Revisiting the Ideal-Free settlement of the Caribbean islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The settlement of the Caribbean Islands represents one of the most expansive and significant overwater population dispersal events in the history of the New World. While it is generally accepted that the Caribbean was settled from northern South America beginning in the mid-Holocene and involved a series of episodic voyaging events, more precise aspects of the timing, patterns, and causes of this island colonization process remain unresolved. Here, we build on previous applications of the Ideal-Free Distribution model to help explain island-scale geographic patterns in settlement. Our approach combines a newly created large radiocarbon dataset of over 2,000 radiocarbon dates with Bayesian chronological and spatial modeling to explore the relationship between habitat suitability and patterns of initial colonization and temporal lags in settlement (i.e., Alee effects). Results provide greater insight into how and when the Antillean chain of islands were settled prior to European contact in the 15th century and help to resolve some longstanding chronological disparities of when some islands were colonized at different points in time, but not others.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23414