José R. Oliver

Biography

      José R. Oliver obtained his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989 under the supervision of Profs. Donald W. Lathrap and R. Tom Zuidema. Born in Barcelona, Spain, and raised in Puerto Rico from the age of 3 (and thus Puerto Rican at heart), he developed a very early interest in archaeology through his father, Dr. Andres Oliver, a neuropsychiatrist and a passionate advocate of archaeology. It was in the mid 1960s, when José was only 11-12 years old that Ben Rouse and Jose María Cruxent became household names. But it was in 1972, as a junior in high school, when José first dared to write a letter to Ben Rouse at Yale informing him that he was going to become an archaeologist “like him” and that he wanted to study with him at Yale. Rouse’s encouraging letter of reply, which José still treasures, was all he needed to raise his confidence to pursue it.

      The rest, as they say is history. José conducted his PhD fieldwork in western Venezuela (1980-84) under the wing of Jose M. Cruxent, and after graduating, was awarded in 1989 a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Minorities, choosing Yale University and Ben Rouse as his mentor. This were the years that he spent in almost daily contact with Rouse, an opportunity to get to know him, his work and his thinking in an intimate setting. Subsequently, from 1991-1994, Jose worked in contract archaeology for Garrow & Associates and later for Goodwin and Associates, conducting fieldwork in the US territories of the Caribbean, and opening up a world of field experience in Southeastern US, especially in Illinois, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Florida.

      From 1990 to 2003, he remained as a curatorial affiliate of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. Since 1994 he is a Lecturer (akin to Assistant Professor) at the Institute of Archaeology-University College London, where he teaches Amazonian, Andean and Caribbean archaeology and ‘The Evolution of Chiefdoms’, and other graduate level courses. Since 1996 he has directed the ‘Utuado-Caguana Archaeological Project’ aimed at understanding the development of chiefdoms in the Caribbean. In the last three years, he co-directs the El Cabo Archaeological Project in Dominican Republic, jointly with University of Leiden-Institute of Archaeology.

      José has theoretical interests on the origin and evolution of food production systems, having written various articles on both the Caribbean and Amazonia. As well he has interests in the current theories debated in the archaeology of religion and the archaeology of personhood as it applies to the relationships and exchanges between human beings, non-human beings, and a variety of political-religious material culture. His forthcoming book, just finished, is titled “Caciques and Cemí Idols: The web that Taíno Rulers Spun between Hispaniola and Boriquén”. His forthcoming project with Lee Ann Newsom, should it be funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on the archaeobotany and ethnobotany of the site and region of El Cabo, Dominican Republic, with particular emphasis on starch residue analyses.

      Presently, he is engaged as a consultant by The British Museum for a new gallery exhibit “The Caribbean before Columbus” (opening on 3 May 2007) that forms part of the larger exhibit “A New World: England’s First View of America” and in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in England.


Abstract

Highland Civic-Ceremonial Centers of Puerto Rico, AD 1200-1500: Old Problems, Recent Perspectives

      Rouse’s pioneering research in Puerto Rico led him to argue that the so-called bateyes –sites with plazas and/or ball courts were essentially inhabited sites; their material content (in middens) while not as abundant as in coastal settlements, was not dramatically different to indicate that it was an exclusively, specialized religious ceremonial center. Conventional wisdom up to this point (when the 1937-38 data was published in 1952) held that such site were purely ceremonial and, largely vacant and was first proposed byJ. Alden Mason in 1915-16.

      By the 1970s and into the 1980s, Ricardo Alegria and Gary Vescelius revived Mason’s “vacant ceremonial center” (or specialized religious site) idea. The debated regarding the nature of ‘ceremonial centers’ as vacant versus inhabited sites (that had public/civic courts) is not an issue unique to the Caribbean, having been subject of relatively recent discussion in areas such as the \Nasca Valley (Peru) or Esmeraldas region (Ecuador). In this presentation, the author provides the latest, most recent developments on this topic of civic-ceremonial centers (bateyes) based on research conducted with colleague Juan Rivera Fontan (Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena) in the region of Utuado-Caguana (north), in Mayaguez (western Puerto Rico), and near Ponce (south).