Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

64 / Domínguez
and that we have and use the most appropriate methodologies. Cuba, like the
rest of Latin America and especially the Caribbean, has been a testing ground
for various disciplinary experiments carried out by investigators from many
parts of the world. However, in most of the writing on this region, accounts
of Cuban excavations are missing, nor is reference made to the work carried
out by Cuban specialists, who are respected professionals in their areas of
expertise with distinguished careers. Even worse, sometimes as a result of a
serious lack of ethics or sensitivity, the work of Cuban scholars, especially if
written in Spanish, is neither alluded to nor cited in bibliographies, even when
Cuban sites are the subject of the publication.
Since about 1983, Latin Americanists started to conduct multiple projects
in their own countries on historical sites, in some instances subsidized by
governmental entities and in others by North American and European universities.
The resonance of Latin American Social Archaeology (Arqueología
Social) in our countries has given new vigor to this specialization. For this
reason, there is a timely need to analyze Historical Archaeology from the perspective
of Latin America (Rovira 1991).
This chapter is not involved in the debate on the scienti¤c/humanistic
character of Historical Archaeology. For decades now, this archaeological specialization
has been practiced in the New World under different titles but in
all cases with the same aim, the historical reconstruction of the lifeways of
people who lived after the discovery of the Americas. The sub¤eld has been
assigned a series of names or meanings over time, all of them having connotations
determined by different theoretical orientations. We could say that
initially it was known as Colonial Archaeology or the archaeology of colonial
sites in the New World (La Rosa Corzo 1995). Out of this simple chronological
orientation, other specializations developed, such as Contact Period and
Industrial Archaeology (La Rosa Corzo 1995). But in Europe, this type of
archaeological work has been named according to a speci¤c socioeconomic
stage, that is to say, Medieval or Post-Medieval, Modern, Contemporary, etc.
In Latin America, current appellations for the practice of Historical Archaeology
include Colonial Archaeology, Archaeology of Colonial Levels, Historic
Archaeology, Urban Archaeology, “Novohispana” Archaeology, Archaeology
of the Recent Past, Archaeology of Recent Capitalism, and Archaeology of
Imperialism, among others. De¤nitions of these categories depend upon two
criteria, the particular focus of study and the time period (Funari 2000). Historical
Archaeology is a social science as much as any other branch of the
discipline of archaeology, and it is clear that, while young and able to accom-