Island societies during the Archaic Age in the Lesser Antilles: the issue of resources in Saint-Martin

International audienceDuring the 4th millennium before Christ, the Lesser Antilles archipelago witnessed the development of insular societies. These communities which combined shellfish collection, fishing, submarine and terrestrial hunting, a proto-agriculture and gathering, developed a culture there rather specific to the tropical insular context. A diachronic and detailed study of the settlements over close to 4 millennia allows detecting an evolution in the human practices although they appear quite homogeneous at first sight. The social structure of these communities seems to be based on a sophisticated cyclic system of resources exploitation, shaped according to their availability and to socio-economic necessities as well as to the needs of their symbolic world. The concept of archaeoecology is used in this work in order to examine the passed interactions between the maritime hunter-gatherers of the Lesser Antilles, their activities and their environment