Early Settlement on the Island of Grenada: Ecological Evidence for the Extinction of Rodents and Palms
Author(s): John G. Jones
Year: 2018
Summary
Evidence of Archaic age settlement with possible rodent harvesting is apparent in two well-dated sediment cores collected in northeastern Grenada. At around 3600 BC, large scale burning on the island coincides with severe forest modification including the total elimination of at least two species of palms. The selective, though possibly unintentional, removal of economically valuable palms suggests the influence of a non-human variable into the equation. I propose that the removal of a seed-dispersal agent, possibly an agouti or a hutia, might play into the removal of these palms, already in a weakened state due to large scale human-caused fires.
Cite this Record
Early Settlement on the Island of Grenada: Ecological Evidence for the Extinction of Rodents and Palms. John G. Jones. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 445157)
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Keywords
General
Archaic
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Environment and Climate
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Paleoethnobotany
Geographic Keywords
Caribbean
Spatial Coverage
min long: -90.747; min lat: 3.25 ; max long: -48.999; max lat: 27.683 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 21450