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

Caribbean Paleoethnobotany / 181
tual and symbolic significance, for example, jagua (Genipa americana, Rubiaceae),
achiote (Bixa orellana, Bixaceae), and cojóbana (which was mentioned above).
Native economic plant resources including a number of fruit- bearing and
beverage- making trees, as well as the cycad zamia— this latter apparently as early
as the Archaic Age based on Pagán’s evidence— were eventually incorporated into
the original garden systems and so became a part of this unique fusion of economic
plants and gardening traditions. Root crops seem to have remained the
mainstay of subsistence spanning the so- called Ceramic Age and into the contact
era (Keegan 1996a, 2000; Olsen 1974). I have argued (Newsom 2006) that maize,
even though now understood to have been introduced relatively early, seems to
have retained a rather restricted pattern of use in the Caribbean, perhaps ultimately
and primarily associated with high- status and/ or communal (feasting)
contexts, never having achieved the status of a staple crop in the islands. The culmination
of all this was a uniquely Caribbean approach to plant production that
includes interesting island and subregional variation, particularly when examined
in combination with use of faunal resources (Newsom and Wing 2004).
In general, we now have the benefit of a more complete understanding of the
types and diversity of plant resources that separately and together, at various times
and in various places, comprised the ancient ethnobotany of Caribbean Indians.
We have a much more solid basis on which to begin to model the evolution of
plant use in the region, and to provide important context and clarification of the
ethnobotanical details provided in ethnohistoric documents. We are to the point
that we are beginning to be able to infer the relative importance and respective
roles of plant resources in ancient subsistence economies and among social segments
(e.g., see Deagan 2004), and we can specify that plant cultivation was part
of the cultural milieu of Caribbean Indians from the outset of colonization and
settlement. Plant use and husbandry in the ancient Caribbean was complex and
multifaceted, mirroring the implications from ethnohistoric record, with individual
taxa gathered from the wild, others maintained in prepared fields, or tended
in home gardens, and perhaps others grown in specialized garden settings, for example,
the specialty plants, as suggested above. The apparent pattern of increasing
presence and diversity of plant taxa over time (Table 13.3) may attest to the evolution,
diversification, and intensification of plant production practices and reliance,
topics that we are now better poised to examine.
Third Base and Home Stretch
The next challenge, as we continue to build on the archaeobotanical database, is
to provide a clearer spatial and temporal framework of understanding, on a regional,
subregional, and island- by- island basis. We should work to address some of
the unique historical circumstances underlying the development of local cuisines,
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