Contemporary historical references, largely corroborated by archaeological findings, placed the Guanahatabey on the western end of Cuba, adjacent to the Taíno living in the rest of Cuba and the rest of the Greater Antilles. The term Guanahatabey is not necessarily the term with which the population identified itself before the arrival of the European colonisers, but likely an adaption based on their limited understanding, similar to the term Taíno. At the time of European colonisation, they lived in what is now Pinar del Río Province and parts of Habana and Matanzas Provinces. Archaeological surveys of the area reveal an archaic population of hunter-gatherers inhabiting the entire Cuban archipelago. Unlike the neighbouring Taíno, they practised no larger scale agriculture, but subsisted mostly on small scale horticulture, shellfish and foraging, and supplemented their diet with fish and game. They lacked ceramic pottery, and made stone, shell, and bone tools using grinding and lithic reduction techniques.