Crossing the Borders: New Methods and Techniques in the Study of Archaeological Materials from the Caribbean

Caribbean Paleoethnobotany / 179
1989:133–135). (This reference may pertain to wild or feral cotton, or to specimens in misinterpreted
tropical home gardens, which are often very junglelike and “untamed” in appearance, or alternatively
to the native “silk cotton tree” or ceiba [Ceiba pentandra, Bombacaceae] that produces a similar seed
¤ber.) On Guadeloupe (Lesser Antilles) during Columbus’s second voyage in 1494 (report of Dr.
Chanca [Hulme and Whitehead 1992:33]): “They had much cotton, spun and ready for spinning, and
many cotton cloths, so well made that they lose nothing by comparison with those of our own
country.”
(10) Red colorant: “their skinne coloured with some painting of a reddish tawney” (Hulme and
Whitehead 1991:53).
another dimension as to who indeed were gardeners in the society, over and above
everyday and more- or- less mundane gardens, gardening, and gardeners. Can paleoethnobotany
be employed to illuminate these kinds of details, that is, the personal
or humanistic side of the indigenous ethnobotany? Perhaps so, particularly
if examined in conjunction with studies of symbolism and ideology, agricultural
implements recovered with human burials, and so on. But this avenue of research
has yet to be realized in the Caribbean. What else can we learn? Specifically, how
can Caribbean paleoethobotany help us to resolve things beyond these basic understandings
and suppositions concerning the indigenous human- plant dynamic?
Second Base: The Caribbean Paleoethnobotanical Record
Caribbean paleoethnobotany has reached a stage of maturity in recent years. A
number of sites have been studied from throughout the region using a variety of
approaches, and they represent nearly the entire span of human occupation in the
archipelago. Recent syntheses of archaeobotanical data from the Caribbean are
available (e.g., Newsom and Wing 2004; Pagán Jiménez 2005b) and do not need
to be reiterated here. Rather, I highlight some of what we have learned with an
emphasis on early human settlement and subsistence adaptations in the region
and from a paleoethnobotanical perspective to reflect on the current breadth and
depth of our data and the unique strengths of this avenue of research.
One thing readily apparent from a cursory comparison (Figure 13.1) between
the list of plants mentioned in ethnohistoric documents and current inventories
of archaeobotanical identifications derived from both micro- and macrobotanical
data sets is that more types of plants and representing a wider range of uses
have now been identified via archaeobotany, relative to the number and variety described
in the chronicles. This makes quite clear that great strides have been made
in recent years toward detailing the paleoethnobotany of the region.
Gardeners from Day One. Caribbeanists have for some time surmised that the first
human occupants of the region— focusing on the period between about 4000–
100 b.c. (Keegan 1994)—were mobile or perhaps partly sedentary hunter- gathererfi
sher people (Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996; Keegan 1994; Rodríguez
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