Our knowledge of the Taíno comes from several sources. Sixteenth-century Spanish chronicles provide incomplete but crucial information about Taíno society. Intensive archaeological excavation of Taíno sites, which began about 1950, has unearthed many types of pottery and artifacts, confirmed Taíno burial customs, and revealed what their ancient communities looked like. Ethnologists have shed further light on Taíno daily life, myths, and ceremonies by gathering comparative data from contemporary societies with similar cultures in Venezuela and the Guianas. The Taíno legacy survives today not only in the ethnic heritage of the Caribbean people, but also in words borrowed from their language, such as barbecue, canoe, hammock, and hurricane; in customs related to ancient traditions of weaving, hunting and fishing, and song and dance; and in a cuisine based on yuca, beans, and barbecued meats and fish.

Until recently, the Taíno have been peripheral to the study of pre-Columbian societies. Scholars focused on the high cultures of the mainland, such as the Inka, the Aztec, and the Maya because they were organized into political states. The chiefdoms (cacicazgos) and chiefs (caciques) of the Taíno seemed less worthy of attention. Archaeologists now realize, however, that by the time of the conquest these chiefdoms had evolved into complex political entities that resembled true states. Art historians recognize that objects made by the Taíno - ceremonial seats (duhos), ball game belts, scepters, sculptures of spirits and ancestors, zemis, pottery, ritual objects used in cohoba ceremonies, and ornaments of semiprecious stones, gold, shell, and bone - had parallels in Mesoamerica and South America. Most important, it has become clear that the Taíno worldview was distinctly pre-Columbian in its conception of the universe and its profound spirituality.