Caribbean Environmental Archaeology: New Perspectives on Human Ecodynamics and Social Relations

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Worldwide, archaeological research increasingly demonstrates the complexity of interactions between human groups and the environment. In the Caribbean, this complexity is underscored by environmental archaeology studies that reveal how past landscapes and seascapes have been shaped at multiple scales by interlinked cultural and ecological systems. The analytic methods of zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, geoarchaeology, and biochemistry have been become powerful tools to understand these dimensions of connectivity. This session will examine human social and ecological relations across space and time in the Caribbean based on various environmental and biogeochemical proxy records. Session themes include, but are not limited to, human mobility and interaction, animal translocation, anthropogenic environmental impacts, cultural responses to ecological change, ecosystem and human social resilience, insular adaptation, and cultural diversity across space. The session will highlight the many dynamic lines of inquiry in environmental and biogeochemical archaeology under investigation in the Caribbean, situate Caribbean-based research within broader topics of environmental archaeology and human ecodynamics, and foster dialogue with researchers pursuing related studies in regions elsewhere.

Other Keywords
Caribbean • Zooarchaeology • Environmental Archaeology • Islands • Bahamas • Paleoecology • Paleoethnobotany • Resource Exploitation • Caribbean Archeology • Climate Change

Geographic Keywords
Caribbean

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

Documents

Archaeozoology contributions to the studies of the anthropology of food through the study of two archaeological contexts of early Hispanic – Indigenous interaction in the northeast of Cuban. (2016)

Archaic Era Vertebrate Faunal Remains from Cuba (2016)

Avian Remains from the Late Pre-colonial Amerindian Sites on the Islands of the Venezuelan Caribbean (2016)

Caribbean Anthropogenic Paleozoogeography: Cultural and Ecological Significance of Animal Introductions in the Lesser Antilles (2016)

Caribbean landscapes during the late-precolonial and early-colonial periods (2016)

Coastal resource exploitation during the late ceramic age on Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean (2016)

Environmental Archaeology in the Caribbean Islands: Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Past Human-Environment Dynamics across Time and Space (2016)

Exploring Records of Prehistoric Anthropogenic and Climate Change in the Bahama Archipelago (2016)

Investigating animal trade, transport, and translocation in the precolonial Caribbean: New isotopic and zooarchaeological evidence (2016)

Island extinctions and invasions: archaeozoological advance in the French West Indies (2016)

Islands as gardens: plant translocations by Caribbean Indians as a dynamic and multiscalar form of cultural niche construction, with emphasis on Puerto Rico and the evidence for psychoactive/ritual plant use. (2016)

"Marineness" and Variability in Maritime Adaptations in the Late Ceramic Age Northern Lesser Antilles (2016)

Natural vs. Human-caused Extinctions of Terrestrial Vertebrates in the Bahamas (2016)

The Saint-Martin island's (French Lesser Antilles) Amerindian archaeomalacological record : insight into a six millennia history of interacting pre-Columbian societies and environments (2016)

Zooarchaeological Records and Isotopic Systematics of Bahamian Hutia (Geocapromys ingrahami): are the Bahamas a distinct isotopic province? (2016)