In this volume thirteen international researchers from Cuba and elsewhere explore the settlement and early development of Cuba. As the largest and most centrally located island in the Caribbean, Cuba experienced successive waves of immigration from Central America and from other islands. Using the tools of general archaeology, linguistics, paleoethnobotany, stable isotopes studies, ethnohistorical sources, and historical research, the authors approach the problems from many angles. The result is a new understanding about the settlement of Cuba. Evidence now points to migrations from the Central American mainland (Honduras and Belize) and from northern South America via the Lesser Antilles.
A second theme concerns the introduction of agriculture to Cuba and the other islands. New research indicates crops that were being cultivated on the mainland—maize, manioc, sweet potato, yam and arrowroot—arrived much earlier than previously believed. A third theme examines the identity of the earliest Cubans.
These essays provide a framework for new, multi-disciplined research on the first Cubans and their brethren in the Caribbean. Clearly these people were more diverse and much more connected than previously thought.
