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En Bas Saline: A Taíno Town before and after Columbus

Online ISBN:
9781683403913
Print ISBN:
9781683403555
Publisher:
University Press of Florida
Book

En Bas Saline: A Taíno Town before and after Columbus

Kathleen Deagan
Kathleen Deagan
University of Florida
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Published online:
18 January 2024
Published in print:
9 May 2023
Online ISBN:
9781683403913
Print ISBN:
9781683403555
Publisher:
University Press of Florida

Abstract

This book details the Indigenous Taíno occupation at En Bas Saline in Hispaniola between AD 1250 and 1520, showing how the community coped with the dramatic changes imposed by Spanish contact. En Bas Saline is the largest late precontact Taíno town recorded in what is now Haiti; the only one that has been extensively excavated and analyzed; and one of few with archaeologically documented occupation both before and after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. It is thought to be the site of La Navidad, Columbus’s first settlement, where the cacique Guacanagarí offered refuge and shelter after the sinking of the Santa Maria. Kathleen Deagan provides an intrasite and spatial analysis of En Bas Saline by focusing on households, foodways, ceramics, and crafts and offers insights into social organization and chiefly power in this political center through domestic and ornamental material culture. Postcontact changes are seen in patterns of gendered behavior, as well as in the power base of the caciques, challenging the traditional assumption that Taíno society was devastatingly disrupted almost immediately after contact. En Bas Salineis the only archaeological account of the consequences of contact from the perspective of the Taíno peoples’ lived experience.

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