En Bas Saline

Life in an Indigenous town during anunderstudied era of Haitian historyThisbook details the Indigenous Tano occupation at En Bas Saline in Hispaniola betweenAD 1250 and 1520, showing how the community coped with the dramatic changesimposed by Spanish contact. En Bas Saline is the largest late precontact Tanotown recorded in what is now Haiti; the only one that has been extensivelyexcavated and analyzed; and one of few with archaeologically documentedoccupation both before and after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. It is thoughtto be the site of La Navidad, Columbuss first settlement, where the cacique Guacanagaroffered refuge and shelter after the sinking of the Santa Mara.KathleenDeagan providesan intrasite and spatial analysis of En Bas Saline by focusing on households,foodways, ceramics, and crafts and offers insights into social organization andchiefly power in this political center through domestic and ornamental materialculture. Postcontact changes are seen in patterns of gendered behavior, as wellas in the power base of the caciques, challenging the traditional assumptionthat Tano society was devastatingly disrupted almost immediately aftercontact. En Bas Saline is the onlyarchaeological account of the consequences of contact from the perspective ofthe Tano peoples lived experience.Avolume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series