Map of Puerto Rico showing the location of the main cities and of the Indigenous Ceremonial Center of Tibes.
so legs, elbows, shoulders and buttocks were used to hit it. The game was played for ritual, social and/or entertainment purposes. The site was first excavated during the
late 1970s and early 1980s by the Sociedad Guaynia de Arqueologia e Historia, a local avocational organization. This society was responsible for unearthing and consolidat- ing most of the monumental architecture and for convincing the City of Ponce to pur- chase the land and establish an archaeologi- cal park (visit online at
http://ponce.inter. edu/tibes/
tibes.html). It thereby preserved the site in its entirety. The original archaeo- logical work was directed toward evaluating the site, discovering most of the monumen- tal architecture and mapping the surface features. With these objectives in mind, ex- cavations were performed in different areas of the site and a number of stone alignments were investigated to determine whether they were natural or cultural formations. Based on radiocarbon (C-14) dates, Tibes
seems to have been first inhabited around A.D. 400 and was abandoned around A.D. 1270, well before the Spanish arrived. Its ancient history can be roughly divided in two major periods: the Saladoid (A.D. 500–900) and the Elenoid (A.D. 900–1200). All monumental structures seem to belong to the late phase of the site, or the Elenoid period. In addition to the stone structures, excavations conducted in the 1970s uncovered two clusters of buri- als. The first one is located under Structure
6, the central, quadrangular plaza of the site, while the second one is 50 meters southeast of Structure 6, under Ball Court Number 3. Both clusters seem to belong to the Saladoid period and are thus older than the overlying stone structures. Other burials belonging to Elenoid were found dispersed over the site, in most cases in domestic contexts (refuse mid- dens or possible house floors). Based on the information from these
initial excavations, many archaeologists be- gan reconstructing the social and cultural changes that took place at the site. Many of these interpretations believed that during the first period of occupancy, Tibes was a farming village, and the social organization seem to have been egalitarian (i.e., without institutionalized social hierarchy) in nature. Later on, between A.D. 600 and 900, Tibes went through a re-structuration of the use of space, where old structures and deposits were moved or destroyed, new monumental structures were built and funerary practices changed. All these changes led many to argue that some form of political centralization and social stratification developed during this time. Around A.D. 1270 Tibes was prac- tically abandoned. While the original excavations from the 1970s and 1980s provided some informa- tion to develop some working hypotheses to explain the changes, this work emphasized mostly the ceremonial structures. In my case I was interested in studying these changes
Example of the rock art present in some of the structures. This particular petroglyph is from the west stone row of the Main Plaza (Structure 6 in the map).
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 31
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTONIO CURET
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTONIO CURET
MAP COURTESY OF ANTONIO CURET. PREPARED BY JILL SEAGARD
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