ultimate goal of the symposium is to realize a balance that permits to identify strengths, weaknesses and perspectives, in the archaeology of the Caribbean lowlands. With this goal, we are trying to establish bases to build regional inventories of the sites where traces of human-environment interaction have been found, and to promote comparative studies.