Constructing from the Invisible: Conceptualizing Indigenous Village Layout and Dynamics in the Circum-Caribbean

Abstract

In recent years, thousands of posthole features have been located during open-area excavations of Indigenous archaeological sites in the Caribbean Islands. However, the reconstruction of village spatial organization and its changes over time is sometimes a challenging task, because Indigenous village occupation can span more than 500 years. This article presents archaeological data from rescue excavations at Argyle, an Indigenous village site dating to the late pre-colonial and early colonial period on Saint Vincent Island in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean Islands. The archaeological data are juxtaposed with an ethnographic reading of seventeenth-century European documentary sources of the Lesser Antilles and two ethnoarchaeological village studies conducted with Arawakan and Cariban-speaking peoples in the Tropical Lowlands of mainland South America. This study demonstrates the value of an integrated approach in understanding the Argyle site and conceptualizing the dynamics of Indigenous village settlements in the wider Circum-Caribbean area.