Though She Be But Little: Resource Resilience, Amerindian Foraging, and Long-Term Adaptive Strategies in the Grenadines, West Indies

ABSTRACT

Because small islands are frequently associated with spatially heterogeneous, biodiverse marine environments that readily exceed the productive capacity of their associated terrestrial habitat, it has been argued that these were attractive settlement locations for people due to the rich aquatic resource base they provided. I examine this proposition for the small West Indian island of Carriacou (32 km²), situated in the Grenadines micro-archipelago, in light of recent zooarchaeological findings for two of its major archaeological sites, Sabazan and Grand Bay, where a millennium of sustainable marine foraging is evidenced. While reliance on abundant marine resources clearly contributed to the long-term occupation of Sabazan and Grand Bay, fine-grained analysis of the fish and invertebrate remains suggests that abundance alone does not explain settlement persistence. I argue that the key to understanding the lengthy prehistoric occupation of Grand Bay and Sabazan lies in the structure of its marine environments, especially the functional and response diversity of targeted prey, and the flexibility of Amerindian foraging strategies. Settlement viability on Carriacou did not rest solely on the importance of marine resource extraction, but more specifically on the resilience of the marine environments exploited and the behavior of foragers in relation to this.

Keywords:

• archaeomalacology
• Caribbean
• Carriacou
• Ceramic Age
• ecosystem resilience
• sustainable fishing

Notes

¹At Sabazan a quarter of the 6.4 mm fraction of each studied context (effectively representing a 50 × 50 cm area) was analyzed except one context (Trench 2, Layer 3A, Level 1), which was analyzed in its entirety as part of a pilot study. For the 1.6 mm fraction, a 100 g subsample was analyzed for each studied context due the abundance of recovered material and the small size of the majority of remains (<3–4 mm). Hundreds to thousands of specimens were recovered in each subsample, but comparatively few were identifiable, and even fewer contributed to MNI. Diagnostic remains from the 1.6 mm fraction consisted primarily of fish vertebrae from Selar crumenophthalmus, Trachurus lathami, Belonidae, Hemiramphidae, and Mullidae, as well as elements of rice rat (Oryzomyini). The majority of echinoid remains in this study were recovered from the 1.6 mm fraction. At Grand Bay, the same protocol involving analysis of a quarter of the 6.4 mm fraction and a 100 g subsample of the 1.6 mm fraction recovered from a 1 × 1 m context was followed for all studied samples, except three samples of 1.6 mm fraction analyzed by LeFebvre (2007), which were analyzed in their entirety due to limited volume. See Appendices C and D of Giovas (2013) for a complete list of recovery provenience and fraction for every analyzed specimen at Sabazan and Grand Bay.

²Conch (Strombidae, primarily the queen conch Lobatus gigas) taxa are excluded from these counts as they were quantified separately in the field due to transport and curation difficulties imposed by their large, bulky shells. For Sabazan conch NISP totals 369, representing a minimum of 88 individuals from all excavated contexts. At Grand Bay, a minimum of 2,405 individuals were tallied (excluding the 2014 excavation) based on counts of shell apices; NISP was not quantified (Giovas 2013).

³A direct date on an opossum vertebrae from Sabazan yields a calibrated age of AD 680–780 (UCIAMS-94046, 1265 ± 20)

⁴Interestingly, preliminary analysis of fisheries data by the Grenadian government has suggested a relationship between fish production and the El Niño phenomenon in local waters. In the year preceding the ENSO events of 1982/83, 1986/87, 1991/92, and 1997/98 fish production was reduced by 25% to 60% of the average, while subsequent onset of La Niña episodes produced catches some 30% to 50% higher than average (Government of Grenada 2000).

⁵It is worth noting that abandonment of small islands, in many cases just a few centuries after settlement, is a recurrent phenomenon of insular regions worldwide (e.g., Adriatic islands, Pitcairn, Henderson, St. Kilda) (Dawson 2013; Fleming 2005; Weisler 1996).