Paleoenvironmental Dimensions of Historic Landscape Change at LaSoye, Dominica

Summary

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 essential for establishing baseline targets for restoration and assessing future vulnerabilities of Caribbean ecosystems. Paleoecological studies of pre-Columbian environments in the Caribbean are well-established, yet fewer studies have focused on the historical period, where we can correlate specific historical phenomena with local landscape changes. We present preliminary results of pollen, faunal, and geomorphological analyses examining the socioecological consequences of colonialism at the 16th-19th century site of LaSoye, Dominica. With these data, we outline the environmental history of the bay and characterize the scale and types of human impacts on this localized landscape system under different regimes; Kalinago stronghold, European settlement, and plantation colony.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow