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Tibes: People, Power, and Ritual at the Center of the Cosmos. L. Antonio Curet & Lisa M. Stringer (eds.). Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010. xvi + 329 pp. (Paper US$ 34.95)
The ceremonial center of Tibes in southern Puerto Rico holds important insights for our understanding of the processes that led small-scale, egalitarian, village-dwelling horticulturalists in the Greater Antilles to develop politically complex and socially stratified regional chiefdoms. Until relatively recently, Caribbean archaeologists have been more concerned with identifying migration patterns and assigning cultural affiliations to archaeological assemblages than with explicating the local forces that spurred social, political, and economic change in the islands. In Tibes: People, Power, and Ritual at the Center of the Cosmos, L. Antonio Curet and Lisa M. Stringer have assembled a talented group of archaeological specialists to examine evidence for the emergence of social complexity at the site.
The ceremonial center of Tibes contains a number of monumental structures, including plazas, ball courts, and petroglyph-lined causeways. The Plaza de Estrella, a star-shaped stone structure, is one of the dominant and defining features of the site. The layout of Tibes, as well as its liminal position on the ancient Puerto Rican landscape, makes it a spiritually charged site with the potential to shed new light on the cosmology of the pre-Columbian peoples of Puerto Rico. Tibes is significant because...