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House Structure and Cultural Change in the Caribbean: Three Case Studies from Puerto Rico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Luis Antonio Curet
Luis Antonio Curet*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
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Abstract

Due to the poor conservation of domestic structures in tropical and subtropical environments, the study of households has received little attention from Caribbean archaeologists. However, recent studies have produced good quality household data in the form of post-mold distributions that can be used to address this topic. A method for the definition of houses using the post-mold data is introduced, and three cases from Puerto Rico are used to investigate changes in house shape and size through prehistoric times. These changes are discussed in the context of sociocultural and political trends in Precolumbian social formations.

Debido a la pobre conservación de los bohíos, el estudio de estructuras domésticas en el Caribe ha recibido poca atención por parte de los arqueólogos. Sin embargo, estudios recientes han producido datos de buena calidad sobre unidades habitacionales en la forma de marcas de postes. Este trabajo presenta un método para definir las casas, utilizando principalmente la distribución espacial de distintos tamaños de marcas de postes. Tres ejemplos de Puerto Rico son investigados utilizando esta metodología para estudiar los cambios en forma y tamaño de las casas através de la prehistoria. Al parecer, las estructuras domésticas prehispánicas de los períodos Saladoide (300 A. C.-600 D. C.) y Ostionoide o Elenoide Temprano (600-900 D. C.) eran de forma oblonga y de gran tamaño, sugiriendo casas de familias extensas. Durante el Ostionoide o Elenoide Tardío (900-1200 D. C.) las casas, aunque manteniendo la forma oblonga, parecen ser marcadamente más pequeñas, sugiriendo un cambio hacia casas de familias nucleares. Finalmente, las casas Chicoide (1200-1500 D. C.) resultaron ser de tamaños similares a las del período anterior, aunque de forma circular. Si se asume que la estructura arquitectónica corresponde al grupo doméstico entonces podemos sugerir que, por lo menos para el caso de Puerto Rico, los grupos indígenas entre los períodos Ostionoide Temprano y Tardío sufrieron cambios sociales, económicos y políticos suficientemente grandes como para inducir cambios marcados en las unidades domésticas. Estas transformaciones coinciden con cambios en otros aspectos del registro arqueológico, como por ejemplo, cambios en el patrón de asentamiento, en la dieta y en los diseños de la cerámica, el surgimiento de los bateyes, y posiblemente, el desarrollo de los cacicazgos.

Type
Reports
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 160 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1992

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