Hello, I am looking for sources on the Pre-Colombian history of Cuba, whether in book form or article form. So far I have only found this: https://www.amazon.com/archaeology-Pre-Columbian-Latin-American-Studies/dp/082293955X
I'm probably going to buy that book, but can anyone point me to so other sources? Thanks!
Hello! I'd be more than happy to point you in the direction of a few sources and answer any more general questions you have on pre-Columbian Cuba. I creeped your post history out of sheer curiosity, since not that many people ask about this topic. Is this for a Europa Universalis IV mod? If so, that's pretty cool!
I wrote an anthropologist with expertise on the subject once, and one of the books he recommended is the one you linked in your post, so you're already off to a good start. The other books he recommended were Beyond the Blockade: New Archaeology in Cuba, by Susan Kepecs, L. Antonio Curet, and Gabino La Rosa. University of Alabama Press (2010), and Roberto Valcarcel Rojas' Archaeology of Early Colonial Interaction at El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba, University of Florida Press (2016). As I haven't gotten around to reading these two I cannot personally attest to them, but the person who recommended them to me is a professional anthropologist and Museum of the American Indian employee, so they should be fairly solid.
On the other hand, I have personally read Irving Rouse's The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus Yale University Press, 1993. The text itself is fairly dry, some sections are very technical, and it is a general text on the Taino people in general, not those in Cuba specifcally. As the date of publication suggests, it is also a couple of decades out of date. Nonetheless, I'd recommend it as a serious starting point to contextualize Cuba's Taino population within the context of that civilization's broader presence in the Caribbean.
Recent scholarship suggests a few interesting differences from Rouse's interpretation. In particular, the questioning of the concept of Taino itself. Taino seems to have been a Spanish term for several groups of people, who would not have identified with it or considered themselves a single people. Kind of like how slavers used terms like Mandinga, Yoruba, and Congo to refer to multiple groups from roughly the same region. To the colonial powers, they were all just thrown under the same umbrella term.
There are also Spanish only sources, like a book on pre-Columbian Cuba by Lilian Moreira Lima, or the pertinent section of Instituto de Historia Cubana: La colonia. Evolución socioeconómica y formación nacional. De los orígenes hasta 1867, however both of those books are also likely to be near impossible to find outside of Cuba... Sorry. Depending on where you live, you could try to contact your local library in order to see if there are any copies in the system (some might be in Florida). You can then pay a small shipping fee to have them sent to your local branch.
On a related note, please also be aware that the Guanahatabey people of Western Cuba were not the same as the Tainos. The Taino people were linguistically connected to Arawak and had migrated from roughly modern day Venezuela, along the Lesser Antilles, up to Cuba. The Taino also had rudimentary agriculture and could develop somewhat complex socio-political organizations, including 'chiefs of chiefs', which went beyond simple familial ties. The Guanahatabey people seem to have been hunter gatherers, it is suspected that they came from what is today Florida (across the Florida Strait and into Western Cuba), and seem to have been in the process of slowly being pushed out by Taino expansion. However, if we know relatively little about the Taino, we know even less about the Guanahatabey.
The Guanahatabey lived roughly in the area that is now Pinar del Rio.
If you get stuck and my (admittedly) limited knowledge on the subject falls short, definitely think about contacting the Museum of the American Indian in DC. The people are lovely and very helpful.
Hope it helps!