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INTRODUCTION The four islands of the Greater Antilles—Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico—represent 88% of the landmass of the West Indies (Watts 1987: 4). Associated with the Greater Antilles and to their east are the islands of Vieques, nearby Culebra, and the group of islands known collectively as the Virgin Islands (Figure 7.1). The Virgin Islands and Vieques are situated on the relatively shallow island shelf contiguous with Puerto Rico. These islands are small, with a total landmass of 418 km2 . The Virgin Islands are separated geologically and culturally from the Lesser Antilles by the Anegada Trough, which is deep, 4,500 m below sea level, and wide—approximately 90 km between the nearest of the Virgin Islands and Lesser Antilles. The physiographic features of the Greater Antilles and the associated Virgin Islands promote a more diverse ®ora and fauna than are seen in the Lesser Antilles. This greater diversity in turn theoretically provided greater opportunities for resource exploitation for human colonizers and subsequent cultural developments. These are some of the ways in which the Greater Antilles and Virgin Islands are distinct from the Lesser Antilles to the south. The broader resource base, the inherent “natural capital” (Costanza et al. 1997; Prugh et al. 1999) of the Greater Antillean islands sustained large human populations before a.d. 1492. These populations derived or arose from at least two different directions and mainland traditions. At the earliest, separate groups of people with stone-tool industries migrated from Middle America into the western Greater Antilles, and from South America up the Lesser Antilles into eastern Puerto Rico (Keegan 1994). Later, ceramic-producing groups migrated up the Lesser Antillean island chain and into the Virgin Islands and Greater Antilles. Very distinctive cultural developments, particu7 Greater Antilles and the Virgin Islands Figure 7.1. Top: Greater Antilles; bottom: Vieques and the Virgin Islands. (By Florence E. Sergile) larly the transition from essentially egalitarian to strati¤ed societies (Curet 1996), with roots in these separate traditions, occurred in the Greater Antilles and spread from there. A part of that cultural development entailed intensi¤cation of agriculture, major landscape changes intentionally planned and carried out by people, and chiefdom-level social organization presumably controlling the production and distribution of some resources. The diverse environment and the complex cultural history are accompanied by ®exibility and innovation in the exploitation of plant and animal resources. ENVIRONMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS The geological history of the Greater Antilles involved spread of the ocean®oor between North and South America along with Caribbean tectonic plate movement, resulting in fusion and splitting of ancient islands to achieve the conformation of the present islands. This geological history in®uenced the landforms as we know them. Each of the Greater Antillean islands has elevations of more than 1,000 m, and Hispaniola has peaks as high as 3,175 m. The Virgin Islands’ maximum elevation is around 500 m. On small islands this elevation produces a very rugged landscape with steep hillsides presenting challenges to a horticulturist. The geological history of the Greater Antilles also controlled the manner in which plants and animals colonized the land. Complete agreement does not exist among scholars concerning this colonization . T wo primary modes of colonization—vicariance and dispersal—are at the center of the debate, as described in Chapter 2. Human dispersal into the islands took place by watercraft of some sort, dugout canoes, or composite vessels like catamarans. Here the debate concerns the routes that were taken. Did people go from one island to the next nearest island, or were intervening islands skipped? Clearly, people promoted the dispersal of plants and animals from one island to another, either intentionally or incidentally along with other transported materials. Some of these organisms became naturalized, whereas others required care; their remains are associated only with archaeological deposits . The uplifted and dissected terrain of the Greater Antilles provides the conditions for many different plant communities. High elevations intercept moisture brought by the trade winds, thereby creating the conditions for perpetually wet (rain) forests (Watts 1987). High-elevation forest associations, known as upper montane, cloud, or mist forest, grow on the higher peaks between about 900 and 1,500 m in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica. Moist to wet evergreen forests are adjacent to mountains, on their windward sides, at elevations between 200 and 900 m, and in riparian settings. Seasonal forests are found at elevations below 200 m on the leeward sides of islands adjacent to mountains. Seasonal forest formations...

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