Long-Term Perspectives on Sustainability, Resilience, and Change on the Island of Barbuda
Résumé
The island of Barbuda in the Lesser Antilles has seen various waves of human occupation over the last 4000 years. During the Archaic Age (ca. 2000 – 500 BC), nomadic groups exploited the rich near shore areas to fish for West Indian conch and other species. The Ceramic Age Saladoid (ca. 100 BC–AD 900) and Post-Saladoid or Troumassoid cultures (AD 900–1490) exploited both marine and inland environments. European colonization of the island began around AD 1628 and left a significant impact on Barbuda’s environment although, unlike other islands, sugar cane was never grown on the island. The Colonial Period thus represents a reorganization of the landscape through agricultural practices, the introduction of new animal and plant species, and land subdivision. After emancipation (AD 1834), the people of Barbuda maintained sustainable fishing and farming practices and demonstrated resilience despite extreme climatic and weather events (hurricanes and droughts), and ongoing exploitative Colonial economic and political structures. Today, for the first time, Barbudans are at risk of losing their sustainable resilience, with irreversible cultural losses and devastating ecological restructuring. In this paper we explore change in Pre-Columbian times through the study of different cultural horizons, combining archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnobotany, archival documents, ethnography and environmental science to explore the long durée in a transdisciplinary perspective from the first peopling to the European contact, with reference to the unprecedented effects of the Anthropocene.
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