Istwa Nou

Archaeologists group all the known Archaic age sites of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands into a single series called Ortoiroid. Underneath that heading are local styles that differ from one another, and the Coroso complex on Vieques Island is one of them. Coroso is identified by its use of pebble tools as percussors, hammer stones for striking flakes, and the assemblages it produces look closely related to those of the northern Lesser Antilles. Classification of this kind is a working tool rather than a claim about who anybody was. It lets specific technologies be tracked as they move across the northeastern Caribbean, and it lets the material of one island be compared with another's on the same terms. Following the complexes is how the social networks and the migration paths of the first islanders get reconstructed. The people who left this material did not think of themselves as Ortoiroid, and the label is what makes their movements visible.