| This is an archaeological study of the plant component of diet and human adaptation in the Caribbean islands. Archaeobotanical data from Caribbean sites, which form the basis of this research, have been largely unstudied to date. Nevertheless, plants play a central role in models that attempt to explain how Ceramic Age migrants from South America adapted to the insular environment.; Nineteen sites were tested archaeologically to provide the first comprehensive view of plant use in the region. The collective archaeobotanical data from Archaic and Ceramic Age occupations form profiles of plant use that correspond with early, later, and the final stages of migration, settlement, and social organization in particular island groups. The results indicate that plant resources were an integral part of prehistoric West Indian economies, and that gardening may have been initiated in the Caribbean Archaic Age. Native plant food resources were used in combination with important homegarden trees that originate in mainland areas. Several of these species appear to have been transported to the islands by Archaic Age people, and the evidence for plant introductions from the Central American/Yucatan region is just as compelling as from South America.; Root-crop horticulture may have been introduced in conjunction with the Saladoid settlement of the Lesser Antilles, even though evidence of domesticated plants is without substantiation by plant remains until relatively late in the sequence of human occupation. The presence of prehistoric maize is confirmed only at En Bas Saline, Haiti, in deposits dating between approximately A.D. 1250 and 1500. Maize cultivation in the West Indies may have been overshadowed by the primary system of root-crop horticulture. The plant remains themselves, combined with the presence of plant-processing artifacts and ethnohistorical observations, are beginning to suggest a uniquely West Indian pattern of plant use. |
