Description:

This event is on Zoom, and is part of our Archaeology & Heritage online series.

Chike Pilgrim (University of Cambridge, Archaeology) will present his work.

Reconstructing past ecological networks in any space in the past is a complicated enough task, but made even more challenging by the fact that the Caribbean is a superhighway of landscapes and waterscapes that are also constantly interfacing with geospheric, atmospheric, hydrospheric and of course biospheric factors. Here we propose a way forward by combining data across these spheres, but in particular using paleoclimactic and paleoenvironmental data and superimposing upon them micromorphological analyses and stable isotope analyses. In tracking these changes in soil structure, plant and animal life, and human settlement and movement we may come to reasonable and maybe even revealing conclusions about ecological exchanges, in particular human-environment ones.