出版社：South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology
摘要：Recent research into the pre-Columbian societies of the Greater Antilles has begun toexamine sociopolitical structures and change at a finer scale and with reference to a broader variety of social, economic, ideological, and political processes. However, most recent studies of the Late Ceramic Age societies of Puerto Rico have assumed, a priori, the existence of complex territorial polities with at least some degree of institutionalized social inequality. Based on an analysis of osteological, isotopic, and mortuary data garnered from the skeletal remains of 135 Late Ceramic Age individualsfrom the Puerto Rican sites of Paso del Indio and Punta Candelero, the present study finds no evidence to support such an assumption. The lack of clear differentiation in either mortuary treatment or diet for these individuals, who together represent a period of roughly the 5th-14thcenturies A.D., calls into question the existence of institutionalized social inequality in this period. This leaves open crucial questions about the nature of the internal organization of societies of Late Ceramic Age Puerto Rico
