The early colonial period witnessed new scales of connectivity and unprecedented projects of resource extraction across the Spanish Americas. Yet such transformations also drew heavily on... Show moreThe early colonial period witnessed new scales of connectivity and unprecedented projects of resource extraction across the Spanish Americas. Yet such transformations also drew heavily on preexisting Indigenous landscapes, technologies, and institutions. Drawing together recent discussions in archaeology and geography about mobility and resource materialities, this article takes the early colonial route as a central object of investigation and contributes to new emerging interpretive frameworks that make sense of Spanish colonialism in the Americas as a variable, large-scale, and materially constituted process. Using three case studies—the ruta de Colón on the island of Hispaniola, the routes connecting the southeastern Caribbean islands with mainland South America, and the ruta de la plata in the south-central Andes—we develop a comparative archaeological analysis that reveals divergent trajectories of persistence, appropriation, and erasure in the region's routes and regimes of extraction and mobility during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Show less
This paper addresses a database collected and constructed as part of PhD research project on the north-western coast of the Dominican Republic. The PhD was part of the ERC Synergy Grant NEXUS 1492:... Show moreThis paper addresses a database collected and constructed as part of PhD research project on the north-western coast of the Dominican Republic. The PhD was part of the ERC Synergy Grant NEXUS 1492: New World Encounters in a Globalizing World. The database was collected during fieldwork campaigns between 2014 and 2015. Fieldwork consisted of a regional survey, material culture registry and collection, test pit excavation, and processing relevant environmental variables. The archaeological data consists of a record of 102 archaeological sites, the material culture associated with them (lithic, shell and coral objects, shell mollusk species), and the relationship between site location and a set of relevant environmental variables used for statistical analysis. This database is one of the only open access archaeological databases available at the moment in the Caribbean and can be reused by any Caribbean archaeologist working in the Greater Antilles. Show less
El estudio de paisajes en la arqueología cobró un inusitado interés hace algunas décadas cuando fue planteado como una alternativa a una arqueología que -influenciada ampliamente por la geografía... Show moreEl estudio de paisajes en la arqueología cobró un inusitado interés hace algunas décadas cuando fue planteado como una alternativa a una arqueología que -influenciada ampliamente por la geografía espacial- proponía el estudio de los contextos arqueológicos desde el análisis espacial y los principios de la economía formalista. En ese entonces, contribuciones de académicos como Walter Christaller (1966) y otros se incorporan en la arqueología como una herramienta metodológica que permitía un acercamiento a aquellos espacios territoriales que habían sido ocupados en el pasado (Clarke 1977; Johnson 1977). En Latinoamérica, y en particular, en el área andina y regiones aledañas, esta preocupación puede ser remontada a esfuerzos pioneros como los de Gordon R. Willey (1953), que serían posteriormente complementados por trabajos arqueológicos de análisis espacial y regional, estudiados tanto a partir de contextos arqueológicos (Moore 1996; Netherly 1984) como a partir de evidencia material y documentos históricos (Zuidema 1962; cf. Silverman e Isbell 2002). Show less
The arrival of Columbus to the Caribbean in 1492 marked a milestone in world history. In both the European and the indigenous world, a set of economic, political and hierarchical networks and... Show moreThe arrival of Columbus to the Caribbean in 1492 marked a milestone in world history. In both the European and the indigenous world, a set of economic, political and hierarchical networks and relations were defined, structured and changed. To approach the transformations that took place in the indigenous world a regional archaeological investigation (coast of the Montecristi province, Dominican Republic) was combined with a theoretical framework that integrated: the concepts of taskscape and contested landscapes with statistical analysis and Geographic Information Systems, to evaluate the patterns of material culture distribution and its cultural implications. This allowed indigenous taskscapes to be defined at different spatial scales, which in turn permitted the delineation of the indigenous landscape before the arrival of Columbus. The archaeological results were compared with evidence from the early colonial chronicles and cartography for the north of the island. This comparison highlighted the spatial and material bases for the transformation of the indigenous landscape. The final results were encapsulated by two transformations of the indigenous landscape, called the Everyday Level, and the Imaginary Level. Show less
Satellite imagery has had limited application in the analysis of pre-colonial settlement archaeology in the Caribbean; visible evidence of wooden structures perishes quickly in tropical climates.... Show moreSatellite imagery has had limited application in the analysis of pre-colonial settlement archaeology in the Caribbean; visible evidence of wooden structures perishes quickly in tropical climates. Only slight topographic modifications remain, typically associated with middens. Nonetheless, surface scatters, as well as the soil characteristics they produce, can serve as quantifiable indicators of an archaeological site, detectable by analyzing remote sensing imagery. A variety of pre-processed, very diverse data sets went through a process of image registration, with the intention to combine multispectral bands to feed two different semi-automatic direct detection algorithms: a posterior probability, and a frequentist approach. Two 5 × 5 km2 areas in the northwestern Dominican Republic with diverse environments, having sufficient imagery coverage, and a representative number of known indigenous site locations, served each for one approach. Buffers around the locations of known sites, as well as areas with no likely archaeological evidence were used as samples. The resulting maps offer quantifiable statistical outcomes of locations with similar pixel value combinations as the identified sites, indicating higher probability of archaeological evidence. These still very experimental and rather unvalidated trials, as they have not been subsequently groundtruthed, show variable potential of this method in diverse environments. Show less
En la historiografía y la arqueología dominicana la trascendencia de la región norte ha estado tradicionalmente ligada a su condición de escenario de importantes acontecimientos vinculados con los... Show moreEn la historiografía y la arqueología dominicana la trascendencia de la región norte ha estado tradicionalmente ligada a su condición de escenario de importantes acontecimientos vinculados con los inicios de la colonización europea (Arranz Marquez 1991; Cassa 1992; Deagan y Cruxent 2002; Guerrero y Veloz Maggiolo 1988; Ortega 1988; Wilson 1992). Al margen de los aportes que esa visión ha generado, la misma ha contribuido a trazar esquemas importantes en los estudios arqueológicos, sobre todo, al incidir en la prioridad de ciertos temas; la forma en que estos han sido abordados, así como los escenarios propicios para su investigación. En este artículo revisamos algunas de estas nociones y proporcionamos evidencias para entender la conquista del norte, principalmente desde la perspectiva indígena. Show less
