The (Re)construction of Ancient Indigenous Landscapes through Visibility Analyses. Analysing visibility patterns from multiple viewsheds during the Late Ceramic Age (AD 800-1500) in the coastal zone of the Montecristi Province, Dominican Republic.
Year: 2017
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In this thesis an attempt was made in order to (re)construct ancient indigenous\nlandscapes through visibility analyses, during the Late Ceramic Age (AD 800-\n1500) in the coastal zone of the Montecristi, the Dominican Republic. The\nnorthern part of the Dominican Republic has been very important in\nunderstanding the Spanish conquest of the island, since is one of the first areas\nwhere indigenous communities encountered the Europeans. At the time the\nEuropeans arrived in the New World, complex indigenous exchange networks\nconnected the Caribbean islands with the mainland of South America. The\ninformation that the indigenous peoples gave to the Spaniards about these\nnetworks was crucial for the conquest of the Caribbean. Visibility is considered to\nbe an important parameter to (re)construct the indigenous socio-political\ndynamics in the Caribbean.\nIn the defined case-study area, 44 sites were categorized by altitude and size and\nused to carry out multiple viewshed analyses in order to analyze the relationship\nbetween the sites and the visual prominent geomorphological areas in the casestudy\narea, the reconstruction of role of visibility in the determination of site\nlocation, the relationship between multiple viewsheds and site clusters and the\npossible role of visibility in the control of marine resources and indigenous\ncommunication networks. The multiple viewshed analyses revealed that it is\npossible that the low-elevated (Meillacoid) sites in the coastal lowlands are able to\nvisually control the coastal and coastal lowland area, the (Meillacoid) hilltop sites\noverview the hinterland, that most of the (Meillacoid) sites can see at least three\nother surrounding sites, that sites within a similar geomorphological area are more\nlikely to overview each other then sites without such a shared aspect and that\nthere could have been an indigenous visibility network, in which the large\n(Meillacoid) hilltop sites had indirect control over the coastal zone.
Author: Ransijn, Sven
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7061421145