Carved Rock Archeological Park

Park - Trois-Rivières

Carved Rock Archeological Park opened to the public in 1975. This one-hectare park looks out on Les Saintes Islands and, if the weather is clear, the island of Dominica. Amerindians from the coasts of what is now Venezuela came to the islands of the Lesser Antilles in approximately 2500 B.C.E. Being nomadic, they left almost no trace of their presence in Guadeloupe. About 2,000 years later, the first Arawak Indians arrived in Guadeloupe from the Orinoco River basin in South America, practicing itinerant slash-and-burn farming techniques (manioc) on small plots of land behind coastal villages. Over the centuries, Amerindians came to occupy all of the Guadeloupe archipelago, mastering the art of ceramics, which evolved according to social practices, religious rites, and beliefs. Stone and ceramic archeological materials discovered in 1995 during excavations near the carved rocks of Trois-Rivières have been dated at 300 to 600 C.E. It may be supposed that the rock carvings are from the same era. The petroglyphs, classified as historic monuments in 1974, are the most dramatic and moving testimony of the pre-Columbian occupation of the Antilles.