Otros escenarios del poblamiento durante el siglo XVI y XVII. La costa norte colombiana como territorio referente de las formas del poblar

Recent studies on settlement phenomena initiated after the sixte-enth century in Colombia show that tensions between different powers significantly affected the settlement patterns of communities, and even generated new forms of settlement. These forms produced as a result of confrontations are the central question of this research. The tensions between the powers located in Castilla de Oro, since early colonial times, produced diverse social phenomena; in the phenomena studied with specific treatments, such as the “palenques”, disputes between human groups have been demonstrated.As a complexity, such confrontation is the hypothesis of this work; with it, when approaching habitat production, a basic idea emerges: habi-tat production is determined by the actions of the subjects and in turn by the social interactions of the whole; in them, the close relationship with a medium -the environment- is a particular axis of interest in the research. At this point, the studies carried out in the northern coast of Colombia produce useful categories for the search of other possible scena-rios produced by other diverse cultural forms. These characteristics of the natural contexts are the reference for the methodological approach of this analysis. As attributes, these characteristics are a guide to generate sys-tematic observations of given phenomena within the settlement process. With this it is possible, theoretically, to point out places where different social routines produced conditions that are to be observed. From the analysis of these conditions, mining, as a wealth-generating activity in the early global model, emerges as the second axis of approach. As a mobilizing routine of settlement in the colony, mining allows to establish the initial factors of settlement, seen as a process in the urban perspec-tive different from the Spanish one and that in rural areas may still be in force in Colombia.