En Bas Saline: A Taíno Town Before and After Columbus -- Kathleen Deagan

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