Shaku Ramcharan

Caribbean Domestic Prehistoric Architecture: Study of Spatio-temporal Dynamics and Acculturation Shaku Ramcharan

This study focuses on the changes in house form demonstrated on archaeological sites across the Caribbean. The models of houses depicting these forms are created from ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources on indigenous architecture in the Caribbean and South American region dating from the Saladoid prehistoric period to the contact era. The migration patterns and territorial maps of the prehistoric diaspora of the Taíno and Carib tribes are purported interpretations integral to this work. Sample material cultural data comes from Barbados, St. Eustatius, St Thomas, Cuba and Puerto Rico. These sites depict the cultural and linguistic markers of the Classic Taíno and Eastern Taíno historic homelands as well as the Carib settlements of the Lesser Antillean islands. Little information is known about the pre-ceramic indigenous cultures which predate these people who formed the Taíno and Carib tribes, but house forms associated with them give a hint at the complexity of the cultural legacy displayed in ethnohistoric records by European explorers.