The people living at Argyle were likely Island Carib (Kalinago/Kalipuna), a people who lived spread across the Windward Islands. A practice seen among the Island Carib was the burying of the deceased under the house floors. The burial practice started by wrapping the deceased in a hammock that he or she previously owned, after which the deceased would be placed into the grave. When this was done, the Island Carib would gather around a big fire, as part of the ceremony for the burial. In the case that a deceased would not be buried beneath a house, the Island Carib would place a small hut over the grave, so the dead would never be without cover. Discovering burial or ritual practices like this one is always very interesting to archaeologists, since it shows us the ways of life from the past.
Rescue excavations were conducted at Argyle on St. Vincent in 2009 and 2010 because of the construction of an international airfield at that location. After careful excavations, around 310 postholes were uncovered, spread around over an area of about 2800 m2. In most cases, postholes like these point towards house structures. This was also the case at Argyle. Out of these 310 postholes, 102 postholes were attributed to 11 structures dating from the late 16th of early 17th century. Eight postholes out of the 310 probably belong to a tobacco shed from colonial times, which would date to around the end of the 18th century. Out of the 11 structures two have a large oval shape, and nine have a round to oval shape between 5 and 8 m in diameter. The map below shows a schematic view of how Argyle looked based on the postholes mentioned before.
Reconstruction of the two plazas at Argyle representing two phases of occupation.
The spatial organization of Argyle shows some similarities with central plaza village sites from across the Caribbean and tropical Lowlands of South America. The nine smaller, circle or oval shaped houses were spread across the site around what can be interpreted as a central plaza. It has been argued that the two bigger houses were used as “Men’s houses”, and the smaller houses as “family houses”. Sometimes, the Men’s houses were located at the center of the plazas with the smaller family houses scattered around them. Gathering information on the way a village or settlement functioned is very valuable, and helps us to reconstruct past lives.
Between the houses a whole bunch of smaller structures were located, for example drying racks or barbacoas. 200 postholes were assigned to those smaller structures, as they do not fit into a floorplan of a house. What is interesting is that the 11 structures belonged to two partially overlapping building phases each with a plaza. That would mean that each of those building phases would contain one men’s or community house, around which the smaller oval houses have been built. The men’s house was used by the men of the village to drink, rest, meet and receive guests, and the unmarried men of the village were thought to also sleep here. When a man would get married, he would move into a smaller family house located around the plaza.
Text by Koen van Rijn, based on original published research (see further reading).
Boomert, A., Hofman, C. L., Hoogland, M. L. P., Jacobson, K. and Manem, S. 2021. Cayo in the Lesser Antilles: a Network of Peoples, Places and Practices in the Late 15th to Early 17th Century in Koriabo from the Caribbean Sea to the Amazon River.
Hofman, C.L., Hoogland, M. L. P., 2012. Caribbean encounters: rescue excavations at the early colonial Island Carib site of Argyle, St. Vincent. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 43/44, 63-76.
Hofman, C. L., Hoogland, M. L. P., Mans, J. L. J. A. and Rostain, S., Constructing from the invisible: conceptualizing Indigenous village dynamics in the circum-Caribbean.