The Archaeology of Tibes: Life, Death, and Memory at an Early Ceremonial Center in the Caribbean

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.

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

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.