Important information on prehistoric island populations and migrations. According to the European chronicles, at the time of contact, the Greater Antilles were inhabited by the Ta&iactue;nos or ...Arawak Indians, who were organized in hierarchical societies. Since its inception Caribbean archaeology has used population as an important variable in explaining many social, political, and economic processes such as migration, changes in subsistence systems, and the development of institutionalized social stratification. In Caribbean Paleodemography, L. Antonio Curet argues that population has been used casually by Caribbean archaeologists and proposes more rigorous and promising ways in which demographic factors can be incorporated in our modeling of past human behavior. He analyzes a number of demographic issues in island archaeology at various levels of analysis, including inter- and intra-island migration, carrying capacity, population structures, variables in prehistory, cultural changes, and the relationship with material culture and social development. With this work, Curet brings together the diverse theories on Greater Antilles island populations and the social and political forces governing their growth and migration.
The Taíno term and concept has traditionally been used as a designation of some form of cultural identity for the groups that occupied the Greater Antilles at the time of contact. This perspective ...assumes that these groups shared a cultural background because of a common ancestry. However, this position has been questioned in recent years, and many problems with the concept have been brought to light. This article presents the history of the concept and discusses three recent studies that have proposed new ways to approach the problem. It ends by presenting the implications of this new perspective for future research, their limitations, how they may be misapplied, and to what extent they are applicable in different situations.
objetivo/contexto: el propósito de este artículo es proveer el marco histórico y teórico de la arqueología latinoamericana para contextualizar los ensayos incluidos en este volumen. Se plantea que ...los cambios recientes en esta disciplina surgen como parte de una autoevaluación de los arqueólogos en relación con el origen colonialista de esta ciencia. Metodología: el artículo comienza con una breve discusión de los cambios significativos más recientes que han establecido nuevas normas en la disciplina, creados por la obligación del arqueólogo de enfrentarse a dos realidades. La primera es el mencionado origen colonialista de la arqueología, en especial cuando se considera la total ausencia del relato indígena en nuestras reconstrucciones de sus ancestros. La segunda es el avance del capitalismo y el desarrollo económico, acompañado por intereses políticos que incluyen, entre otras cosas, el uso de sitios y artefactos arqueológicos para el desarrollo turístico o el registro de su destrucción como antesala a proyectos industriales de infraestructura o extractivos. Se presenta un breve recuento de la disciplina en la región, desde el siglo XVIII hasta los movimientos nacionalistas y el presente, en el que también se plantea el reto de construir narrativas alternas a las propuestas por el eje hegemónico de las ciencias tradicionales y, sobre todo, de reconocer e incluir las voces silenciadas del pasado. Conclusiones: termina el texto presentando los artículos en este número y contextualizándolos brevemente dentro de esta nueva perspectiva en la arqueología de América Latina, para concluir que, en décadas recientes, la arqueología latinoamericana ha tomado nuevos rumbos como resultado de la reflexión sobre su pasado colonial. Originalidad: en particular, esta arqueología poscolonial, como la llaman algunos, nos reta a desarrollar perspectivas, métodos e interpretaciones alternas que sean más incluyentes y abarcadoras, a la vez que realistas. La contextualización del problema colonial dentro de las condiciones sociales, históricas, económicas y políticas de la región es clave para un entendimiento de esta arqueología emergente y para motivar un diálogo entre arqueólogos y partícipes del patrimonio, tanto en el ámbito nacional como en el internacional, que promueva una arqueología más justa e inclusiva.
Like many other regions throughout the world the colonial experience in the Caribbean included the arrival of foreign archaeologists conducting research and taking collections to their countries of ...origin. These were mostly composed of North American and European scholars representing different institutions such as museums, universities, or scientific academies. One of these expeditions poorly known by Caribbean, but more specifically by Puerto Rican archaeologists is the 1916 expedition of the Museum of the American Indian led by Theodoor de Booy. This paper describes and discusses this expedition within its institutional and historical context and how it relates to the early to the history of museums and archaeology. Como muchas otras regiones a través del mundo, la experiencia colonial del Caribe incluyó el arribo de arqueólogos extranjeros para investigar sitios y llevarse colecciones a sus países de origen. Éstos se componían mayormente de académicos norteamericanos y europeos que representaban instituciones como museos, universidades o academias científicas. Una de estas expediciones poco conocida por los arqueólogos del Caribe es la expedición del Museo del Indio Americano a Puerto Rico en 1916 dirigida por Theodoor de Booy. Este trabajo discute esta expedición dentro de su contexto institucional e histórico y cómo se relaciona con la historia temprana de los museos y de la disciplina de la arqueología. Comme cela fut le cas dans de nombreuses autres régions du monde, l'experience coloniale de la Caraïbe s'est traduite par l'arrivée d'archéologues étrangers venus fouiller des sites pour ramener ensuite leurs découvertes dans leurs pays d'origine. Dans le cas de la Caraïbe, ces archéologues se composaient essentiellement de chercheurs nordaméricains et européens qui travaillaient pour des institutions comme des musées, des universités ou des sociétés savantes. Parmi ces expéditions figure celle, peu connue des archéologues de la Caraïbe, du Museo del Indio Americano effectuée à Porto Rico en 1916 et dirigée par Theodoor de Booy. Cette contribution resitue l'expédition dans son contexte institutionnel et historique, puis en étudie les liens avec les débuts de l'histoire des musées et de l'archéologie.
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► Aspects of any given food system inform, and are informed by, a variety of social, economic, religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political processes. ► Elite foods (or, ...indeed, socially valued foods) tend to be those foods (or groups of foods) which are (a) scarce, (b) overly abundant, (c) diverse, (d) labor-intensive in acquisition or preparation, (e) periodically occurring, (f) exotic (non-local) in origin, (g) tasty, or (h) symbolically potent. ► Using these criteria elite food can be identified using archeological data, even when lacking ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence. ► Possible elite foods were singled out at the Ceremonial Center of Tibes, Puerto Rico using these criteria, many of them small contributors to the general diet of the population.
More than providing simply nutritive value, food in human societies can be endowed with great social weight. Aspects of any given food system inform, and are informed by, a variety of social, economic, religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political processes. Moreover, food systems are often intentionally designed and executed to communicate key aspects of a consumer’s identity including class or social status. The manipulation of food systems on the part of socio-political elites or high status individuals is but one example of this phenomenon, the appearance of which is a correlate of increased socio-political hierarchy. As food can come to be used by elites as a socio-political tool in stratified societies, the temptation to use archeologically recognizable differences in foodways as a means of understanding the origin, nature, and functioning of processes of stratification is strong. The obvious difficulty lies in developing theoretically informed methods that reckon food system differences in ways that enable scholars to identify those foods that may have been particularly imbued with social meaning. In this paper, we propose a metric for the identification of elite foods (or, indeed, socially valued foods) using the types of data typically available to archeologists. Based on these proposed criteria, we attempt to unravel the complex and politically charged food system of the stratified societies of the pre-Columbian Greater Antilles with an eye towards refining our understanding of the development and maintenance of prestige and institutionalized power therein.
Islands at the Crossroads Curet, L. Antonio; Hauser, Mark W; Armstrong, Douglas V ...
2011, 2011-07-15, 20110101
eBook
This volume looks beyond cultural boundaries and colonial frontiers to explore the complex and layered ways in which both distant and more intimate sociocultural, political, and economic interactions ...have shaped Caribbean societies from 7000 years ago to recent times.
Beyond the Blockade Susan Kepecs; L. Antonio Curet; Gabino La Rosa Corzo ...
2010, 2010-12-30
eBook
This innovative volume builds on dialogues opened in recent years between Cuban archaeologists, whose work has long been carried out behind closed doors, and their international colleagues.  ...The chapters included herein span a wide range of subjects across the full chronological spectrum.  Most were written by emerging Cuban professionals who are breaking new ground; a few were penned by long-time leaders in the field.   Issues addressed by the 17 contributors represented in this collection include the long-term cultural and intellectual links between Florida and Cuba, which influence shared research goals today; the limitations of theoretical frameworks for archaeology defined in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, and how to overcome them; the challenges involved in charting out the earliest human occupations on the island; the processes of Indo-Hispanic transculturation during the Colonial epoch; late pre-Colombian links between the Taínos of eastern Cuba and the rest of the Greater Antilles; and the theoretical and practical tensions between architectural restoration and the practice of scientific urban historical archaeology.  Thus this volume makes a crucial contribution to the field of archaeology on many fronts, not the least of which is the sharing of information across the blockade.
When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, the indigenous groups, labeled Tainos by historians and archaeologists, inhabited Puerto Rico and other parts of the Greater Antilles. For more than three ...hundred years the traditional historiography has claimed that these groups and their culture became "extinct" within a few decades of European colonization. In the past fifty years, however, an indigenous revival movement that has been called Neo-Tainos has developed, calling into question the claims of cultural and biological extinction. These claims have triggered a multilateral and unresolved debate between members of the Neo-Taino movement, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists that has spread to the general public and popular culture of the Island. This paper presents a historical review of the debate, the main positions in favor of or against the claims of Taino descendancy in Puerto Rican communities both in the Island and in the continent, and discusses several issues that need to be considered and addressed to gain a better understanding of the controversy. Key words: Tainos, Neo-Taino movement, Jibaro, indigenous revival, Caribbean indigeneity Puerto Rico
Ceremonial architecture of late precontact (A.D. 600-1500) societies of Puerto Rico consists of stone-lined plazas and ball courts (bateys,). Archaeologists use these structures to signify the onset ...of hierarchical “chiefly” polities and to interpret their regional organization. Problematically, little consideration is given to the costs of their physical construction and the associated organizational implications at local and regional scales. In this paper, we use data gathered through geoarchaeological field investigations to develop labor estimates for the plaza and bateys at the site of Tibes—one of the largest precolumbian ceremonial centers in Puerto Rico. The estimates provide a basis for addressing how these features were constructed at the site and are considered within the broader organizational contexts of incipient polities in the island's south-central region between A.D. 600 and A.D. 1200.
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