Communities in Contact: Health and Paleodemography at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba (Weston, D. and R. Valcárcel Rojas) (original) (raw)
2016, Weston, D. and R. Valcárcel Rojas 2016 Communities in Contact: Health and Paleodemography at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba. In Cuban Archaeology in the Caribbean, edited by I. Roksandic, pp. 83-105. Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series. University Press of Florida, Gainesville
The site of El Chorro de Maíta contains the remains of indigenous peoples who were among the first to interact with Europeans in the New World. By reading the population history of these people, as written in their bones and teeth, we can achieve an understanding of their lives under the Spanish colonial encomienda system of forced labor—a system that by 1540 had reduced the indig-enous population of Cuba to only 2,000, from what may have once been between 225,000 and 553,000.
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