On the way to the islands: the role of early domestic plants in the initial peopling of the Antilles

Summary

Indigenous people initiated their dispersal toward the Caribbean isles at sometime around 8000 to 7800 years before present. This time framework coincides with the consolidation/aggregation and eventual transference of new dietary suites (domestic plants) to long distances, having been this process one that initiated at least in two different and mutually distant regions of continental America. This presentation explores the feasibility of the ideal free distribution (IFD) and diet breadth (DB) models for interpreting early human dispersal towards the isles and between them. Although the causes that triggered the initial peopling of the isles are poorly understood, some outcomes of these early processes, such as the acquisition and factual use of domestic plants in island locales, have been consistently registered. Together with the IFD-DB models we also explore other theoretical constructs derived from archaeology, experiential philosophy, and phenomenology (e.g., transported landscape, experiential space, biography of things) aiming at weigh up if domestic plants could have been a primum mobile around the initial peopling of the Caribbean islands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• New Insights into the Archaic of the circum-Caribbean

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