Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2023
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
In 2017, Hurricane Maria exposed evidence of a colonial-era settlement on the Caribbean island of Dominica. Subsequent testing and excavation suggest that the site (LaSoye) was established as an informal European trading complex as early as the 16thcentury, which was then abandoned in the early 18th century, and subsequently re-occupied by the French in the 1740s. Until the late 18th century, Dominica was one of few Caribbean territories controlled by the Kalinago, the Indigenous inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles at the time of contact.This session presents ongoing archaeological, geophysical, and paleoenvironmental research at LaSoye aimed to characterize the nature of the relationship between the ancestral Kalinago and the European settlers, and to examine the political, economic, and socioecological realities of an informal trading encampment on the periphery of European colonialism in the Caribbean.
Other Keywords
Historic Archaeology •
Survey •
Colonialism •
Environmental Archaeology •
Maritime Archaeology •
LiDAR •
UAV •
Indigenous Archaeology •
Caribbean •
Settlement archaeology
Geographic Keywords
Caribbean
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-5 of 5)
- Documents (5)
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Emerging Materialities and Landscapes of Early Colonial Encounters at LaSoye, Dominica (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Contemporary archaeological research of Indigenous-European interactions in the colonial Caribbean explores themes of Indigenous resilience and agency in the face of encroaching European conquest. This paper presents an overview of ongoing archaeological work at LaSoye, a colonial era European...
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Maritime Survey Results of La Soye Bay (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper focuses on the maritime components of the LaSoye archaeological project. Excavations from the terrestrial site, LaSoye 2, in 2018 and 2019 revealed that this site was occupied within the 16th century. An initial underwater survey via snorkel and scuba were conducted in 2019 to establish...
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Near-Surface Geophysical Survey of a 17th/18th century trading factory at LaSoye, Dominica. (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2017, storm surges exposed archaeological deposits near LaSoye Point located on the north-eastern coast of Dominica. A year later, a small-scale excavation—focusing on the exposed coastal features of the site—revealed remnants of a structure, an extramural activity area, and a wide range of...
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Paleoenvironmental Dimensions of Historic Landscape Change at LaSoye, Dominica (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. European colonization of the Caribbean and the imposition of imperialist practices of resource extraction and slave labor is possibly the most significant change in human-environment interactions since the early Holocene. Multi-proxy study of ecological responses to land use during this time is...
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UAV LiDAR Survey at La Soye, Dominica (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) LiDAR survey was conducted along the shore and land adjacent to the La Soye site in the Woodford Hills area of Dominica. This survey is part of the broader exploration of colonial encounters (indigenous Kalinago and European Traders) on the Caribbean Frontier. The...