First records of modified snake bones in the Pre-Columbian archaeological record of the Lesser Antilles: Cultural and paleoecological implications

Abstract

The past distribution of Boa snakes and their interactions with Pre-Columbian human populations in the Lesser Antilles (Caribbean) remain enigmatic. These snakes currently have a patchy distribution in the islands and are nearly absent from archaeological deposits. This raises questions about whether their absence from Pre-Columbian contexts should be interpreted from a biological or a cultural point of view. In this study, I provide three new references to Boa remains from archaeological and natural deposits on the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, most of which were manufactured into beads. These are the first objects in the Lesser Antilles known to be manufactured using snake bones and all appear to be made from Boa, despite a wider diversity of snakes occurring in this region. Using these new observations and combined pieces of evidence from archaeological, historical, and biological data sources, I propose that the extreme scarcity of Boa in zooarchaeological assemblages reflects their prominent status in Pre-Columbian Amerindian communities.

Keywords:

• Modified bone
• Martinique
• squamate
• zooarchaeology
• Guadeloupe

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the Service Regional de l’Archéologie of Martinique (Damien Leroy and Thierry Dorival) and Guadeloupe (Dominique Bonnissent) who enabled access and loaned the material for this study. I also thank Salvador Bailon for his assistance and advice in the earliest phase of this work, Jean Lescure for the numerous discussions we had and for his bibliographic advice, Sandrine Grouard for granting access to the archaeological material of the Cathédrale de Basse-Terre site loaned by the Service Régional de l’Archéologie de Guadeloupe, and A. Lenoble for providing the material recently excavated at the PGR6 site. I am also grateful to the three reviewers who provided many useful comments which helped me to improve the quality of this paper and to the editors of JICA who proofread it and revised the English.

Additional information

Funding

The author was funded by a fellowship granted by the FYSSEN foundation and also received support from the Société des Amis du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. The fieldwork during which the Martinique zooarchaeological material was investigated was funded by the Direction des Affaires Culturelles de Martinique and the FEDER program 2016–2020 ‘‘Ecosystème insulaire tropical, réponse de la faune vertebrae terrestre à 6 000 ans d’anthropisation de la Guadeloupe’’ (ECSIT), operated by the CNRS and funded by a European PO-FEDER 2014-2020 grant (grant n°2016-FED-503), the Guadeloupe Regional Council, and the DAC of Guadeloupe.