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Taino Indians Still Thrive in Cuba

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Bianca
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« Reply #15 on: February 27, 2008, 01:51:39 pm »









Some of that evidence comes from another site in Cuba:

Los Buchillones, a coastal settlement about 200 miles west of El Chorro de Maíta.

First excavated in 1998 by a Cuban-Canadian team, Los Buchillones is the site of the
only known intact Taíno house. In the last decade, continuing study of the site and
the surrounding region by Mr. Valcárcel Rojas and Mr. Cooper has revealed a commu-
nity with trade networks all over the Greater Antilles that survived into the Spanish
colonial period in the early 17th century.

Clearly, they would have known about Europeans’ presence, but chose to avoid con-
tact, unlike El Chorro’s chieftains. It may have kept them alive longer.



Tate Images

A 17th-century portrait of William Style
of Langley, England, shows him wearing
lace tags, above, and other accouter-
ments like those found in Cuba.


Together, the sites hint at an array of tactics not documented by the Europeans.
 “Most accounts seem to be based on the idea that Europeans ‘acted’ and Taíno
‘reacted,’ ” said Elizabeth Graham of University College London, who with her hus-
band, David Pendergast, first excavated Los Buchillones. “In the case of El Chorro
de Maíta, the Taíno were clearly being proactive.”

The finds at El Chorro also help to fill a hole in the study of the Caribbean past created
by Cuba’s political isolation. Archaeology of the island has been little known outside
of its borders since the 1959 revolution. Very few foreign archaeologists have dug
there, and the few field reports published by Cuban archaeologists, mostly trained
by Soviet scholars, are difficult to get outside the country.

In recent years, there have been efforts to bring Cuban archaeology out of the long
shadow cast by the 45-year-old United States sanctions. In 2005, the scholarly vo-
lume Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology assembled a dozen English-language reports in
one place. (In it is a paper Mr. Valcárcel Rojas co-wrote about El Chorro de Maíta.)
The relatively new Journal of Caribbean Archaeology currently has its first Cuban paper
in peer review.

For most American archaeologists, papers published by their international colleagues
are about as close as they are going to get to Cuba these days.

Since 2004, the Bush administration has greatly tightened restrictions on educational
travel to Cuba; programs under 10 weeks are now prohibited.

Last summer, Florida went a step further, banning public universities from spending
money on research in countries the State Department considers state sponsors of
terrorism, including Cuba. Both sets of regulations are being challenged in court.

Last spring, Mr. Valcárcel Rojas was denied a visa to attend the annual Society for
American Archaeology conference in Puerto Rico. Dr. Martinón-Torres and Mr. Cooper
presented the research — which received Cuba’s highest academic prize — without him.

Still, the British-Cuban team is seeking a three-year grant in hopes of uncovering the
trade and social networks that connected El Chorro’s inhabitants — in particular, the
effects of the brass-gold trade on those connections. And there is European behavior
to puzzle out, too.

“We would expect the Europeans to load up with brass in their cargos, but we haven’t
found that brass in Cuba,” Dr. Martinón-Torres said. “It’s possible it hasn’t been reco-
gnized by archaeologists. We expect if both sides were happy with this exchange, there
must be more evidence of it.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/16cuba.html
« Last Edit: February 27, 2008, 01:55:39 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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