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

Summary

Environmental Archaeology is a diverse field that focuses on the inherent relationships between past people and the physical environments in which they lived. Archaeologists employ traces of past human behavior and cultural practices in their macro-, micro-, geo- and biochemical forms to study past environmental conditions as well as human activities that directly or indirectly involved or impacted the environment. In the Caribbean islands, archaeologists employ a diversity of analytical techniques for the analysis of past environmental signatures and cultural remains. Questions pursued by Caribbean scholars address topics of cultural, ecological, biological, and geological significance, contributing to broader understandings of human ecodynamics in island and coastal settings through time. This presentation reviews traditions and tenets of environmental archaeological scholarship within the Caribbean islands, provides an intellectual context for the symposium papers, and situates Caribbean island-based research within broader topics of environmental archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Caribbean Environmental Archaeology: New Perspectives on Human Ecodynamics and Social Relations

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