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.