title: Resilience in Pre-Columbian Caribbean House-Building: Dialogue Between Archaeology and Humanitarian Shelter.
abstract: This paper responds to questions posed by archaeologists and engineers in the humanitarian sector about relationships between shelter, disasters and resilience. Enabled by an increase in horizontal excavations combined with high-resolution settlement data from excavations in the Dominican Republic, the paper presents a synthesis of Caribbean house data spanning a millennium (1400 BP- 450 BP). An analysis of architectural traits identify the house as an institution that constitutes and catalyses change in an emergent and resilient pathway. The "Caribbean architectural mode" emerged in a period of demographic expansion and cultural transition, was geographically widespread, different from earlier and mainland traditions and endured the hazards of island and coastal ecologies. We use archaeological analysis at the house level to consider the historical, ecological and regional dimensions of resilience in humanitarian action.
authors.affiliation: University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire UK.
authors.forename: A V M
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Samson
authors.affiliation: Centre for Urban Sustainability and Resilience, Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, UK.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Crawford
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: M L P
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Hoogland
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Hofman
keywords: Environmental hazards; House architecture; Humanitarian shelter; Pre-Columbian Caribbean; Resilience