Review
ADVANCE PRAISE "Unlike the Tupian and Cariban people of South America, little is known about the Arawakan diaspora as a cultural system. A tour de force of scholarship by individuals at the very cutting edge of their subdiscipline, Comparative Arawakan Histories provides a myriad of new insights into native life and breaks long-held stereotypes about relationships among language, culture, and ethos." -- Norman Whitten, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Product Description
This penetrating study is the first to synthesize the writings of ethnologists, historians, and anthropologists concerned with contemporary Arawakan cultures in South America and the adjacent Caribbean basin. Before they were largely decimated and dispersed by the effects of European colonization, Arawak-speaking peoples were the most widespread language family in Latin America and the Caribbean, and they were the first people Columbus encountered in the Americas. "Comparative Arawakan Histories" examines social structures, political hierarchies, rituals, religious movements, gender relations, and linguistic variations through historical perspectives to document sociocultural diversity across the diffused Arawakan diaspora.