ABSTRACT
The lifeways, adaptive strategies, and sociopolitical trajectories of native cultures occupying the Gulf Rim region and Caribbean Islands varied considerably. Common to the disparate adaptations and social formations were intimate and frequently systematic interactions with groups in Mexico, Central America, South America, or parts of the Southeast. The earliest coastally oriented groups generally followed broad-spectrum foraging, collecting, fishing, and hunting adaptations. With greater population densities developing through time, relative degrees of reliance on horticulture resulted. With connections to South and Central America, groups in the Caribbean emphasized such root crops as manioc, yams, and arrowroot, while Gulf Rim people relied more on seed plants, primarily maize, beans, and squash. Complex society developed independently in the Gulf Rim and Caribbean. Chiefly formations in the Greater Antilles in particular were similar in organization to those of the Middle Mississippi Valley. Earthen burial and platform mounds were constructed by chiefly polities in the Gulf Rim region. In the Greater Antilles and Virgin Islands of the Caribbean, civic-ceremonial centers contained formally constructed ball courts. With the arrival of Europeans to the Caribbean and later the Gulf Rim region in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, indigenous cultures were forever changed. Despite significant population losses due to European diseases and enslavement, many native groups or remnants of them survived.
