Kelly Hearn
for National Geographic News
December 9, 2008
Stone idols collected over the last two years at an archaeological site
in Cuba were manufactured from exotic imported material for elite
Indians, according to U.S. and Cuban researchers who announced their
finds this week.
The relics, combined with new translations of Spanish colony
"newspapers" from the 1500s, help paint a picture of the Indian
populations that Christopher Columbus encountered during his first
voyage to the New World in 1492.
In recent years, archeologists have worked to map the size and location
of residential areas at the El Chorro de Maita site in hopes of learning
how Cuba's Arawakan Indians were affected by Spanish conquest, said Jim
Knight, a University of Alabama archaeologist who supervises work at the
site.
Stone Idols a Status Symbol
In the process of mapping, Knight and his colleagues happened upon
several thousand pottery and stone artifacts, including the small stone
idols.
"They took exotic, fine-grain metamorphic rocks and gradually reduced
them into forms that look very crude, but you can tell that the intended
product was an [idol]," said Knight, whose work is funded in part by the
National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.
(The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
"We know now that the society had an elite class and that the crude
idols were meant for the elite," he said, adding that the idols were
human-shaped figures representing gods and were likely worn on necklaces.
The origins of the unusual stone are unknown, but it was probably
imported, Knight said.
Columbus's voyage landed him in northeastern Cuba, where researchers say
he would have encountered Arawakan Indians.
While Knight said there is no evidence that Columbus visited El Chorro
de Maita, the researcher is certain that the settlement was occupied by
Arawakans, who were organized by chiefdoms.
They were an agriculturist people, reliant on root crops instead of
corn, but there is a lack of specific information about names of tribes
and their specific locations, according to Knight.
To complement the findings at El Chorro, researchers are using
historical documents—including handwritten materials made by Spanish
colonizers of Cuba.
The documents are written in a barely recognizable form of Spanish that
today few people understand, Knight said. But they are rich in
information, he adds.
One 16th-century document, for example, offers a detailed inventory of
an early Spanish colonizer's possessions.
John Worth, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of
West Florida, is analyzing the documents, which are housed in Spain.
"I'm trying to sort through the details of how this all took place,"
Worth said. "The sources are excellent with respect to the broad
generalities of what happened during the 1500s and 1600s and later, but
they are generally not specific enough to be able to zero in on the
Chorro site in particular."
Post-Conquest
Worth said he hopes the old documents will provide clues to how long
Cuba's Arawakan culture may have survived post-conquest.
"Right now there is a lot we don't know, such as the exact names of the
people who lived near the Chorro site," Worth said. "We want to know if
there were pure indigenous populations versus pure Spanish or if there
was a mixing ground during this early period."
Researchers also want to know if the Cuban Indians went extinct without
descendants or if there was a gradual process as native groups were
given a type of autonomy that led to mixing, Worth said.
"While living there, for instance, did they work on Spanish plantations?
Did they die or become more assimilated?"
The documents mention encomiendas—or colonial labor systems imposed by
the Spanish crown during the time of the conquests. And Worth has found
references to specific chiefs.
"If possible, I would like to be able to identify the original group
name of those who lived in the vicinity of El Chorro de Maita and to
then find out precisely where each chiefdom might have been located," he
said.
"This project is an example of how the integration of archaeological and
historical research allows more balanced perspectives on the contact
between Europeans and indigenous communities of the Caribbean," said
Marcos Martinón-Torres, a researcher with the Institute of Archeology at
the University College London who is not part of the study.
"Rather than using potentially biased European texts alone, the
combination of sources allows more nuanced perspectives where both
Europeans and indigenous peoples are represented."
Spanish Colonizers
Dennis Blanton, curator of Native American archeology at Fernbank Museum
of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia, was not part of the Cuba dig.
Blanton said the work provides an opportunity to do cross-cultural
comparative studies of native chiefdom societies in Cuba and elsewhere
in the world, including the eastern United States.
The work also provides added insight into 16th- and 17th-century Spanish
activity in the New World, Blanton said.
"We're curious to see how Spanish policies changed over time," he said.
"This work provides a wonderful opportunity to see how they were
conducting themselves in the midst of native people at the very
beginning. This is probably an unprecedented glimpse at 'chapter one' of
the Spanish encounters."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081209-columbus-cuba-archeology-missions.html
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