Indigenous Landscapes in the Caribbean: Using network analysis and spatial statistics
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2020-12-02

What we know today of the Indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean is the result of a process of cultural interpretation and representation originating from the colonial enterprise. For the island  of  Haytí,  later  renamed  Hispaniola  by  Columbus,  the  first  Spanish  chroniclers  define  indigenous territories that represented diverse political hierarchies and cultures. This identi-fication has been repeated through the years, reified in textbooks and histories until it repre-sented the “truth” about the indigenous past for the general public in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and even worldwide. Using regional surveys and extensive excavations throughout thenorthern Dominican Republic, the Nexus 1492 project has compiled a database of archaeolog-ical information that provides enough data to evaluate the real existence of these territories in terms of material culture and archaeological regional patterns. In this paper, we will confront the  Spanish  model  of  the  indigenous  territories  before  the  arrival  of  Columbus  using  three  landscape methods to create a model built from different material culture and analyses. The first method uses network analysis to examine relationships revealed through material culture similarities to understand how social relationships might be interacting with the construction of authority. The second uses X-tent analysis to examine hierarchical patterns in archaeological site distribution. The third method evaluates the relationship between environmental variables and archaeological site distribution using Geographically Weighted Regression. These compar-ing and contrasting methods will allow us to generate an alternative image of the indigenous landscapes before the arrival of Europeans and critically review the Spanish representations.


Eduardo Herrera Malatesta, Lewis Borck, Maroussia Favre Carlen, Jan Christoph Athenstaedt, Corinne L. Hofman