Cultural Sequence in Southwestern Haiti
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1 CULTURAL SEQUENCE IN SOUTHWESTERN HAITI IRVING ROUSE CLARK MOORE Research on the prehistoric archeology of Haiti has been largely limited to the main urban centers. Local prehistorians, such as Bastien (19^M, Fisher (19^6), and Roumain (19^3), have worked around the capital of Port-au-Prince in the south. Foreigners have operated mainly out of Cap Haitien on the north coast—Rainey (19^1) and Rouse (1939, 19^1) east of that city, Hamilton and Hodges (1982) in its vicinity, and Barker (l96l) to its west, along the peninsula leading to Cuba (Fig. l). The much longer southwestern peninsula, extending towards Jamaica, has received little attention. Work there is needed to round out our knowledge of Haitian prehistory. Our paper is concerned with the outer half of the southwestern penin sula, that is, with the Departments of Sud and Grande Anse, which the Indians called Guacayarima (Sauer 1966, Fig. 7) . The Spanish colonial writers disagree about the inhabitants of this region. Pedro Mártir de Anglería and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo say that they were savages who lived in caves (Zayas y Alfonso 1931: 13-lM , while Alonso de Santa Cruz and Andres Morales refer to their wildness and lack of agriculture (Sauer 1969: h&). On the other hand, Father las Casas (1951, 2: 2U0) reports the presence of farming villages. If the first four authors are correct, the historic Indians of Gua cayarima were still in the Archaic Age, but if we are to believe las Casas, they had advanced into the Ceramic Age. Accepting the majority opinion, Zayas y Alfonso (1931: l1*), Rouse (19^8: Map 8), and Sauer (1966: 1+8) have Figure 1. Map of Haiti. 5 likened the situation in our study area to that at the far end of Cuba, where Archaic culture did survive until historic time. However, the fact that Guacayarima is a Tainan name suggests that Ceramic-Age Indians, speak ing Tainan, had indeed occupied it, as indicated by las Casas * One aim of our research was to test this possibility against the archeological record. The word Guacayarima means "back of the island" (Arrom 19Ô0: 100-1). The Ceramic Indians so named it because their ancestors, coming from South America, had expanded westward through Hispaniola into Jamaica at the ex pense of the Archaic Indians. We hoped to obtain archeological evidence aboux their forward progress; did they conquer Guacayarima on their way to Jamaica, occupy it afterwards, or completely bypass it? Our third and final aim was to investigate the degree of interaction between the proto- historic Indians of Guacayarima and those of Jamaica. Las Casas (1951, 2: 356) tells us the Indians at the other end of Hispaniola made daily trips to Puerto Rico just to pass the time of day. This is evidenced archeologi- cally by the existence of close similarities between the remains in eastern Hispaniola and western Puerto Rico. We wished to learn whether interaction between Guacayarima and Jamaica had produced equally strong resemblances. Archeological Research Some archeological evidence was already available. In describing the French colony of Saint Domingue, Moreau de Saint-Mêry (1T97: -1275) reports the existence of a large, presumably Archaic shell mound near Les Cayes on the south shore of our study area (Fig. l). He also mentions the discovery of pottery around Les Cayes, at Port Salut farther west, and at Jêrêmie on the north shore. They support las Casas' contention that the people who lived there had passed from the Archaic into the Ceramic Age. 6 The first modern research in the study area was carried out in the 1930's by Herbert J. Krieger, of the U.S. National Museum, and Godfrey J. Olsen, on behalf of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, of New York City. In 1931, Krieger located four Archaic shell mounds on Ile à Vache, off the south shore (Pig. l), and trenched one of them (Krieger 1932: llU). In 1933, Olsen dug a second trench in this or a neighboring mound (Moore 1982: 189-91). Neither has published his results. Jacques Roumain followed up their research with a reconnaissance in the 19^0's, but we have been unable to find a record of it. Rouse became interested in Olsen1s assemblage because it resembles several which Rainey (19^1) and he (1939, 19^1) had excavated in northern Haiti. He published an analysis of it in the Bulletin du Bureau d'Ethnolo gie de la République d'Haiti (Rouse 19^7). He was dissatisfied with this publication because the printer had inadvertently omitted his illustrations and also because he had been unable to determine the relationship of the specimens to the stratigraphy of the site. To remedy the latter deficiency, he and Moore relocated the site in 198l and Moore dug another trench there. Rouse (1982b) then published a revised version of his analysis of the Olsen collection, with the illustrations, and Moore (1982) followed it with a report on his own fieldwork. Moore did survey as well as excavation on Ile à Vache, and has since extended the survey through the western half of the peninsula. The present paper is based upon his fieldwork. We shall proceed chronologically, first considering the Archaic-Age sites and then the Ceramic-Age sites, and shall attempt to determine the sequence of cultural complexes within each of them. 7 Archaic Age Moore has located 39 non-ceramic sites (Fig. 2). The largest ones are concentrated along the south side of the peninsula between the Baie d'Aquin and the Baie des Cayes and on Ile à* Vache. They lie near the shore. While most are in the vicinity of mangrove swamps, their abundant shell refuse indicates that food gathering was not oriented there but towards shallows bays and open water. The oysters presently abundant on the mangroves do not appear to have been exploited (Moore 1982). Insofar as can be told, all the sites belong to the Casimiroid series of complexes (Barreroid or Mordanoid in the terminology of Veloz Maggiolo 1980: 36). None except Cacoq. 2, the excavated shell heap on Ile à Vache, can be assigned to a complex within that series. Moore's surface collections from the other sites are not large enough to identify their complexes. The Cacoq 2 finds may be attributed to the Couri complex, as defined by Rainey (19^1) and Rouse ( 19^+1 ) in northern Haiti. They include examples of all the types of ground stonework distinctive of that complex: axes with single or double bits, bowls, milling stones, rectangular hammer-grinders, balls, and pegs (cf. Rouse 1982b, Pis. 1, 2 with Rouse 19^1, Pis. 1, 5). Cacoq 2 has also yielded a mortar and pestle, which are missing from the Couri complex, but this may be an adaptive rather than a stylistic differ ence; Cacoq 2 is on a coastal lagoon while the Couri sites were on an interior savanna, to Judge by a local place name. The other types of ground stone artifacts are too nondescript or too rare to serve as the basis for compari son, as are the bone and shell artifacts. The Couri complex is further characterized by macroblades of flint, trimmed only on their edges. Krieger (19M) obtained the two commonest Scale : Icm — 9km ? km «S I -1_ I He a Vache -18- A Archaic sit O OsHonoid M. Meiliacoid C Chicoid sit Figure 2. Map of the Southwestern Peninsula, summarizing the results of Moore's site surv 9 types, stemmed spearheads and straight-edged knives, from his trench, but we cannot be sure that he dug the same site as Olsen. The latter encoun tered only a single piece of outer cortex struck off in the preparation of a prismatic core (Rouse 1982b, PI. 1,A). While Moore excavated no macro- blades, he did collect a prismatic core, spearheads, and knives from the surfaces of neighboring sites (op. cit.: ITT). These finds lead us to believe that the Casimiroid tradition of flintworking was indeed present at Cacoq 2. 'The Cacoq assemblages are also linked to the Couri complex by a style of decoration that occurs on axes, vessels, and ornaments as well as non- utilitarian objects. Both engraving and sculpture were practiced, engrav ing to make complex rectilinear designs featuring hatched areas, and sculpture to produce eared projections comparable to those on the so-called Carib stones of the Lesser Antilles (Rouse 1982b, Figs. 1-2, Pis. 1,F_, (3 and 2,A, JE). Moore found additional examples of this art in his survey and Langworthy (1980) has obtained a complete bowl decorated with it from a rock shelter near Jacmel at the base of the peninsula. The Museo del Hombre Dominicano arranged for one of Moore's shell samples from Cacoq 2 to be analyzed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Its date of llU0±50 B.C. corresponds nicely to those of 1030 and 905 B.C. for the El Porvenir site in the Dominican Republic, which has yielded Couri-type artifacts but not the latter's artwork (Rouse and Allaire, MS, Table h). With further excavation, it should be possible to identify earlier Archaic complexes on the southwestern peninsula. The Cabaret complex, now known only from central Haiti (Roumain 19^3), ought to be there, since it 10 appears to be ancestral to the Couri complex (Cruxent and Rouse 1969). The still earlier and simpler Seboruco-Mordan complex of Cuba and the Dominican Republic is another possibility (Kozlowski 1974: 37-69; see our Fig. 3). Cerami c Age To date, Moore has located 1^5 pottery-bearing sites within the study area.