00:01.45 heritagevoices Okay, so jumping back in you were before I I briefly detoured us to talk about your how your military service and anthropology experiences influenced each other ah you were starting to talk about. What you wanted to look at in grad school. So Can you tell us more about that. 00:24.28 Jonathan Rodriguez Yeah, so once I got into the ph d program and I shifted my focus to Dominika. Um, my advisor told me about the fright program. Um, and we were able to go down my first year in the program. We. I I joined her on the project that she has going on with the archaeological survey of colonial dominicica where she's one of the pis along with Dr Mark Hauser from northwestern and they basically. We're working on a indigenous contact site. So within the caribbean there's the Kalainago which are indigenous to the island of Dominica and they had found like a trading outpost on the beach. And 1 of our local collaborators Dr. Lennox Honeychurch he's a native to Dominica and he actually has wrote a couple books on maroons in dominicka. Um, after Hurricane Maria he had found. Like some surface scatter pottery at this location so they had been going down there and doing excavation. So I joined them two summers ago and while I was down there. We were able to make contact with schuyler a spree. 02:00.83 Jonathan Rodriguez Um, Dr Schiller is free and she is the founder and director of create Caribbean Research Institute which is a digital humanities research institute that focuses on providing different. Um, resources for students and the public on the history of Dominica as well as training um interns on different digital humanities research topics. So the. Other good thing about Dr Espri is she is a descendant of maroons and her family are proprietors of 1 of the most well-known um maroon camps maroon sites and Dominicica the chief jacko camp oh on. My first visit to Dominico I met with her and her father and we actually got to do a pedestrian survey of the ah maroon camp the chief jacko camp so that was super cool and when I got back. From domminika I started the fulbright process to apply to um work with Dr Ispri for my fulbright. 03:27.59 heritagevoices And what what were they hoping for out of out of this fulbright that you put in for this community. 03:38.44 Jonathan Rodriguez So. The first thing was ah they were really interested in um, an ecology kind of base research. They kind of wanted to understand. Um. Why they decided to settle in those areas different like farming techniques and stuff like that. Um the region where it's at in Dominica is in the interior. It's located near this village called bells and there's a lot of subsistence farming. Goes on in that area. Um, and because of climate change and the natural disasters on that island like they wanted me to kind of focus my research on those types of questions and. Another kind of benefit that I could bring to them was during my master's program I interned at the institute of digital exploration here at Usf where we were trained on different. Digital technologies and tools to create 3 d models of cultural heritage objects and do that type of research. So I've been trained in digital photogrammetry. Ah terrestrial laser scanning gis those types of things. So. 05:10.48 Jonathan Rodriguez The goal here is for me to work with the interns students and any interested members of the public to train them in digital photogrammetry gis um I plan on getting one of the scholars. At Usf to possibly fly down and do a laser scanning of the landscape at chief jacko camp to create a 3 d model. Um, so all those aspects are the focus of the fulbright. 05:45.75 heritagevoices So can you can you talk a little bit more about like how you'll be applying those technologies. 05:52.57 Jonathan Rodriguez Yeah, So um, we'll be working with lenux honeyurch again he has a collection of artifacts that we're hoping to ah do some digital Photogram tree with to create 3 D Models. Um. We have an oral history aspect of the project where we will be ah collecting oral histories and traditions from descendants of Maroons on the Island. Um, so that's the game plan as of right now. 06:22.70 heritagevoices Wow. 06:28.80 heritagevoices Well may and after my own heart you know, being a cultural anthropologist and all love me some good oral histories. 06:32.50 Jonathan Rodriguez Um, and. 06:40.37 Jonathan Rodriguez Yeah, well um I was kind of influenced by work done by Richard price with maroons in surinam and then also Kenneth Bilby who did a similar oral history type project with maroons in Jamaica. And the goal is to try and uplift their voices that are silenced in colonial archives because most of the um historical research that has been done on maroons in Dominica they're using the archives in London. 07:04.14 heritagevoices A. 07:17.36 Jonathan Rodriguez Mainly and some of the archives that are in dominicka to shed light on the maroons. The Maroon History. So My goal is to focus on the people and try and get their version of history and. Kind of centered their voices and perspectives. 07:41.26 heritagevoices Yeah, and naturally I'm going to nerd out here for a second. But do you have like a a thought on. Um I mean I don't know if you've talked to the community about this yet. Um or the descendants about this yet. But um, like what they might want to see. Done with those oral histories. 07:59.45 Jonathan Rodriguez Um, so it's going to be part of create caribbean um, so I've only talked to Dr Aspri about this and um, schyler actually got funding from wenergren ah to do. 08:05.70 heritagevoices A. 08:16.66 Jonathan Rodriguez And oral history project. So last time I met with her this past summer I brought up the idea of like collecting these oral histories and she was like this is a great idea like we want to do something like this. So. It's going to be part of that project. Their oral history project. But there'll probably be a segment that's specific on maroon descendants. 08:40.52 heritagevoices Um, that's so cool. Um. 08:42.40 Jonathan Rodriguez Yeah, it's it's the part that I look forward to the most honestly is just going out there and talking with the community that's been heavily focused in our curriculum here at Usf is doing community-based research. Um, and even though like for your proposal you have to come up with research questions and that sort of thing really over the ten months that I'll be down there in Dominique I'm hoping to get more community involvement in the research design and planning. Um. 09:15.73 heritagevoices A a. 09:21.00 Jonathan Rodriguez And and gear my research questions to what the community wants to know. Ah. 09:26.38 heritagevoices Yeah I Love a good iterative approach thrown in my Jargon word of the day. Um, yeah, that's that's awesome. Um, so ok, um. Thinking about um the work that that you've already done that you were already part of um there on the site. Um, you know you mentioned like doing some ground survey there. Um, what did you learn. 09:55.94 Jonathan Rodriguez I mean. 10:00.32 heritagevoices Um, from the work that you've done so far and how are you? How is that like making you think differently about the work that you're going to be doing. 10:09.41 Jonathan Rodriguez So the reason why? ah I'm very interested in the chief jacko camp is we kind of know that this was the location of it based on there are extant. Um. Stepping stones leading to the camp that were chiseled into the rock of the cliffside. Um, and they're incredible. Originally they were about three feet high and to climb them. It would I right now. They've been ah. Kind of modified to where they're easier to walk up. Not super easy but easier. It's over a hundred steps that you have to take to go up but it was part of their defensive measures. So originally when they were three feet tall it would cause any kind of. British military offensive or troops they would have to sling their weapon on their back and really climb these these stones and towards the end there's actually like a funneling in a trench wall sort of and the maroons would post centuries up at the top. 11:10.10 heritagevoices A. 11:22.59 heritagevoices Here. 11:25.00 Jonathan Rodriguez To watch any kind of approach and um while I was there ah, Schuyler's father Martin was our guide and he's actually a hunter. That hunts in this central forest reserve where it's located so he's super knowledgeable about the ecology the landscape so he was giving us details about like which plants were used to. Um you. Would be used to create settlements like that thatched roofs um different types of trees that were used for canoe building. Um, which the maroons were known to travel from Dominique Dominica to martinique and guadadeloupe which are nearby french. Um, islands. Um, so the the one good thing about going there. The first time was opening my eye to the knowledge of some of the locals that know the terrain they know the different species of plants. That sort of thing. Um, when I went there I brought my Gps and I recorded points of interest and the location of the camp and then the second time I was there people kept telling me about lake catchy bona. 12:57.60 Jonathan Rodriguez Which is northeast of a town a coastal town called cali hope um and that's the location where they think another maroon chief farcel his camp was supposedly located so I went and did that hike. Um, with the same methods this time I brought a drone to try and create a 3 d model of the landscape and that hike was brutal. It was it was super ah you have to like there. There's rope um on. On the trail to actually like climb up so doing archeology up. There would be extremely challenging. So that's why I've kind of just focused on doing it at the chief jacko camp because it was actually one of the easier hikes I've done in Dominika um, but basically with those. With the Gps data I came back home and decided to do spatial analysis on gis um, which included doing visibility analysis and lease cost path analysis. So. In short what that means is I wanted to see how much of the landscape was visible from the locations of these camps and how many camps were innervisible like they could see each other and then since I knew the cheap Jacko camps location. 14:32.40 Jonathan Rodriguez Um I created lease cost path is basically the route that could possibly be taken from one point to another point and you can create barriers or costs. So the cost for this analysis was the elevation of the landscape. Using a digital elevation model as well as um, rivers there's over 365 River Networks in Dominica um, so the cost to cross a river as well as crossing elevated areas. So that was part of my initial like preliminary research to get a better idea of some of the settlement patterns and my goal is over the ten months of going there I've talked to Schuyler and she said one of the things they would do growing up is visit. 15:28.35 heritagevoices Wow. 15:28.47 Jonathan Rodriguez These different maroon camps she she mentioned over twenty that they would just go and it was part of a tradition that they did so my aim is to visit as many as possible to get Gps data and then do a gis-based study. Um. That focuses on settlement location choice which is grounded in settlement ecology theory and understanding the different environmental and socio cultural variables that went into their decision making process that was a lot. 16:05.23 heritagevoices Yeah I was I know that is a lot. Um, but it's super interesting. Um and like ah super cool. Um, but um, yeah, like I always think least cost. Um, wait least cost path right? analysis. 16:06.99 Jonathan Rodriguez Ah. 16:18.67 Jonathan Rodriguez Right. 16:21.63 heritagevoices Um, is always kind of interesting I think just because um, like from an ethnographic side. Um, people don't obviously always make decisions I mean like Americans tend to make decisions based on what's easiest, but like um. You know, like thinking of like indigenous pilgrimage trails or or things like that that like sometimes the hardness is kind of the point. Um like that you have to like earn it and then thinking about like what you're talking About. Um. 16:50.41 Jonathan Rodriguez Um e. 16:55.91 heritagevoices Maybe the least cost would be bad in a different way like if we're talking about people that are escaping slavery. Um, you know like obviously in a lot of ways. Maybe you'd want it to be a hard path. Um. If if you're worried about you know people coming after you or your community or or things like that um have you looked at that at all like have you looked at um I mean it sounds like from what you're saying like that the elevation was like a purposeful choice. Um, so like I don't know I'm just curious about what you're., You're thinking or finding so far with that like least cost. 17:32.97 Jonathan Rodriguez Yeah, so like um 1 thing about Dominicica is the top. Ah, the topography is very mountainous. Um, so the mostly in the interior of the island. It's very rugged. 17:40.46 heritagevoices A. 17:50.39 Jonathan Rodriguez Very mountainous. Um and most of the plantations during the british colonial period from 17 63 to 1834 um they were along the coast the coastal zones. Um. 18:06.92 heritagevoices Um. 18:07.29 Jonathan Rodriguez And when I did this initial analysis I even made a caveat like these are imagined routes. You know we don't have other barriers such as vegetation. Um, colonial settlements. Um military defenses those types of things. That would have also been avoided. Um, so you know it's that that initial gis study doesn't account for those things. But since then I've found ways of creating New Gis data 18:27.21 heritagevoices Fairware. 18:46.69 Jonathan Rodriguez That's that's another issue with trying to do this without being in Dominica is there's no gis repository that has the types of data that I need to do that study. But since then I've been able to. For instance, there was a map from that of a survey done by John Byers in 1776? um that I was able to geo reference and I was able to add colonial roads um different military defenses for the british colonial. Military so I've added those to my Gis data to rerun the same type of analysis to get better results. Um, so I haven't redone a lease cost path with those but I have started to do preliminary. Um. Research to find out for instance I I redid a view shed where I still had the visibility of the maroon camps and then I had visibility from the british colonial outposts which are all along the close line. And the field of view for the maroon camps is much larger than the field of view for the british colonial outposts. So in my sense I read that as them strategically positioning themselves. The maroons. 20:14.71 heritagevoices M. 20:23.60 Jonathan Rodriguez In locations where they have eyes on possible movements by the british military as a defensive measure. Um, so yeah I'm I'm still adding more data to the Gis analysis. But. 20:30.60 heritagevoices He. 20:42.33 Jonathan Rodriguez I'm looking at different like I said different environmental and sociocultural variables to kind of point to their decision making on where to settle and and even the maroon camp. So I have two where I know there was Maroon sites there the Chief Farcell camp. 20:51.58 heritagevoices Yeah. 21:02.00 Jonathan Rodriguez And the chief jacko camp but the other ah eight that I have that was all based off of place names. Um that are mentioned in Lennox Hunting Church's book what's it called? It's the fighting maroons of Dominicica. It was published in 17 he has a map on on there as well as kind of ah throughout the text details of where the locations of camps were so like the spatial accuracy of where these camps are located haven't been ground truth through archeology. Um, per se but the place names still exist. So I was able to create points. Um first seven other maroon camps based off of place names and creating a point in that location. 21:59.90 heritagevoices Yeah, it seems like you could spend a lifetime on this alone. Um, there's so much good stuff to explore. But um, we are sadly at our second breakpoint so we will be back here in a second. 22:04.85 Jonathan Rodriguez Um.