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Global post-medieval/historical archaeology: Cuba and Puerto Rico
Abstract
Now in its sixth edition, this yearly overview of global post-medieval/historical archaeology takes us to Cuba and Puerto Rico in 2022. This edition provides an interesting case study in how the practice of historical archaeology evolved differently within the Caribbean region and addresses key themes, such as colonialism and the evolution of archaeological practice.
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After a military coup in 1952, Cuba entered in a dictatorship with extreme state repression. By 1958 a colonial fortress in the city of Matanzas became a torture and detention center known as Escuadrón 41. Illustrating a case of forgetting, its destruction presents an atypical case study that defying official master narratives. Here, I analyze how is a traumatic past remembered through the lens of conflictive ideologies by intertwining the concepts of place of memory, destruction, and cultural trauma, which provides an account of a peripheral place and its local significance in the process of defining Cuba.
We present a brief account regarding the second archaeological fieldwork season in the town of Guanabacoa, on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba, where a research project is looking to understand the complex sociocultural interaction and the material correlate of the Indians (as a colonial category in the Caribbean) of both local and Florida origin who were sent to settle in the town between the 16th and 18th centuries. The finding of the first artifacts associated with Florida Indians is reported, as well as that of a rich archaeological record from the 18th and 19th centuries showing how Guanabacoa's cultural identity shifted from an Indian origin to a culturally diverse modern town with strong Afro-Cuban traditions in a short period of time.
La relevancia histórica de Guanabacoa, poblado que surge como reducción de indios en La Habana y donde se sucedieron importantes procesos sociohistóricos, contrasta con la exigüidad de intervenciones arqueológicas practicadas, y la necesidad de dilucidar cuestiones relativas al emplazamiento de la primera iglesia y cementerio, área que constituyó el núcleo urbano a partir del cual se expandió y conformó el actual municipio. En función de esto se implementó el proyecto arqueológico Indios naturales y floridanos en Guanabacoa con el propósito de constatar la ubicación de las mencionadas estructuras, enfocado además en la presencia e interacción de indios naturales y floridanos. El análisis de las abundantes y significativas evidencias arqueológicas halladas constata la continuidad de algunas producciones tradicionales aruacas y la presencia de indios floridanos en el entorno urbano guanabacoense del siglo xviii. Igualmente, ilustran sobre el comercio, la producción de azúcar, la religión, el divertimento, la construcción de inmuebles, la alimentación, el procesamiento de alimentos y actividades que incluían elementos vinculados con la apariencia personal. Los resultados obtenidos en la primera etapa de investigación arqueológica evidencian la necesidad de continuar la implementación del proyecto en el área seleccionada.
Across the Caribbean and adjacent regions, systematic inventories of historical ship graffiti remain markedly incomplete. Previous studies had identified several islands in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos associated with ship graffiti primarily within colonial period structures. We expanded the range of these preliminary inventories, recording a diverse array of ship graffiti specific to plantation era structures across seven islands in the Bahamian Archipelago, as well as the sole cave site known to harbor such imagery. Examples were also associated with Spanish colonial era fortifications in Old San Juan and found within a set of nine of the numerous caves found on Isla de Mona and two caves on the Puerto Rican mainland. Many of the nautical images encountered were previously unrecorded as they have only recently been revealed through systematic exploration and detailed site surveys, demonstrating that the phenomenon is regionally more widespread and complex than previously known. In this interregional study of ship graffiti in the Puerto Rican and Bahamian Archipelagos, we examine image distribution patterns, techniques, preservation status and historical context unique to each area, contrasting the respective Euro-colonial cultural arcs reflected in these distinctive nautical iconographies. Although each act of mark-making is historically and contextually unique, we consider what this imagery has in common, namely that the majority were produced under conditions of slavery, confinement, and/or hard labor.
A Arqueologia Industrial em Cuba é uma modalidade vinculada ao desenvolvimento de grandes plantações na Ilha a partir do último quarto do século XVIII. Foram abundantes os cafezais e engenhos fundados em praticamente todo o país e ainda hoje abundam as ruínas destas fábricas, em alguns casos agrupadas em extensas zonas produtivas. Muitos têm sido os pesquisadres que, ao longo de 50 anos, têm tentado reconstruir, a partir de métodos arqueológicos, os sistemas hidráulicos, o desenvolvimento da indústria, o modo de vida dos escravos, os padrões de enterramento, a resistência escrava nas plantações, etc. É objetivo deste trabalho comentar sobre o patrimônio industrial e o desenvolvimento da Arqueologia como complemento gnoseológico indispensável para o mesmo. Além disso, propono compilar os dados sobre grande aprte das intervenções arqueológicas realizadas em Cuba desde a década de 1960 até a atualidade.
p>La segunda iglesia más antigua en el Nuevo Mundo está ubicada en San Juan de Puerto Rico y ha alcanzado un estado crítico de deterioro que requiere intervenciones estructurales y de conservación para segurar su permanencia. En el 2004 fue incluida en la lista de los “100 Lugares en Mayor Riesgo en el Mundo” del World Monuments Fund. Arquitectos, ingenieros estructurales, arqueólogos y técnicos en conservación realizaron una serie de estudios detallados, además de la documentación y análisis extensiva del templo entre los años 2003-2012. El presente artículo sintetiza estas investigaciones, medidas de conservación y las recomendaciones efectuadas durante este periodo.</p
IN THIS CHAPTER WE FOCUS ON the pragmatic and theoretical problems
of archaeological praxis within one of the Caribbean islands, Puerto
Rico. The inhabitants of the Caribbean islands were the first “New
World” peoples to suffer from the irruption of Europeans and their colonial
projects in the late fifteenth century. As a result, contemporary Puerto
Rican society emerged out of, and currently lives in, a colonial situation.
This analysis will emphasize the differences in the ways archaeology is carried
out and is conceptualized in “eccentric” (i.e., marginalized) contexts,
in contrast to the skewed perspective that is usually presented in the centers
of theory production, which are also typically located in some of those
countries that created and contributed to the current socioeconomic conditions
and cultural realities of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.
Los estudios sobre la esclavitud en Cuba han sido, y siguen siendo, muy numerosos, especialmente cuando se trata sobre la plantación esclavista desarrollada durante los siglos XVIII y XIX. El territorio que se consagró como máximo exponente de esta etapa fue precisamente la llanura Habana-Matanzas, donde se consolidó el mayor capital de la burguesía cubana de entonces.
El desarrollo de las plantaciones, especialmente dedicadas a la explotación del azúcar y el café, conllevó a un incremento exponencial de los esclavos cimarrones a lo largo de todo el archipiélago, en busca de liberarse del yugo esclavista. Los espacios aislados e intrincados, en las montañas o en las ciénagas, fueron los lugares seleccionados por los cimarrones para intentar sobrevivir al margen de la sociedad, en ocasiones tratando de impulsar sublevaciones más amplias que aunque llegaron a dimensiones insospechadas, no lograron el cese de la esclavitud.
Es precisamente sobre estos temas que versa el libro que presentamos. Desde un caso específico, la Cueva El Grillete, en la provincia cubana de Matanzas, se abordan varios aspectos de la vida de los esclavos cimarrones, su cultura material, el ambiente y sus interacciones con la sociedad que los excluía. Todo esto a partir de un estudio arqueológico que intentó rescatar la memoria, el patrimonio, al darle valor a un espacio saqueado que contribuye al conocimiento del fenómeno social del cimarronaje esclavo en Cuba.
Los orígenes de la Arqueología Histórica en Cuba estuvieron marcados por las labores de rescate y restauración del patrimonio edificado llevadas a cabo en las primeras décadas del siglo XX. No obstante existen antecedentes registrados en la bibliografía de tempranos hallazgos arqueológicos pertenecientes a la época colonial -realizados en parte, de manera casual- casi siempre asociados a exploraciones cuyos objetivos se relacionaban con la búsqueda de nuestro pasado aborigen. Una aproximación a la trayectoria de esta disciplina nos permite plantear que los estudios arqueológicos del período postcolombino cobraron fuerza a partir de las primeras normativas que delimitaron y definieron los campos de acción de la ciencia arqueológica para el territorio nacional, signando de este modo, su devenir. La creación de un cuerpo legislativo e institucional promovió, sin lugar a dudas, su reconocimiento e impulsó su desarrollo dentro de los trabajos de restauración y rehabilitación de los centros históricos, fundamentalmente. Acercarnos al tratamiento dado a la disciplina arqueológica en las regulaciones a través de los reglamentos planteados para su ejercicio, nos ha valido para conocer también la ambigüedad de sus enfoques y de cómo estos repercuten en la práctica arqueológica en sentido general. Por otra parte, plantear propuestas que se ajusten a la realidad de nuestro contexto y respondan al desarrollo de la arqueología histórica como disciplina con estrategias de investigación propias y como campo generador de conocimiento histórico dentro de los proyectos de restauración, es parte de nuestros objetivos. Antecedentes y primeras regulaciones Si bien es cierto que los primeros reportes de objetos de la etapa colonial se enmarcan a finales del siglo XIX, no es lícito, para esas fechas, hablar de una disciplina que tenga por finalidad el estudio de la época histórica a través de los restos materiales. Las exploraciones arqueológicas que entonces se realizaban tenían como objetivo la búsqueda de evidencias precolombinas. De tal manera, muchos de los hallazgos pertenecientes a períodos tardíos -entiéndase posterior a 1492- se realizaron de forma fortuita. Son múltiples los ejemplos que se encuentran en la bibliografía de las primeras décadas del pasado siglo.
Santa Cruz de los Pinos is a small town like most others in the Cuban countryside. But half a century ago it was the epicenter of the 1962 Missile Crisis. During that time it served as a Soviet base for middle-range nuclear missiles, and the US air reconnaissance photos of it were spread through media all around the world. The crisis was solved through negotiations without Cuban involvement, and as a result of this neglect the Missile Crisis has been an under-communicated part of history in Cuba. A Swedish—Cuban research project has now investigated what kinds of memories of the crisis remain today at the former missile base — in the ground as well as in people’s minds. Digging in the ground has proved to be an effective way to start a remembering process and to help disarm a politically loaded history and uncover stories other than those dominating ‘big history’.
Around the world, archaeological collections are curated in museums, universities, foundations, government agencies, and other organizations. Some are carefully documented and readily accessible, while others are languishing in substandard conditions as a direct result of the curation crisis. This article highlights the value of collection-based research. It encourages the mutually beneficial approach of training students in both collection preservation and collection-based research and demonstrates other ways to obtain data for research projects, aside from excavation. Using my collections-based research carried out in Puerto Rico and the continental United States as a case study, I draw attention to the valuable information that can be derived from acquisition and accession documents and offer ways to incorporate new datasets. This allows for more accurate narratives of collections’ historiographies.
Recent archaeological fieldwork on Isla de Mona in the Caribbean has led to the discovery of a substantial corpus of early colonial inscriptions inside the darkzone of one of the 200 cave systems on the island. Cave 18, like multiple others on Isla de Mona, was a well-established indigenous spiritual realm in the centuries leading up to European colonization. Christian symbols, individual names, written dates, and Spanish and Latin religious commentaries are located in direct association with preexisting indigenous iconography and activities. This paper applies paleographic (handwriting) analysis to establish the authenticity, authorship, and chronology of the inscriptions and to interpret the nature of this early spiritual encounter. We conclude that these sixteenth-century inscriptions represent visits to the cave by first-generation Europeans, including Spanish royal officials in Puerto Rico, and reflect their reactions to native religious landscapes. The inscriptions on Isla de Mona capture personal, face-to-face encounters with native religion and represent Christian commentaries and reactions to indigenous spaces and worldview in the early colonial period.
Cuba had the largest slave society of the Spanish colonial empire and thus the most plantations. The lack of archaeological data for interpreting these sites is a glaring void in slavery and plantation studies. Theresa Singleton helps to fill this gap with the presentation of the first archaeological investigation of a Cuban plantation written by an English speaker.At Santa Ana de Biajacas, where the plantation owner sequestered slaves behind a massive masonry wall, Singleton explores how elite Cuban planters used the built environment to impose a hierarchical social order upon slave laborers. Behind the wall, slaves reclaimed the space as their own, forming communities, building their own houses, celebrating, gambling, and even harboring slave runaways. What emerged there is not just an identity distinct from other North American and Caribbean plantations, but a unique slave culture that thrived despite a spartan lifestyle.Singleton's study provides insight into the larger historical context of the African diaspora, global patterns of enslavement, and the development of Cuba as an integral member of the larger Atlantic World.
The sixteenth-century church, Iglesia San José, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was placed on the World Monuments Watch List in 2004. Originally known as the Iglesia de Santo Tomás de Aquino, it is considered by many scholars to be one of the finest and oldest examples of Gothic-influenced religious architecture built by the Spanish in the New World. Water infiltration and structural issues were at the core of the closing of the structure in 2002 after which emergency conservation measures were developed together with a long-term restoration plan. Both the development of the restoration plan and the conservation measures were enhanced by the use of ground-penetrating radar with both midrange and high-frequency antennas. Subsurface water infiltration and subsequent voids were effectively mapped to help determine patterns of rainwater travel through the stone and rubble masonry walls. Ground-penetrating radar results also provided evidence of multiple construction phases and modifications and corroborated or enhanced architectural evidence used to understand the construction sequences.
This project intends to document graffiti identified on the walls of the defence system of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in a collaborative effort between the author and the National Park Service. The initial proposal envisaged a maximum of 8 or 9 ship drawings previously identified by the Park's personnel. Fieldwork has hugely expanded that number—so far over 400. Preliminary evaluation of the ship-types identified suggests the presence of a visual representation of ship-type evolution, at least from the 18th to the first half of the 20th centuries.© 2006 The Author
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