Food Preparation and Dietary Preferences among the Arawak Aboriginal Communities of Cuba

Abstract

Food procurement and consumption practices represent an important aspect of a culture and the identity of its bearers. Indigenous communities used a wide variety of approaches for the collection, preparation and consumption of food, determined by an interplay of ancestral traditions, climate, and social relationships established by the ample mosaic of ethnic groups settled in the continental and insular territories. This chapter examines the ethnohistorical strategies, forms of food preparation and its consumption, as well as dietary preferences among Arawak Aboriginal communities in Cuba. It critically evaluates and systematizes the information provided by the early chroniclers in the West Indies (late 15th and early 16th centuries), in order to compare them with the data gathered through archaeological excavations, taking into consideration various paleodietary analyses, as well as the most recent census of faunal remains associated with the sites on the island. It also examines the contributions of the indigenous heritage in the shaping of contemporary Cuban culinary preferences.

Late Precolonial Culinary Practices: Starch Analysis on Griddles from the Northern Caribbean

“…Rodríguez Suárez and Pagán-Jiménez (2008) analyzed five clay griddles and recovered starches from a variety of species but no manioc starch, their study also proved that starches preserved and could be recovered from charred remains on griddles (see also Zarrillo et al 2008). In sum, although long assumed to have been a staple cultigen, manioc has been sporadic or virtually invisible in the data generated from microbotanical investigations in the northern Caribbean and absent from griddles that have been analyzed for starch content (Berman and Pearsall 2000;Berman and Pearsall 2008;Chinique de Armas et al 2015;González Herrera 2016;Mickleburgh and Pagán-Jiménez 2012;Pagán-Jiménez in Ulloa Hung 2014:115,138;Pagán-Jiménez 2007, 2011aRodríguez Suárez and Pagán-Jiménez 2008). Starch analyses that have been carried out within the Greater Caribbean region also do not support the traditionally assumed view that manioc was a dietary staple (see discussions on this in Pagán-Jiménez 2013; Pagán-Jiménez et al 2017;Perry 2002Perry , 2005.…”