Migrations, colonizations, perisferies, and historical divides. An analysis of the construction and deconstruction of the ¨archaics¨ in Cuba and Hispaniola

Summary

The diversity, complexity, and continuity of ¨archaics ¨ communities is one of the most recurrent themes in contemporary Caribbean archeology. Despite this, the tradition of research on this phenomenon goes back more than 40 years in Cuba and La Española, prompting classifications and models under the dominance of four basic theoretical approaches: colonization, difussion, evolution, and transculturation. This paper examines, discusses and compares the treatment and management of archaeological data on these communities on both islands, and the impact of these approaches to create the so-called archaic vs farmers historical divide; and homologies with another divide, pre-colonial vs colonial. It is de-construct and contextualize the essential features of both divides as a result of handling of archaeological data that have generated ideas on marginalization and invisibility of indigenous population cores in two different historical moments and result of various ¨colonizers processes¨. Aspects which in turn have become in creations of transformation prototyping about the ¨archaic¨ indigenous societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• New Insights into the Archaic of the circum-Caribbean

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