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.

摘要

近年来，在加勒比群岛土著考古遗址的露天挖掘过程中，已经发现了数千个柱孔特征。然而，村庄空间组织的重建及其随时间的变化有时是一项具有挑战性的任务，因为土着村庄的占领可以跨越500多年。本文介绍了在加勒比群岛小安的列斯群岛圣文森特岛上的一个土著村庄遗址 Argyle 的救援发掘的考古数据，该遗址可追溯到前殖民晚期和早期殖民时期。考古数据与对 17 世纪欧洲小安的列斯群岛文献资料的民族志解读以及在南美洲大陆热带低地的阿拉瓦干和加勒比语民族进行的两项民族考古村庄研究并列。这项研究证明了综合方法在理解阿盖尔遗址和概念化更广泛的环加勒比地区土著村庄定居点动态方面的价值。