Human Impacts on a Small Island Ecosystem: Lessons from the Lucayans of San Salvador, Bahamas for This Island Earth

Abstract

The issues of prehistoric impact on the environment, resource overexploitation, and overfishing have emerged as major themes over the last few decades as scholars have come to realize that indigenous peoples, even those living at relatively simple levels of technology, such as land-based hunter-gatherers and “maritime hunter-gatherers” (Yesner, 1980), appear to have had the capability of significantly altering their local and regional environments by reducing biodiversity through customary subsistence practices such as horticulture, hunting, shellfish collecting, and fishing (Keegan, Portell, & Slapcinsky, 2003; Krech, 1999; Newsom & Wing, 2004; Redman, 1999; Wing, 1989, 2001; Wing & Wing 2001). Modern zooarchaeological techniques and accompanying statistical analyses are allowing us to address these important themes by providing quantitative measures of prehistoric human-environmental interaction, but zooarchaeological data must be multivariate (and demonstrate consistent trends), and must be understood within the broader context of human social behavior, modes of prehistoric subsistence, and human adaptation to ancient environments. Multifaceted evidence from numerous zooarchaeological studies across the Greater Caribbean illustrates that the Taino and related cultures of the Antilles, including the Lucayans of the Bahamas, indeed had significant, wide-reaching, and profound impacts on the terrestrial, intertidal, and marine environments of the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the Bahamian Archipelago (Blick, 2006; Blick & Murphy, 2005; Carlson, 1999; Carlson & Keegan, 2004; Keegan, Portell, & Slapcinsky, 2003; Newsom & Wing, 2004; Steadman & Stokes, 2002; Wing, 2001; Wing, deFrance, & Kozuch, 2002; Wing & Wing, 2001). In fact, prehistoric impact on the environment appears to be one of the main emerging themes of island and coastal archaeology, particularly in the Caribbean, of the last three decades or so (Erlandson & Fitzpatrick, 2006; Newsom & Wing, 2004; Wing, 1989; Wing & Reitz, 1982; Wing & Scudder, 1983).