Island Historical Ecology

Island Historical Ecology addresses Caribbean island ecologies from the perspective of social and cultural intervention, focusing on selected islands between Venezuela and Puerto Rico. This region represents the locus of the West Indies, the site of the longest continuous human occupation, spanning approximately 8,000 years. Environmental coring was carried out in carefully selected wetlands with the goal of collecting preserved microfossils, allowing for the reconstruction of pre-colonial and colonial landscapes. This volume goes on to compare these findings with well-documented patterns in the Mediterranean and Pacific islands, placing the Caribbean into a larger context of island historical ecology.