A street of large, pastel-coloured buildings with white columns and red-tiled roofs: a pretty picture of Caribbean architecture. These buildings, built by Post-Columbian settlers are what remains of the colonial era in the Caribbean Islands. However, decades before the Spanish first set foot on Hispaniola there were entire villages and communities who lived in wooden houses, strong enough to withstand the tough weather conditions of the Caribbean, and built with nothing more than natural materials.
Indigenous villages and communities across the Caribbean islands have existed for thousands of years. When the Spanish landed on the island of Hispaniola they made use of Indigenous routes across the island. Even after the Spanish had killed, displaced or otherwise subjugated most of the Indigenous population, these Indigenous routes remained intact and were used extensively by the colonizers. These routes connected villages as well as the lower coastal areas with the inland areas. Most of the villages were built on higher ground on hills or slopes, but with access to the sea or rivers.
"A house is a system where each part is a testimony of its time and events" is a quote by Virgina Flores Sasso in her work on Caribbean timber houses. To build a house on slopes and hills, away from open plain or coastal areas must have been a challenge, especially with the tools that were available in the pre-colonial era. These houses were made out of locally acquired wood, with the sturdiest tropical hardwood for the large, weight-supporting beams and the lighter wood for the roof and wall frames. Constructed by placing large, upright beams in a circular or oval shape and anchoring these into the rock, these houses would have been able to support a large, thatched roof at a steep angle to better guide the heavy rainfall to the ground. Evidence suggests that these houses had ornamental entrances with large logs as doorposts. These buildings would have spanned anywhere from twenty to sixty square metres for the smaller huts, to more than one hundred twenty square metres for the large village elders' huts. In the middle of a levelled floor would be a communal fireplace used for cooking.
A house of this kind has been built experimentally by archaeologists in collaboration with local community members at the archaeological site of Argyle on St. Vincent (photo below). The houses were built using traditional techniques, materials and tools. The research done at this site showed the lay-out of a traditional Carib village, with the larger men's house centred around a small village square with several smaller huts surrounding it.
Construction of an Indigenous house at the archaeological site of Argyle with members of the Garifuna community from Greiggs. Cayo village, Argyle, Saint Vincent (photo: Menno Hoogland).
Text by Peter Fioole, based on original published research (see further reading).
Hofman, C and van Duijvenbode, A, 2011. Communities in Contact, Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Hofman, C.L., J. Hung, E. Herrera Malatesta, J.S. Jean, T. Sonnemann & M.L.P. Hoogland, 2018. Indigenous Caribbean perspectives: Archaeologies and legacies of the first colonised region in the New World. Antiquity, 92, 200-216.
Roksandic, I., 2016. Cuban archaeology in the Caribbean. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Samson, A.V.M., C.A. Crawford, M.L.P. Hoogland & C.L. Hofman, 2015. Resilience in Pre-Columbian Caribbean House-Building: Dialogue Between Archaeology and Humanitarian Shelter. Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 43(2), 323-337.
Sasso, V.F. et al. 2020. 'Applications of Non-Destructive Techniques in the study of a Caribbean historic timber house' in: IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering 949. OIP publishing.