“Shows how . . . identities were imposed, expropriated, and socially constructed by colonial influence and offers new insight to such studies and historical contexts. This book will be an enduring contribution for scholars of Cuban history and Caribbean archaeology alike.”—Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology
 
"This book, a true milestone in the archaeology of the Greater Antilles, presents a bold new synthesis and interpretation of El Chorro de Maíta, a native Cuban Indian town caught up in the political and economic domination of the early colonial world."--Vernon James Knight Jr., author of Iconographic Method in New World Prehistory

"Provides a deeper and well-documented understanding of the role of the aboriginal ‘Indo-Cubans’ in an early colonial context that stimulated the development of a Cuban national identity."--José R. Oliver, author of Caciques and Cemí Idols

During Spanish colonization of the Greater Antilles, the islands’ natives were forced into labor under the encomienda system. The indigenous people became "Indios," their language, appearance, and identity transformed by the domination imposed by a foreign model that Christianized and "civilized" them. Yet El Chorro de Maíta retained many of its indigenous characteristics.
In this volume--one of the first in English to examine and document an archaeological site in Cuba--Roberto Valcárcel Rojas analyzes the construction of colonial authority and the various attitudes and responses of natives and other ethnic groups. His pioneering study reveals the process of transculturation in which new individuals emerged--Indians, mestizos, criollos--and helps construct the vital link between the pre-Columbian world and the development of an integrated and new history.

Roberto Valcárcel Rojas is a researcher for the Cuban Ministry of Science's Department of Central-Eastern Archaeology and a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University.

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Archaeologists with specific interests in Spanish colonialism will certainly find the book useful, but scholars interested in any expressions of European colonialism will equally find much of interest.
--Antiquity

This important study adds greatly to knowledge about the interactions between Spanish colonialists and Indigenous peoples that led to the emergence of a new cultural tradition in Cuba. . . . A must read for Caribbean archaeologists and archaeologists working in other contact settings in the New World.
--Choice

Shows how . . . identities were imposed, expropriated, and socially constructed by colonial influence and offers new insight to such studies and historical contexts. This book will be an enduring contribution for scholars of Cuban history and Caribbean archaeology alike.
--Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology