The Earliest Peoples of the Insular Caribbean

Abstract

The earliest inhabitants of the Antilles have traditionally been considered as belonging to the Lithic Age based on their stage of social and cultural development. According to Rousean systematics, contexts associated to this period were restricted to Cuba, Hispaniola, and possibly Puerto Rico. This age was characterized by the production of flaked stone assemblages, mainly using a blade-core technology, together with the lack of use of shells as raw materials and ground stone tools, innovations that were considered to have developed in the later Archaic Age. However, in contemporaneous sites to those classified within the Lithic Age, ground stone tools and shell implements have been widely documented. It is very difficult to parse whether a distinct Lithic Age indeed existed, given that most of the sites attributed to it are workshops located on or near raw material sources. Thus, it is possible that they represent specialized activity contexts of flaked stone production for their eventual use in habitation sites and other consumption locations. Since the characterization of the Lithic Age focused on stone tool classifications, other aspects of human existence such as subsistence strategies, settlement patterns, mobility, burial practices as well as the physical traits of the human populations who produced such tools are not well understood. The lack of well-associated human remains has been detrimental in understanding whether Lithic Age groups constituted biologically or culturally distinct collectivities. Recent results about early inhabitants of the Antilles have changed traditional perspectives on their origins, lifeways, diversity and cultural traditions.