L. Antonio Curet

• PhD
• Curator at National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian

Trade before Civilization explores the role that long-distance exchange played in the establishment and/or maintenance of social complexity, and its role in the transformation of societies from egalitarian to non-egalitarian. Bringing together research by an international and methodologically diverse team of scholars, it analyses the relationship b...

Like many other regions throughout the world, the colonial experience in the Caribbean included the arrival of North American and European archaeologists representing museums, universities, or scientific academies. The objects, specimens, and archival documentation gathered during their research were taken back to their countries of origin and toda...

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 cienci...

William F. Keegan & Corinne L. Hofman. The Caribbean before Columbus. 2017. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-060525-4 $35. - Volume 92 Issue 362 - Antonio Curet

The Caribbean Before Columbus, by William F. Keegan & Corinne L. Hofman , 2017. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-060525-4 paperback, $35. 32 pp., 67 b&w figs, 2 tables - L. Antonio Curet

Cuban Archaeology in the Caribbean. IVAN ROKSANDIC , editor. 2016. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. xii + 291 pp. $84.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-68340-002-8. - Volume 28 Issue 4 - Antonio Curet

When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, the indigenous groups, labeled Taínos 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 colonizati...

The Taino 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...

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 ph...

One of the central goals of archaeology is the definition of regional cultural succession. Since at least the 1960s, archaeology has purported to have moved beyond the strictures of Culture History, and yet the constructs of that paradigm (styles, periods, cultures) continue to be used routinely. This work aims to show that by doing so, one is stil...

Island Shores, Distant Pasts. Fitzpatrick Scott M. and Ross Ann H. , editors. 2010. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, xvi + 288 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-81-303522. - Volume 23 Issue 2 - L. Antonio Curet

Since the early European incursions in the New World, the Caribbean has been a region of colonial establishment and contestation. In one way or another, colonialism in its different forms, has influenced, shaped, or affected almost every aspect of life, including the academic world. This paper discusses the histories of the development of current a...

A long sequence of social, cultural, and political processes characterizes an ever-dynamic Caribbean history. The Caribbean Basin is home to numerous linguistic and cultural traditions and fluid interactions that often map imperfectly onto former colonial and national traditions. Although much of this contact occurred within the confines of local c...

When discussing the study of long- distance interaction in the Caribbean, one cannot ignore the contributions of irving rouse. While he was not the first scholar to suggest the close relationship between the islands, south ameri ca, and even Central america, he, in collaboration with local archaeologists, was able to suggest potential routes suppor...

Essays in this volume tackle the question of interaction, albeit from remarkably different time periods (colonial vs. pre- Columbian) on sites that encompass a range of activities: The working of shell in the age of the industrial revolution to the intercontinental transshipment of goods during a time when people made a living through the growing o...

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 commun...

The prehistoric civic-ceremonial center of Tibes is located on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, just north of the modern coastal city of Ponce. Protected on two sides by a river, and on the other two sides by hills, this approximately 10.5-acre site remains as fertile and productive today as when first occupied over 2,000 years ago. Such a rich r...

When a variety of rock types are mixed in an apparently haphazard way in monumental architecture, it may be difficult to discern any preferential selection of materials and the reasons behind such selection. Localities with diverse igneous, sedimentary, and/or metamorphic bedrock outcrops, or broad catchment regions for receipt of alluvial or glaci...

The presence of ceremonial centers in the Greater Antilles has always been the source of much debate, speculation, and imagination in Caribbean archaeology. Throughout history they have been indiscriminately used as evidence for cultural affiliation (Rouse 1948), sociopolitical development (Curet 1992a; Oliver 1998, 2009; Siegel 1999), ideological...

The Ceremonial Center of Tibes was first discovered by a resident of the area, Mr. Luis Hernández, who collected dead wood and manufactured charcoal on the land where the site is located. Mr. Hernández became interested in the shells and ceramic "adornos" found on the surface and began collecting them. After doing some bibliographic research he qui...

The Archaeological Project of the Ceremonial Center of Tibes originated from my interest in studying the development of social stratification in ancient Puerto Rico. In 1992 I concluded a regional study designed to test demographic and ecological models for the development of chiefdoms in the Caribbean (Curet 1992a). Although the study concentrated...

When originally published in German in 1924, this volume was hailed as the first modern, comprehensive archaeological overview of an emerging area of the world. Yes, the Caribbean islands had long been known and owned, occupied, or traded among by the economically advanced nations of the world. However, the original inhabitants-as well as their art...

Pottery in contexts that predate the entrance of Arawak societies to the Antilles (500 B.C.) by at least one millennium demand a reassessment of the introduction of this technology to the islands. We summarize the available evidence of what we term the Pre-Arawak Pottery horizon and address the social implications of the introduction of such techno...

Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology of Native Puerto Rico. Edited by Siegel Peter . Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. Pp. xix, 423. Illustrations. Tables. Maps. Notes. References. Index. $34.95 paper. - Volume 63 Issue 1 - L. Antonio Curet

we present here the initial results of the Proyecto Arqueológico del Centro Ceremonial de Tibes. The aim of the project is to study changes in the social, political, and economic systems at Tibes, the earliest civic and ceremonial center in the Caribbean. Tibes was founded as a village around A.D. 1, and sometime between A.D. 600 and A.D. 900 exper...

The Americas 63.1 (2006) 156-157 This is an excellent volume that includes ten articles by specialists on different aspects of the ancient history of Puerto Rico. All of the articles are research-based papers with substantive results and interpretations. Most include a review of their respective topics, useful for students and scholars interested i...

According to the European chronicles, at the time of contact, the Greater Antilles were inhabited by the Taínos 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, change...

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances o...

Caribbean archaeology traditionally has focused on culture history and migrations while social and political issues have been mostly ignored. Recent studies, however, have begun to overcome these deficiencies by paying more attention to some of the intangible aspects of prehistoric groups and by improving field methodology to gather the appropriate...

The rules of succession described in the early Spanish chronicles for Caribbean chiefdoms have been used by many scholars to reconstruct a Taino kinship system. This article argues that these conclusions were reached by using unfounded assumptions, especially confusing rules of succession with rules of descent. Furthermore, it is suggested here tha...

Mortuary practices rank among the best sources of archaeological data from which to infer social organization, ideology, religious beliefs, and to a certain extent, the political structure of past societies. This essay (1) reviews mortuary practices among prehistoric groups of Puerto Rico, (2) proposes a possible sequence of changes through time, a...

This article presents new, improved formulae to estimate prehistoric populations for lowland South America and the Caribbean islands at both the household and the community levels. In presenting these formulae the basic assumptions, methodology and premises are discussed in some detail. This work is a refinement of formulae developed for two previo...

Studies of Caribbean pottery have focused on shifts in style and decoration while changes in ceramic technology have received little attention. This work presents the results of an exploratory project on the study of changes in pottery technology to overcome some aspects of this deficiency. Collections from the Proyecto Arqueológico del Valle de Ma...

Temporal changes in material culture normally have been used by archaeologists to reconstruct the cultural history of an area or site. In the case of the Caribbean, shifts in artifactual style have been used to trace prehistoric migrations and interactions between different cultural groups. Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to explain the...

We examine ceramic and settlement-pattern changes in the Mixtequilla, Veracruz, during the Preclassic and Classic periods with special attention to the periods corresponding to the rise and decline of Teotihuacan. Data for the study derive from full-coverage survey of 40 square kilometers accompanied by systematic surface collections. Collections a...

With systematic surface collections from the Mixtequilla region of Veracruz, Mexico, multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis distinguish two Postclassic complexes and permit examination of their associated settlement patterns. Comparison of pottery types to other assemblages provides cross dating and allows judgments about stylistic affinitie...

Few regional projects in Mesoamerican archaeology have detected ceramic production areas. One project in La Mixtequilla, south-central Veracruz, likewise has provided little direct evidence (eg., overfired wasters) of specialized ceramic production. In this study, some of the reasons for the paucity of wasters are investigated through refiring expe...

Due to the poor conservation of domestic structures in tropical and subtropical environments, the study of households has received little attention from Caribbean archaeologists. However, recent studies have produced good quality household data in the form of post-mold distributions that can be used to address this topic. A method for the definitio...

This book offers a new perspective on some of the most important archaeological work that is being developed in Cuba in the first decade of the new century. This research is defined within the context of changing socio-economic circumstances and transformations in theoretical and methodological approaches to Cuban archaeology. The compilation refle...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Arizona State University, 1992. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [342]-392).

Provides a politically and historically informed review of Cuban archaeology, from both American and Cuban perspectives. Many Americans are aware of the political, economic, and personal impacts of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. But the communication blockade between scholars has also affected the historical course of academic disciplines and research i...