Christian Stouvenot

In the Caribbean archipelago, the rare underwater pre-Columbian remains identified to date have been generally found in shallow waters on coastal margins, such as the site of Los Buchillones in Cuba, Colas Islet or Chasse Islet in Guadeloupe. New discoveries in the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin in Guadeloupe are of a very different kind. After the first findings by scuba divers in 2012, a set of systematic surveys were carried out in 2016 : they enabled us to gather 160 lithic artifacts at more than 1 km offshore. They were scattered on the seabed between 2.50 m and 4 m of depth. The collection is only composed by andesite macrolithic tools. The most spectacular ones are axe blades and abrading tools such as grinding stones, mortars and circular-shaped polissoirs.  We also found a large quantity of elongated pebbles with percussion marks. The  status of this wide set of scattered artifacts is still indeterminated. It could result from multiple navigation events over the centuries causing cargoes losses. Another  assumption is that these artifacts are remains of pre-Columbian settlements or  camps located on a paleoshoreline which have been submerged by the result of the post-glacial sea-level rise, or because of great storms causing erosion of the  substrate. The hypothesis of a submersion of preceramic sites by sea-level rise is reinforced by the discovery of a peat layer at a depth around 5 m dated between 4000-5000 BC and containing pieces of fresh water trees reflecting a terrestrial
environment.

Among the many effects that may distort the interpretation of radiocarbon dates are those for which the age of the archaeological event is different from the radiocarbon age of the sample or "14C event" age. This type of problem arises in many cases, notably in the "old wood effect”, and occurs in various regions of the world where very long-lived trees species are common. In the Caribbean anthracological studies indicate a very high frequency of some indigenous centuries-old species such as Guaiacum, Guaiacum officinale L. However the absence of tree-ring data in humid tropical zones deprives us of an accurate inventory of long-lived species and especially the assessment of their longevity. Here we present measurements which enable us to estimate the longevity of archaeological Guaiacum wood posts. They highlight a gap of several centuries between wood from the outer edge and the heart of the tree. This example illustrates the additional uncertainty that can result from dating archeological events when dates are realized on unidentified botanical species from which the area that was sampled is unknown. Another source of error could arise from the use of rot-proof dead wood as fuel if we take into consideration that major hurricanes can produce large amounts of dead wood that may be collected for decades, even centuries. To improve chronometric data used in archaeological interpretations, it is necessary to ensure the quality of the dating process by following a protocol similar to those used in other regions of the world based on a better understanding of the material to be dated by preliminary identifications of wood samples: species, anatomical part, wood moisture content (unseasoned or seasoned).

Checking out the archaeological map of Guadeloupe is enough to assess the unequal geographical distribution of identified Pre-Columbian sites : their density decrease rapidly from the coast towards inland and disappear almost completely from 2 kilometers away the shoreline and 150 meters above sea level. It is legitimate to ask whether this distribution reflects the reality of Pre-Columbian settlements. It could be more likely the result of a survey bias in the knowledge of the inland sites whose the apparent lack could be explained by the difficulties of the archaeological surveying in this heavily wooded region and by the scarcity of civil works in these currently unoccupied areas. We have begun to explore an area of a few square kilometers between 250 and 450 meters above sea level in the highlands of the municipality of Capesterre-Belle-Eau. This area was chosen because of extensive banana fields frequently plowed involving a good visibility of the soil, but also by pieces of evidence of Pre-Columbian presence reported by archaeologists in year 1998. Initial results of our work indicate that these highlands are rather densely occupied. We have found several Neo-Indian settlements and one Meso-Indian campsite dated around 1350 BC. In addition we observe a widespread and scattered but dense presence of lithic artifacts (flakes of volcanic rocks, tools and axes blades) who remains still unexplained and could indicate places of food gardens or lithic working made from volcanic raw material which can be collected in one of the nearby valleys.

With the most extensive limestone deposits of the Lesser Antilles, the islands of Guadeloupe have remarkable potential for the study of Amerindian use of natural caves within the islands of the Eastern archipelago. Recurrent use of caves was evidenced very early, noted within the first chronicles recounting the colonization of the archipelago. However, very few excavations and studies have been completed in caves (Voûte-à-Pin in La Désirade, Morne Rita, Cadet 2 and 3, Blanchard in Marie-Galante, Abri Patate at le Moule in Grande-Terre, Morne de Lake in Saint-Martin, for the most significant sites of the French islands). The contrast between this potential and the sparse researches actually carried out on cave sites led to the initiation of a collective research program dedicated to this particular question. The program has three foci: 1) Animal populations and occupation of caves within the archipelago, 2) Pre-Columbian use and occupation of caves, 3) Karstic Sedimentogenesis / diff...

During the 4th millennium BC, the Caribbean part of the Atlantic Ocean witnessed the development of insular societies in the Lesser Antilles archipelago. These communities which combined shellfish collection, fishing, submarine and terrestrial hunting, a possible proto-agriculture and gathering, developed a culture there rather specific to the tropical insular context. For this period, the typology of the deposits and of the material productions, patterns in the exploitation of alimentary resources and of raw materials as well as patterns in the territorial settlement, show that the natural environment had an influence on the lifestyle and organization of these populations. Their social structure seems to be based on a cyclic system of exploitation of resources, shaped according to their availability and to socio-economic necessities as well as to the needs of their symbolic world. The notion of archaeoecology presented here comes from that of ethnoecology which analyses the interactions between humans and their natural environment with historical, sociocultural and ecological perspectives. The concept of archaeoecology is used in this work in order to examine the past interactions between the maritime hunter-gatherers of the Lesser Antilles, their activities and their environment. The palaeo-environments are considered in a widely accepted way that is including living species, ecosystems and their evolutions, climatic conditions and their variations. If it appears quite obvious that the natural environment partly influenced these societies, this aspect is even more distinct in the very specific insular context of the Caribbean. The island of Saint-Martin, localized in the Northern Lesser Antilles, offers a privileged field for this study. Indeed, it concentrates about a third of the Archaic Age sites that are attested by absolute dates in the Lesser Antilles. The archipelago spreads over more than 1 000 km, from Trinidad in the South to the Virgin Islands in the North, and thirty-seven Archaic Age sites have been, to this point, listed as far North as the island of Vieques, south-east of Puerto Rico. The case of Saint-Martin, which yielded twelve out of these thirty-seven sites, allows to examine, on a small territory, the sites’ settlement pattern, their formation and taphonomic evolution, and, in particular, the deterioration parameters of the shell deposits. Little developed on a vertical scale in Saint-Martin, these shell deposits appear to result from the combination of cyclic human settlements and stormy episodes bringing marine sand deposits which separate the successive discarding events in the same spot or destroy them, especially during cyclonic episodes. A diachronic and detailed study of the settlements over close to four millennia allows detecting an evolution in the human practices although they appear quite homogeneous at first sight. The global analysis of all available parameters reveals a strong interaction of the trio: humans, activities and environment. Indeed, the origin of the raw materials exploited in the industries and of the fauna which was consumed at the sites, show that these populations have a thorough knowledge of the resources specific to each island of archipelago. These aspects suggest that the communities were highly mobile, moving from an island ton another according to their needs and in adaptation to the availability and seasonality of some of these resources. The means of subsistence are mostly based on the collecting of shellfish and, to a smaller extent, of crustaceans. The consuming of fish, mostly taken from nearby reefs, is attested but it is difficult to evaluate its representation in the diet of the Archaic Age communities given the rarity of bones found at the sites, probably as a result of differential preservation problems. Given the high occurrence of known littoral sites, all in all quite coherent for nomadic navigators, it appears that these communities thus preferentially settled on the coast while they spent time as well inland where terrestrial fauna then appears to be targeted. Most of the activities registered at the sites are related to meat-based alimentation which seems to have conditioned the choice of places to settle quite systematically, according to the settings of the collecting zones. Cooking and consumption were also taking place at the settlements. The production and use of tools, attested by the debitage and shaping of stone, shell, and coral, are, in most cases, combined with alimentary activities. Meanwhile, some sites have a more specific, more technical purpose and clearly stand as workshop sites. Practices of a symbolic dimension are sometimes identified through, for example, unusual stone tools which aren’t functional a priori. All these activities are also witnessed by human laying out: various types of firing, cooking and consuming zones, clusters where the shells, mostly the queen conch (Lobatus gigas), were exploited for the making of tools, objects deposits in pits and empty areas suggesting the presence of huts installed during bivouacs. One of the special features of the Archaic Age settlements of Saint-Martin is the reoccupation of some of them, for hundreds or thousands of years. This phenomenon appears to be directly led to by the communities’ lifestyle which establish themselves on the places where they can find the resources they need. The results on the island of Saint-Martin allow defining the social profile of the Archaic Age communities, that is highly mobile and nomadic populations that travel around using canoes over long distances. These data, compared to those collected in the rest of the Lesser Antilles confirm and add to the so far understood pattern. Thus, the archaeoecology of the Archaic Age populations of the Lesser Antilles reveals a relative symbiosis between humans, their activities and the environment. This fragile balance for communities interdependent with the natural environment witnesses to a rather precarious lifestyle which will be progressively discontinued in favour of semi-sedentary settlements at the end of the Archaic Age period. Meanwhile, the migration of farmer-potter communities around the end of the 1st millennium BC leads to the disappearing of the Archaic Age populations in the Lesser Antilles, integrated with the new societies or pushed away in the Greater Antilles where they lasted longer.

"A 2 m² recognition test pit was undertaken in 2004 in this small rock shelter, immediately nearby Grotte Cadet 2. The excavation revealed a 1,20 m thick sedimentary infilling. The sediments blocked behind an accumulation of blocks at the cave entrance accumulated since the late Pleistocene and during the Holocene. The lower part of the infilling is composed of phosphate deposits rich in vertebrate faunal remains, land snails and land crabs. The basis of this level was dated to about 13 800 BC. The upper part of the sequence yielded traces of a late Neoindian occupation dated to about AD 1000 and of subsequent historical remains. About fifty taxa were identified. The stratigraphic sequence therefore reveals the history of the animal peopling and subsequent anthropization of the Guadeloupean environments. The deepest layers have yielded a high diversity of Chiroptera, avian, saurian and amphibian fauna. The part of native vertebrate species decreases progressively: this fact probably reflects an direct (introduction, predation) or indirect (ecosystem disturbance) anthropization of the environments. On the other hand, the part of land snails and land crabs grows substantially. Finally, the upper levels, related to post-Columbian deposits, illustrate a rather sudden stop in the cavity’s use by the small native insular fauna and a dramatic drop in vertebrates’ diversity. The old world domestic taxa then compose most of the taphocenose of the shelter.
The faunal associations enable to partially infer the composition of the surrounding environments during each period. However this reading is made complex given the multiplicity of agents responsible in these accumulations, a point which is discussed in this paper. Finally this assemblage offers a remarquable stratified series, quite new for the Lesser Antilles islands."

A multiproxy analysis of lacustrine sediments cored in Grand-Case Pond at Saint-Martin, north of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, reveals three distinct climatic periods for the last 3700 years. From 3700 to ~2500 yr cal. BP and from 1150 yr cal. BP to the present, carbonate mud deposition occurred in connection with pond lowstands. These periods were also punctuated by severe drought events, marked by gypsum laminae, and hurricane landfalls, leading to marine sand inputs into the pond. The intermediate time interval, from 2500 to 1150 yr cal. BP, is typified by black organic mud deposition, suggesting that hypoxic to anoxic conditions prevailed at the pond bottom. These were probably linked with a perennial pond highstand and reflect more uniform and wetter climatic conditions than today. The carbon isotopic composition of the ostracod Perissocytheridea bisulcata shows that the lowest δ13C values are recorded during the hypoxic periods, as a consequence of bacterial recycling of isotopically depleted organic matter. Such a climatic history agrees closely with that documented from other records in the Caribbean area, such as the Cariaco Basin, central coast of Belize or Barbados. By constrast, discrepancies seem to emerge from the comparison between hurricane activity recorded at Saint-Martin on the one hand and Vieques (Puerto Rico) on the other hand. We explain this apparent contradiction by a balance between two distinct storm paths in response to latitudinal shifts of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Stronger storm activity over the Gulf coast and the inner Caribbean Sea is favoured by a southern position of the ITCZ in connection with dry climatic conditions. Plausible links with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are also suggested.

Les prospections de cavités naturelles réalisées ces dernières années sur le littoral guadeloupéen apportent de nouvelles données sur la morphogenèse et la sédimentogenèse de ce karst particulier. Les grottes et abris s'ouvrent le plus souvent sur les falaises mortes étagées. Trois principaux modes de cavernement sont reconnus : 1/ la dissolution en milieu phréatique à la périphérie du biseau d'eau salée, 2/ l'érosion différentielle des falaises sous l'action des vagues et 3/ l'exploitation de la fracturation des falaises fossiles. Des exemples de remplissage de cavités sont décrits. La genèse et le contrôle environnemental des lithofaciès observés sont discutés. Une succession de dépôts traduisant l'évolution depuis une position littorale vers une position plus continentale en réponse à la fossilisation des falaises est reconnue. Le recueil d'ossements fossiles dans ces dépôts témoigne également de l'existence de sites paléontologiques pléistocènes en Guadeloupe.

A 2.5-m-thick sequence of lake sediments at the Étang de Grand-Case, Saint Martin (French West Indies) is studied here. Significant hydrological budget fluctuations allows distinction of three main climatic periods: (1) an overall dry period (4200 BP–2300 BP), characterised by carbonated mud, gypsum and storm sand layers; (2) a wet phase (2300 BP–1150 BP) dominated by organic mud; and (3) a more complex phase (1150 BP to present), with detrital inputs due to human activities. Comparison with other regional high-resolution records shows that similar climate modifications typify the whole Mesoamerican and Caribbean area. The climatic phenomena that are implicated in the variations of both precipitation and hurricane frequency over the Lesser Antilles are due to the latitudinal displacement of the inter-tropical convergence zone. These data give new support to the hypothesis of the existence of a correlation between peopling phases and climate variations in the Caribbean as previously proposed by some archaeologists.

Une séquence de vases lagunaires de l'étang de Grand-Case, à Saint-Martin (Petites Antilles), couvrant les quatre derniers millénaires, est analysée. Trois périodes climatiques et sédimentaires peuvent être distinguées : (1) une période globalement sèche (4200–2300 BP), caractérisée par le dépôt de vases carbonatées, de gypse et de lits sableux déposés par des cyclones ; (2) une période humide (2300–1150 BP), où dominent des vases organiques ; (3) une période récente (1150 BP jusqu'au présent), plus complexe et marquée par les activités humaines. Ces différentes phases trouvent leur correspondance dans les enregistrements livrés par d'autres lacs de l'aire Antilles–Mésoamérique. Les phénomènes climatiques impliqués, d'une part, dans les variations de fréquence des cyclones et, d'autre part, dans les variations de la pluviosité sur les Petites Antilles sont liés au déplacement de la zone de convergence intertropicale. Ces modifications climatiques pourraient constituer l'un des éléments d'explication des changements observés dans le peuplement de l'île de Saint-Martin

Le site amérindien de Baie aux Prunes est localisé à l'extrémité ouest de l'île de Saint-Martin, sur la péninsule des Terres Basses. Il s'étend sur la côte, derrière le haut de plage longeant la Baie. Des sondages de reconnaissance ont permis de localiser des structures liées à un habitat précolombien : dépotoirs, sépultures et trou de poteau. Les analyses stratigraphiques et l'homogénéité du mobilier archéologique, attestent de la contemporanéité des dépôts. Le site est daté par le radiocarbone entre 1000 et 1300 après J.-C. en années calibrées et correspond à une phase amérindienne postsaladoïde jusque là non représentée sur l'île. Le gisement présente plusieurs intérêts majeurs : une occupation unique couplée à un mobilier abondant, en excellent état de conservation, tant au niveau des productions anthropiques que des restes de faune consommée. Cette occupation permet d'établir un référentiel chrono-culturel précis et complète la chronologie des occupations postsaladoïdes de l'île de Saint-Martin.

The site of Saint-Antoine at Vitrolles (Hautes-Alpes) was excavated during two rescue campaigns in 1995 and 1996. They have shown the existence of three culturally homogenous loci, attributed to an advanced Epigravettian on the basis of the lithic industry. The second excavation campaign concerned "Locus 2 ", a multistratified spread of remains covering about 120 m2. The results provided by laboratory studies suggest the autumnal occupation of a site specialised in the acquisition and processing of cervidae carcasses. Among the most significant results, we wish to stress the discovery of obvious structures (a burnt surface and an accumulation of bones) and the first occurrence in an Epigravettian context of knapping with a soft hammerstone.

The salvage excavation of locus 2 of the site of Saint-Antoine (Vitrolles, Hautes-Alpes), located in the southern part of the French Alps, has yieldied an abundant Epigravettian hthic assemblage. The principal flint procurement zone is situated more than 30 km south of the site. Reduction sequence is oriented toward the production of rectilinear bladelets and their eventual transformation into backed projectile points. The debitage is effectuated by the use of soft stone hammers. Typologically, the presence of numerous rectilinear backed points, espacially microgravettes and backed bladelets, along with the absence of geometric tools and the microburin technique, permit a correlation to be made with the evolved or final Epigravettian of some Italian assemblages.

Understanding the formation processes of maritime archaeological sites and the maritime landscape in the French West Indies is a new challenge in underwater archaeology. This chapter presents an analysis of formation and conservation processes of maritime archaeological sites in Guadeloupe using evidence from both historical and archaeological research. Formation parameters include contemporary events associated with maritime loss and the in situ geophysical regime. Questions considered include: what natural and/or anthropogenic parameters best classify maritime sites in the context of the French West Indies landscape? And: how do these parameters vary by site location? Field-tested case studies are used to assess the archaeological potential for submerged shipwreck sites for three locational typologies within the landscape: submerged, coastal, and micro-island. Geomorphic parameters, including erosion, sea level evolution, and tectonic activity, are evaluated with regard to the formation of coastal Amerindian and colonial sites. The location of shipwrecks are primarily determined by historic patterns in commercial trade and by topographical constraints associated with accessibility, risk, and the presence of natural harbors, parameters important in the Caribbean. A unique feature of Guadeloupe is the high variability of the structure of the coastline through time. The recent discovery of numerous underwater prehistoric artifacts confirms that several islands, coastal areas, and their archaeological sites have been completely submerged or eroded since their formation. The characterization of these formation processes provides both academically interesting and practical information valuable in assessing the impact of development and urbanization in Guadeloupe’s maritime landscape.