Our research focuses on exploring Indigenous landscape transformations following the process of Spanish colonization. However, beginning with the early Spanish chronicles of the 16th century, most accounts about precolonial populations are biased narratives produced by European outsiders. This is also the case throughout the historiography of the 18th and 19th centuries and the archaeology of the early 20th century. To overcome this problem, we combine regional archaeological research, a comparative study of early Spanish chronicles, and advanced digital methods. This combined approach generates archaeological and historical data to develop new hypotheses about inter-community and inter-island connections and to create a less biased image of the Indigenous landscape and its transformation after 1492.
Photo above: Excavations carried out in 2014 by the Departamento Centro Oriental de Arqueología at the Managuaco archaeological site, Cuba. Archaeological evidence was found here related to a colonial hacienda (estate) where Indigenous peoples lived and worked (photo: Roberto Valcárel Rojas).
Photo left: Excavations at the site of El Flaco in the northern Dominican Republic in 2013 (photo: NEXUS1492).
Photo top of page: Joseph Sony Jean from Haiti carrying out an archaeological survey in the Département du Nord-Est, Haiti (photo:Till Sonnemann).