The Transformation of Indigenous Landscape in the First Colonized Region of the Caribbean

Abstract

This paper presents an archaeological reconstruction of indigenous landscape transformations in the first colonized region of the Caribbean. The arrival of Columbus in 1492 in the northern region of the island of Haytí (the current Dominican Republic and Haiti) signified a profound change in the lives of the island’s communities, transforming their everyday actions and their perceptions of landscape. To address this complex topic, this research tackled a key problem in landscape archaeology: while the “landscape” concept has been extensively debated, there is a growing tendency to use the concept without clear definitions and to obscure important methodological aspects of how scholars bridge the divide between their conceptual definitions and the archaeological record. This paper approaches this problem by applying the concepts of ‘sites as tendencies’ and ‘contested taskscapes’. This theoretical and methodological framework allows for the reconstruction of the indigenous landscape and, more importantly, highlights how the colonization process impacted the everyday tasks and perceptions of Hayti’s indigenous people through the profound transformation of their landscape.

Emerging Empires and Opportunistic Land-Use Legacies: Testing a New Model on Rome's Conquest and Colonization Through Archaeological Survey Data in the Territories of Cosa and Tarraco

“…The early conquest of the Americas by Columbus (1492-1502) represents a useful parallel case study that can be examined to understand potential Roman colonization practices. Recent research combining archaeological studies, historical sources and ethnographic surveys (Hofman et al, 2014(Hofman et al, , 2018Hofman, Valcárcel Rojas, Ulloa Hung 2020;Herrera Malatesta, 2022) illustrated that the Iberian villages established on the island of Hispaniola (modern Dominican Republic and Haiti) after Columbus's first voyage targeted areas that had been previously abandoned or were unused by local communities, but which were easily defended. These areas were not particularly suitable for agriculture but, interestingly, were located at the margins of fertile rural land farmed by indigenous peoples or nearby previous settlements.…”