280 pages, 6 x 9
58 B&W figures - 4 maps
Paperback
Release Date:17 Dec 2024
ISBN:9780817361761
The Archaeology of Tibes
Life, Death, and Memory at an Early Ceremonial Center in the Caribbean
Edited by L. Antonio Curet and Lisa M. Stringer
University of Alabama Press
A collection of new essays that brings archaeological insights and discoveries at the Tibes Ceremonial Center up to date
The Archaeology of Tibes is a collection of essays offering a fresh analysis of this important ceremonial center. It brings new insights about social structure, illuminating the smaller-scale daily lives of ancient peoples rather than focusing on large-scale chiefdoms.
Tibes is the earliest known (ca. 400 to 1300 CE) ceremonial center in Puerto Rico. It has been the focus of one of the largest and longest-running archaeological programs in the Caribbean. Early researchers interpreted evidence in the area of a shift from dispersed villages to a ceremonial center as suggesting the development of social stratification and accumulation of power. Seen as the seat of an early chiefdom, Tibes served as a model applied broadly across the Greater Antilles.
New discoveries prompted archaeologists to question their original assumptions about ancient Puerto Rico, and later research failed to produce evidence of social stratification at Tibes. The Archaeology of Tibes therefore incorporates updated and wider perspectives on social formation. It considers agency, decisions, and events and the possibility of more than one form of social organization. It also presents a more accurate “humanized” past: the sociological meanings of that space and its significance for the people who created, used, and occupied it and who influenced rituals, social memory, and community.
Summarizing findings from excavations at Tibes after 2010, the collection also reviews the geoarchaeology of the site. Additional essays cover ceramic pastes, lithic production, faunal remains, coral, burials, and rock art. This work will engender discussion and future research by archaeologists across the Caribbean and beyond.
The Archaeology of Tibes is a collection of essays offering a fresh analysis of this important ceremonial center. It brings new insights about social structure, illuminating the smaller-scale daily lives of ancient peoples rather than focusing on large-scale chiefdoms.
Tibes is the earliest known (ca. 400 to 1300 CE) ceremonial center in Puerto Rico. It has been the focus of one of the largest and longest-running archaeological programs in the Caribbean. Early researchers interpreted evidence in the area of a shift from dispersed villages to a ceremonial center as suggesting the development of social stratification and accumulation of power. Seen as the seat of an early chiefdom, Tibes served as a model applied broadly across the Greater Antilles.
New discoveries prompted archaeologists to question their original assumptions about ancient Puerto Rico, and later research failed to produce evidence of social stratification at Tibes. The Archaeology of Tibes therefore incorporates updated and wider perspectives on social formation. It considers agency, decisions, and events and the possibility of more than one form of social organization. It also presents a more accurate “humanized” past: the sociological meanings of that space and its significance for the people who created, used, and occupied it and who influenced rituals, social memory, and community.
Summarizing findings from excavations at Tibes after 2010, the collection also reviews the geoarchaeology of the site. Additional essays cover ceramic pastes, lithic production, faunal remains, coral, burials, and rock art. This work will engender discussion and future research by archaeologists across the Caribbean and beyond.
CONTRIBUTORS
Gordon Ambrosino / L. Antonio Curet / Mariela V. Declet Pérez / Harper Dine / Geoffrey R. DuChemin / Debra K. Green / María Mercedes Martínez Milantchi / José Mirão / Maria A. Nieves-Colón / William J. Pestle / Ali Pourmand / Charis L. Rodríguez Nieves / Reniel Rodríguez Ramos / Lisa M. Stringer / Joshua M. Torres / Anna Tsoupra
Curet and Stringer bring together the results of the most recent research at the iconic site and its surrounding region. Finding truly comparative information across sites in the Caribbean region has often been difficult over the years, and the book provides a quantity of useful comparative data. This is an important book for Caribbean archaeology.' —Kathleen Deagan, author of En Bas Saline: A Taíno Town before and after Columbus
L. Antonio Curet is curator at the National Museum of the American Indian and an adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology at Catholic University of America. He is the author of Caribbean Paleodemography: Population, Culture History, and Sociopolitical Processes in Ancient Puerto Rico and coeditor of several books in The University of Alabama Press’s Caribbean Archaeology and Ethnohistory series, for which he serves as series editor.
Lisa M. Stringer is laboratory director at the Ceremonial Center of Tibes Archaeological Project in Tibes, Puerto Rico. She coedited Tibes: People, Power, and Ritual at the Center of the Cosmos with Curet. She is affiliated with the Field Museum.
Lisa M. Stringer is laboratory director at the Ceremonial Center of Tibes Archaeological Project in Tibes, Puerto Rico. She coedited Tibes: People, Power, and Ritual at the Center of the Cosmos with Curet. She is affiliated with the Field Museum.
