7 A PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE 1980 AND 1982 FIELD SEASONS AT GRANDE (12 PSJ7-5): OVERVIEW OF SITE HISTORY, MAPPING AND EXCAVATIONS

PETER G. ROE

INTRODUCTION

Viewed from many perspectives, Hacienda Grande (12PSJ7-5) is one of the most important sites in . It is central to the history of Greater Antillean archaeological investigation since it is the eponymous site for the identification and first publication of the earliest documented ceramics in the chronology of the island, the "Hacienda Grande" phase of the Saladoid stylistic series (Alegría 1965:247-248; Rouse 1964:503, Fig. 5). Nearly every major figure, and most minor ones, active in scientific or avocational archaeology, or just plain "pot-hunting," in Puerto Rico have "worked" the site or studied collections from it. From the vantage point of intrinsic culture-historical interest, as a huge multi-component site Hacienda Grande contains perhaps the longest, richest and most continuous cultural succession, from Igneri to Pre-Taino and Taino, in Puerto Rico. Furthermore, it lies in close proximity to the island's first published preceramic site, Cueva María la Cruz, 12PSJ7-1, 152

(Alegría, Nicholson and Willey 1955) and shares some aspects of its material cultural assemblage with it. Lastly, the geographical location of the Hacienda Grande site, and its ecological setting on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, the eastern-most of the Greater Antilles, accessed the cultural influences which moved with the major currents and prevailing winds from the island stepping stones of the Lesser Antilles during Pre-Columbian Neo-Indian times. The site lies within Rouse's Sonda de Vieques (Vieques Sound) culture area (1982:47, Fig. 2), dependent as it was on sea-born, rather than land-based communication (Fig. 1). Unfortunately, due to some thirty years of persistent looting, the site is also the focal point of a coastal plain-wide crisis in the management of the Pre-Columbian cultural resources on the island. A laudatory and newly enacted local ordinance will not save it in the face of a lack of enforcement capability and the absence of supporting legislation on the Commonwealth level. Yet even in its present sorry state as a gouged and pock-marked cadaver, the Hacienda Grande site still holds abundant data to address such current research questions as the priority of ceramic/agricultural migrations in Saladoid times or the post-Saladoid dietary shift. Beyond these questions of the contents of the badly-disturbed midden, when viewed as an ossuary, the site represents a vast bank of virtually intact human osteological information vital for addressing the still-untold aboriginal physical anthropological history. Lastly, present research has revealed that the site is even more 153

internally complex than had hitherto been supposed and many of the zones of occupation thus isolated still await systematic excavation. Currently, Hacienda Grande is the subject of a detailed report on the 1954 Alegría and Nicholson cataloged excavations (Rouse and Alegría, ms.). The intent of this paper is more limited; to present some preliminary results from two seasons (1980 and 1982) of test excavations at the site directed by myself as part of a field school in archaeological method and a research program into Puerto Rican prehistory sponsored by the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y_ el^ Caribe. The Centro, under the direction of , who was also the first to publish the results of excavation at Hacienda Grande, has a special interest in reexcavating the site. The program of which our own restudy is a part represents an effort to systematically retest noted northeastern and southeastern Puerto Rican coastal sites with the research objective of coupling the traditional stylistic study of ceramics as space/time indicators with investigation into the related prehistoric ecological, technical and social adaptation of Amerindian cultures to an island environment. This research is being carried out from the perspective of cognate lowland South Amerindian prehistoric and ethnographic societies (Raymond, DeBoer and Roe 1975; Roe 1982a) and incorporates a new methodology of generative design analysis (Roe 1980; 1982b) to relate the hitherto useful but autonomous concept of style (Petitjean Roget and Petitjean Roget 1976) to eco-technology and society (Veloz Maggiolo 1977:8) in an 154

Antillean setting (Roe 1982c). The program began in 1978 with excavations at Luquillo Beach, the Monserrate site, on the northeastern coast, continued through testing of the Caracoles site in Ponce on the southeastern coast in 1979, and the two seasons at Hacienda Grande on the northeastern coast in 1980 and 1982 (the year hiatus of 1981 was produced when I was in the Peruvian jungle doing ethnographic research) to culminate in 1983 at the site of Ojo del Buey near Dorado on the north-central coast. The field school lasts for six weeks each summer, from early June to mid-July and involves theoretical, field and laboratory components. Aside from the excavations at Tibes (Questell 1983) and El Bronce (Robinson, Lundberg and Walker 1983), the Centro program represents the largest scale and most sustained program of excavation on the island in recent years. These excavations take on added significance given the current predominant role of contract archaeology in Puerto Rico which reallocates effort from excavations to site survey. In view of this situation, emphasis has been placed on the publication of the field school's results in addition to its didactic functions. Both independent publication and publication as Master's theses through the Centro will be used to disseminate the information. This and the following paper constitute reports on only four phases of the program's work at Hacienda Grande: the mapping, excavation, lithics and human osteology. Other reports are in preparation on the ceramics, faunal and malacological aspects as well as the earlier work at Monserrate (Hamilton 1980; 155

Pantel 1981; Roe 1979a).

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL SETTING

The site of Hacienda Grande is located about 25 km. to the east of San Juan and immediately south of the present town of Loiza on Puerto Rico's northeastern coastal plain. The site is some 1.21 km. from the unnaturally-straight present course of the largest river on the island, the Rio Grande de Loiza (probably canalized in colonial times) as it debouches into the Atlantic and is surrounded on both sides by old mouths of the formerly meandering Rio Grande. Just to the rear of the site is an ancient oxbow lake remnant of a former main channel of that river (Carbone 1980b:38, Fig. 8; see my Fig. 4), an indication that the site was closer to fresh water in aboriginal times than it is at present.

Furthermore, while the site lies some 1.56 km. from the current seashore, there is also evidence that it was located much closer to salt water in aboriginal times as well. Ever since the late Quaternary the low alluvial land the site occupies has been actively prograding due to eustatic rise and possible climatic shifts (Carbone 1978:19). Hacienda Grande itself sits halfway up the most extensive series of fossil beach ridges and relict shorelines on the island. This regime continues to Punta Vacía Talega on the west and Punta Miquillo at the mouth of the Rio Espiritu Santo to the east. These beaches were formed when the sea was some 2-3.66 m. below current levels. The site's mid-point 156

location within them opens up the possibility of using other dated archaeological sites in the region to establish a relative chronology based on these fossil shorelines. The idea first articulated by de Hostos in 1919 (p.378), that the largest sites in Puerto Rico are found on the south coast where the protected leeward side of the island and the existence of a wide and shallow coastal shelf aided exploitation of that region by Amerindians with primitive water craft, is still widely held. Hacienda Grande is clearly an exception to that pattern since the site is found on the northern windward side of the island. Yet there may be an explanation which could cover both cases. There appears to be a particular concentration of big sites (both early and late) in the northeastern region of the north coast of Puerto Rico. In the area covered by this report alone one finds the huge sites of Monserrate, Hacienda Grande and Vacía Talega (Fig. 3). These sites continue until the area of San Juan, which is also the area where the protecting fringing barrier reef ceases and the waves of the deep waters pound the shore directly. Since all of these north coastal sites lie in areas protected by the reefs, which foster the development of lagoons and concomitant moluscan fauna as well as providing an analog of the protected south coast's shallow anchorages, their appearance may not be coincidental with the reef development. Such is clearly the case with the Hacienda Grande site (Fig. 4). As one who has experienced the difficulty of navigating even the wide major tributaries of the Amazon like the Ucayali during high winds and waves in wooden dugout canoes, even manned by such 157

experienced canoemen as the Shipibo, I can appreciate the attractiveness of such sites from the point of view of Puerto Rico's similarly equipped early inhabitants. The site is cradled to the south and east by several mogotes, or isolated Tertiary limestone outliers of the coastal hill chain. These Lower Miocene knobs are honeycombed with solution caverns such as the famous preceramic Cueva María la Cruz less than 500 m. to the west of Hacienda Grande across the present route 188, or the smaller Cueva Mela located on the southern periphery of the site itself. These mogotes and their tali provided high ground which was essential to escape the periodic flooding characterizing this low-lying region. Today the deep, poorly-drained and nearly level Quaternary soils of the Humid Region Coloso Toa Bajura association which have formed in this alluvial plain still hold standing water after frequent rains. A marsh has developed to the south of the site. These are not the only soils in the immediate area, however. Carbone (1980b:41) notes that "the location of the site thus seems ideally situated in close proximity to the old river yet at the edge of the most productive soils (Cataño loamy sands) from the point of view of manioc cultivation" precisely because of their highly permeable and infertile character. This soil association is found just north of the site. Vescelius (Vescelius and Walker 1983:45) has also found soil associations helpful in predicting site location. Indeed, using an ordinal ranking system based on the presumed desirability of soils to an Amerindian horticulturalist, he calculated that within the whole Humacao 158

region of northeastern Puerto Rico one of the two highest-ranking areas is precisely where the site is located, inside the lower valley of the Rio Grande. The horticultural potential score he calculated for Hacienda Grande itself is very high (1983:51). In addition, he developed another ordinal scale to score an area's "littoral-gleaning" potential (1983:48). While not computed for 12 PSj7-5, its score is reckoned similar to a high-rated littoral site in the region, Punta Percha. Thus Hacienda Grande and its immediate catchment area was blessed with a "double dose" of potential, a high culture-"carrying capacity;" and when it was occupied a desirable place to live. To quote Bullen and Bullen (1974:1), "the site is situated on good agricultural land within easy walking distance of the Atlantic Ocean. Canoe transport on the river made readily available the resources of the inland forests as well as those of the sea." The site's large size, continuous occupation and elaborate material cultural remains all attest to its optimal location at the intersection point of a number of complementary environmental zones. In terms of the Ewel and Whitmore (1973:20) classification of Puerto Rican life zones, itself largely derived from forest morphology, the site lies within the ubiquitous northeastern coastal regime of the "Subtropical Moist Forest/Bosque Húmedo Subtropical" (Fig. 3) to the west of the present "El Yunque" relict rain forest. This zone is characterized by a mean annual rainfall of 1,000 or 1,100 to 2,000 or 2,200 mm. and a mean biotemperature of 18 to 24 degrees C. While currently deforested and covered by grasses, the Subtropical Moist Forest originally 159

was an ideal environment for many crops and was characterized by trees up to 20 m. tall with rounded crowns (1973:25). Such characteristic indigenous trees as the white cedar (Tabebuia heterophylla) and, in older secondary forests, local species of "laurels" like Nectandra and Ocotea abounded as did the royal palm (Roystonea borinqueña)- Mangroves prospered along the sheltered coast (1973:29). This was a suitable habitat for the limited local indigenous fauna like the extinct hutia rodent (Isolobodon portorricencis) or the also extinct insectivore Nesophontes edithus, and the large Caracolus sp. land snails which still abound on trees within the site. The humid conditions also permitted freshwater turtles (Hicotea sp.) and the blue land crab (Cardisoma guanhumi) to flourish. All of these life forms, together with the Puerto Rican boa (Epicrates sp.) have been reported from both the Saladoid and post-Saladoid middens at the site—the percentages of land crab dropping precipitously in post-Saladoid times, as is invariably the case— (Rodriguez 1981, Tabla A). The ocean fauna included a host of shellfish (mostly intertidal species) as well as green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), manta ray, and reef and pelagic fish like Great Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda), hogfish (Lachnolaimus maximus), Queen triggerfish (Balistes vetula), sama (Lutjanus analis), and pargos (Lutjanus jocu; Lutjanus griseus) (1981, Tabla A; Suárez 1979). While cultural utilization of all these life forms was not uniform in time these rich and varied resources (land, fresh water, brackish water, salt water) all provided the basic subsistence materials for the elaboration of aboriginal life. 160

HISTORY OF WORK AT THE SITE

Because of its unique position in Puerto Rican archaeology, it is worthwhile to consider the history of both collecting and excavation at the site. The sugar cane hacienda that originally included the present site of Hacienda Grande belonged to the Gallardo family, the maternal grandparents of Ricardo Alegría. The present Caño Gallardo, which was built by that family and runs to the south of the site (Fig. 2), carries their name. By the time Alegría began his work there the land, then known as "Hacienda San Jose del Cacique" (Alegría 1948:4) attesting to some local remembrance of its indigenous past, had already been sold. The second owner eventually resold the 900 acre holdings, including the site, to the present owner, Don Jorge Alvarez, who runs a dairy behind the mogote at the rear of the site. The northern part of the site had earlier been given to the family physician in payment for services rendered and was known by his name as the "finca de Clemente Fernández," when Alegría worked there. Indeed, it was within this finca, just to the north of the present fence, that he put in the majority of his pits and found the richest, deepest and earliest deposits, those of the Hacienda Grande phase occupation.

For the purposes of the following discussion I have prepared a triangulated sketch map (Fig. 5) of the whole site. It is divided into four quadrants based on the high ground which runs southeast-northwest across the northern part of the site. 161

Quadrant A includes the present squatter settlement of Villa Cañona (not illustrated but greatly augmented by the 1970 floods which caused people to flee the low-lying Punta Vacía Talega within view of the site to the northwest and seek the protection of the hill on the site). To the east is Quadrant B which occupies the northeastern half of the present hill. This entire area, including all of its midden, was gouged out for landfill for a housing project in the 1970s. It is now a vast depression, archaeologically sterile. Quadrant C incorporates the lower slopes of the southwestern half of the hill on which the Villa Cañona houses stand. It slopes gradually to a large level area now in cattle pasture and not heavily pot-hunted, save for the hill slope itself. That leaves Quadrant D, a roughly rectangular space encompassing the eastern extension of the tall mogote which encloses this quadrant like a big "L." As it descends from the hill and passes through a swampy area the land rises briefly on either side and becomes the talus of either wing of the mogote. On the western side of the southern talus is the small but deep "Cueva Mela."

As a perusal of Fig. 6 reveals, the hill and Its slope in Quadrant D is the most heavily pot-hunted part of the site; its surface presenting all the appearance of Flander's fields after a WWI bombardment. It was within Quadrant D, further down on the slope and on the southern talus, that we excavated and topo-mapped (Fig. 6). Inside each of the quadrants are occupational zones which from oral tradition, present observation or actual excavation are known or believed to have (or had) cultural 162

deposition. These zones are numbered sequentially within each quadrant. Not all of these deposits contain assemblages of the same age or cultural affiliation as will soon become evident. Normally archaeologists pay more attention to vertical than to horizontal stratigraphy. The complex occupational history of the Hacienda Grande site constitutes a powerful cautionary note for such archaeologists who might laterally trench such a site only to cut across several such zones and thereby mix together different chronological assemblages within the same vertical strata. The early main figures in archaeology on the island, Lothrop, Fewkes and Rainey, did not know of the site and it also escaped Rouse's attention in his 1936-1938 survey of that part of northeastern Puerto Rico, even though he had excavated a nearby site at Carmona (Rouse 1937:184-185) and Cuevas (Rouse 1952:406-407; 413-417) further up the Rio Grande. The real scientific discovery of Hacienda Grande and the identification of the painted pottery found in the lower levels there as a distinct phase of "Igneri," or Saladold ware, dates to the months of May-July, 1948 when Ricardo Alegría excavated there. He was fresh from his extensive excavations at Monserrate to the east the year before and visited Hacienda Grande as part of the Just-beginning research program into Puerto Rican prehistory under the newly organized "Centro de Investigaciones Arqueológicas" of the University of Puerto Rico where he taught (Alegría, et. al. 1955: 114). At the same time he excavated the nearby Cueva María la Cruz and therein discovered the first preceramic site on the 163

island. His principal excavations were massive and consisted of some 121, 2 X 2m. pits, 1, 1 X 2 m. pit and 8 intercalary 2 X 2 m. test pits. These were arrayed on either side of the path which bisects the site, just north of the fence in Quadrants A and B, zone 1. To the west of the path these units stretched 48 m. in a rough rectangle some 16 m. wide. Most of the units were excavated to below a meter by using 6" artificial stratigraphie levels. A narrow branching, right-angled trench of 17, 2 X 2 m. units explored Quadrant B to the east. In Quadrant C he put in 1, 2X2 m. test pit in zone 2. Test pitting was much more extensive in zones 6 and 7 of Quadrant D where some 35, 2 X 2m. units and 1, 1 X 2 m. unit were laid out within the same grid system. These covered the present hill and its slope in that quadrant. During that testing Alegría discovered that the richest area was in Quadrants A and B, zone 1, the place where the Hacienda Grande phase was defined. He also found that the present area of the borrow pit was relatively sterile while Quadrants C and D yielded more material, but still less than the area of the main units. Alegría also systematically Investigated and excavated the caves and rock shelters of the area. In addition to the units he put into the nearby Cueva María la Cruz, he put in two pits in Cueva Mela, in zone 8, Quadrant D. His most interesting find, however, came from one of the three rock shelters in the small calcareous outcropplngs to the west of zone 1 between Quadrants A and C. This region is called by the native term for such formations, seboruco, and the rock shelter in question, Cueva 164

Dolores (marked by an arrow in Fig. 5), yielded a fragmentary skeleton at 24" and a complete associated small (H=10.2 cm., W=12.7 cm., Rim D.=8.3 cm.) Cuevas carinated plain ware jar with short flaring rim and vertical strap handles (University Museum cat. no. 184a). The vessel was capped by a flat stone and within it were 95 tubular perforated necklace beads (92 of granite like Fig. 12a, b and one of corneline—the first evidence of work in semi-precious stone at the site, but by no means the last, University Museum cat. no. 151a). In addition, he found 2 complete plano-convex adzes near the remains made of finely polished serpentine (the larger, cat. no. 21a, W=4.6 cm., L=20.2 cm., T=1.4 cm.; the smaller, cat. no. 20a, W=3.5 cm., L=17.4 cm., T=1.5 cm.). All of the material from his 1948 excavations was transferred to the University Museum where it formed the core, along with the Luquillo finds, of the exhibitions which are still on view there (Alegría 1948; Alegría fieldnotes, 1948; Ramirez 1948; Pons Alegría 1979).

The important outcome of these excavations was Alegría's recognition of a style of Igneri (Saladoid) pottery which was obviously earlier than the Cuevas material Rouse had assigned to his first pottery-using period, Period II, because it possessed fine-line incised (actually engraved) cross-hatched designs similar to those documented for the much earlier Saladero site pottery from Venezuela (Alegría 1965:247). Now additionally defined by other stylistic criteria as well, such as a preference for curvilinear and thinly-applied white-on-red slip-painted designs rather than the thickly-applied rectilinear Cuevas 165

motifs, the Hacienda Grande phase continues to be the earliest documented pottery on the island. The early 1950s saw the arrival at the site of collectors such as Doña Blanca Berio who dug in the area of Alegría's excavations. Now resident in Bayamon, she has both cross-hatched engraved and white-on-red painted materials as well as work in semi-precious stone like a pierced amethyst bead (Rodriguez, Per. Com., 1983). Dr. George Warreck, who taught English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, began to dig in the same area and was active until around 1978. His particular interest was the engraved ware and he eventually donated most of his collection to the Fundación (Rodríguez, Per. Com., 1983).

The next scientific archaeology at a by-now much pitted site occured in 1954 with the arrival of a joint Peabody Museum of Harvard University/University of Puerto Rico expedition under the direction of Ricardo Alegría and Henry B. Nicholson (Alegría, et. al. 1955). Both Hacienda Grande and Cueva María la Cruz were investigated, partially in hopes of obtaining carbon samples for C-14 dating, but without success (Alegría, Per. Com., 1983). The excavations at Hacienda Grande were not as extensive as the earlier ones and were placed under the path itself in zone 1 between Quadrants A and B because, although compacted, such places often prove to be undisturbed. A total of 11, 2 X 2m. units and 1,1 X 2 m. unit were opened to a depth of 120 cm. The units were oriented, as had the earlier ones been, to magnetic north (Rouse and Alegría, ms., Fig. 3) and the recovered materials screened (ms., Plate a), but only a representative 166

faunal and malacological sample saved. A badly preserved fetal-position skeleton oriented south was found in the north wall of one of these units (El) at 100-110 cm., while another similarly-posed skeleton was encountered between El and E2. The cultural stratigraphy, as determined by a profile of the 136 cm. deep east wall of E2 shows a humus cap of 6 cm., a shell layer and dense midden in a dark colored layer from 6 to 50 cm., a lighter zone of leaching and diminished midden content from 50 to 96 cm. and a great concentration of crab remains pertaining to the Hacienda Grande occupation as a yellow deposit from 96 to 116 cm. The last 20 cm. of the cut consisted of sterile sand (Alegría, fieldnotes, 1954). The depth of these deposits and the clear stratification of the crab layer beneath the shell layer, although characteristic of other early sites like Monserrate, is not to be found in the area of our 1980 and 1982 excavations (zones 6 and 9), but is approximated in other areas of Quadrant D such as zone 5. After this joint expedition the saqueadores, or pot-hunters, reclaimed the site. The second most extensive private collection of materials obtained at that time belongs to José Castillo, who currently resides in and was active from 1960-1975. He purchased many of his pieces from a local dairy worker, Sr. Clemente, who dug at the site on afternoons and weekends and sold his booty by the sackload. He also copied a method earlier pioneered by Alegría of lifting out burials whole using prefabricated boxes to sell them. The going rate was $100.00 for an intact skeleton and $125.00 for one with a ceramic offering. 167

Clemente holds the distinction of being the only person to find a large and elaborately-carved three-pointer in association with a burial (presumably Chicoid). He has since "retired" (Rodriguez, Per. Com., 1983).

The site was again briefly preempted for science during the summer of 1962 when Irving Rouse of Yale and Ricardo Alegría returned to make test excavations for C-14 dating under a National Science Foundation grant (Alegría 1965:247). Four 2X2 pits were dug by arbitrary 25 cm. levels to collect the charcoal. All of these cuts were located to the south of Alegría's 1948 units, but still north of the fence (Fig. 6) in zone 1, Quadrant A. Of these cuts, labeled "A, B, C, and D," C was disturbed and thus discounted. The dates were taken from the most secure cut, D (Rouse and Alegría 1978:496). The date obtained for the beginning of the Hacienda Grande phase occupation was 120 _+ 80 A.D. and for the upper levels 370 + 80 A.D. (1978:499), thus establishing the temporal priority of the Hacienda Grande phase and placing it in a correct "sloping" Saladoid series with respect to the earlier dates from the Lesser Antilles, Trinidad and Venezuela. The succeeding Cuevas phase was dated to A.D. 510 (Bullen and Bullen 1974:2).

It may have been this same cut "D" which Gary S. Vescelius later restudied and seriated into 6 levels, the first 5 spanning the full Hacienda Grande phase occupation (100-350 A.D.) of his Period 4A. In his application of the Midwestern taxonomie system to the Caribbean, these materials belong to Vescelius' "Cedrosian pattern of the Saladoid tradition," while the last and 6th level 168

pertains to Early Cuevas (only the first period of that phase, 4B1, from 350-400 A.D.—Vescelius and Walker 1983:25, Fig. 4.1.). At the same time Rouse and Alegría put 2, 2 X 2 m. units at either side in front of the mouth of Cueva Mela to test that area but the results of the excavations were negative (Alegría, fieldnotes, 1962). Work was also done at Cueva María la Cruz which yielded the unexpectedly late date of 40 + 100 A.D. to 30 + 120 A.D. (Alegría 1965:247; Rouse and Alegría 1978:497, 499). Perhaps the best private collection of Hacienda Grande, especially Saladoid materials, belongs to Rafael Cosme, who began digging at the site as a young boy during 1967 in association with Dr. George Warreck. More than any other collector he is responsible for the site's pitted, "Lunar Landscape" (Plate A). Exhibitions of Cosme's "finds" have been held at the Fundación's museum in Old San Juan in 1978, and at the University of Puerto Rico library in 1979 (Rodriguez, Per. Com., 1983). Luis A. Chanlatte Baik, who as research archaeologist of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras' "Centro de Investigaciones Arqueológicas," has been conducting massive excavations at the Sorcé site in Vieques (Fig. 1), also did some test pits at Hacienda Grande in 1970. He appears to have dug in at least two or three different areas, zone 1 of Quadrant A, zone 2 of Quadrant C and zone 8 of Quadrant D. In the last zone he encountered a sealed Saladoid midden at the mouth of Cueva Mela. This material is now at the University where I had the opportunity to study it. Based on the spatial, and slight temporal, segregation of the Saladoid white-on-red painted ware 169

and the cross-hatched engraved ware at the Sorcé site, Chanlatte (1979; 1981; 1983a; 1983b) has argued for a new "Huecoid" cultural manifestation as a separate wave of migration antedating the Hacienda Grande phase of the Saladoid series. He suggests that this culture was the first agricultural and ceramic-making population to reach the area and interprets the "mixtures" of these two wares such as Alegría and other investigators have found at mainland sites, like Hacienda Grande, as indicative of trade or mutual influence between the two groups (Chanlatte, Per. Com., 1982). Alegría (Per. Com., 1980) and Rouse (1982:48-49), on the contrary, tend to view the La Hueca area of Sorcé as an anomalous activity area, or as a "La Hueca" Saladoid substyle which may have been locally separated and in advance of the rest of the Saladoid migration (Rouse, Per. Com., 1983).

The relevance of this disagreement to the Hacienda Grande site is that Chanlatte is now inclined to see the spatial and temporal isolation of "La Hueca" substyle materials at such mainland sites. Specifically, he suggests that not only will areas like zone 2, Quadrant C yield nothing but the engraved ware, but also that in the other Hacienda Grande cuts one will find the engraved ware below the white-on-red ware in the cuts (Per. Com., 1982). While our own excavations took place in a zone of later occupation and therefore cannot address this question, an examination of his 1970 cuts seems to show the same co-occurence that Alegría and others have noted. However, one of his deepest cuts, A-3, appears to give some credence to the "segregation" hypothesis. The basal level, 1.00- 1.25 m., of this undisturbed 170

2 X 2 m. square in an uncertain part of the site (possibly Quadrant C, zone 2) yields only engraved rims significantly below the white-on-red painted ware. Yet, these collections have not been studied in detail and since Rouse did not find a similar pattern in the 1954 Hacienda Grande cuts (Rouse, Per. Com., 1983), the matter is still open for further investigation. During 1972 members of the Fundación Arqueológica, Antropológica e Histórica de Puerto Rico, Wilfredo Géigel, Jalil Sued-Badillo, Miguel Rodríguez and others, made collecting trips to Hacienda Grande (Rodriguez, Per. Co., 1983), probably in Quadrant B, zone 1, and reported a random distribution of Rouse's pottery traditions scattered throughout their levels, thus calling into question his accepted regional chronology. They asked Ripley P. Bullen and Adelaide K. Bullen of the Florida State Museum to make some stratigraphie tests to investigate this matter (Bullen and Bullen 1974:2)- During three days work in July, 1972 the Bullens made 2 test pits in an unidentifiable southeast area of the site (Quadrant D, zone 6?) with the help of 4 workers. The pits measured 4 X 8 feet excavated to 42" (Test 1) and Test 2 (4 X 4.5 feet) down to 28" (1974:3-4). While mistakenly believing that the old pot-hunter's pit they dug into in Test 1 was aboriginal (1974:4), they correctly diagnosed the Fundación member's confusion as a product of their digging in already disturbed areas; the apparent randomness of cultural complexes they reported being merely a product of mechanical admixture (1974:3). The Bullens did find the expected pattern of (from deepest to shallowest levels in Test 2): Cuevas (350-800 171

A.D.), Ostionoid (probably what Vescelius has redesignated Early Ostionoid or Monserratean — Carbone 1980a:33; Vescelius and Walker 1983:22, Fig. 6), Elenoid (800-1350 A.D.), and Esperanza (Chicoid, 1350-1500 A.D.) (Bullen and Bullen 1974:4). The Bullens also noted that the overlap in cultural zones within their Test 2 suggested, a "fairly continuous occupation of the Hacienda Grande site without significant hiatuses" (1974:5). This picture of cultural succession holds up well for our 1980 excavations in the same general area.

In 1975 the archaeologist Diana López Sotomayor visited the site to give a workshop in archaeological field methods on behalf of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. She was fresh from her master's thesis work on Vieques and made two test pits (see arrows in Fig. 6); at least one of the 2 X 2 m. units was in zone 7, Quadrant D. This southernmost square is still visible and yielded a skeleton sunk into sterile sand with a complete vessel, and possibly a vomiting stick as grave furniture. The excavations lasted one week (Alegría; Dávila, Per. Com., 1980, 1983). No other information is available about this work. During the late 1970s the sacking of the site continued apace and included the weekend explorations of whole families, like the Gandías (2 brothers, one sister and their mother), or the continuing work of Cosme and a brief associate, Iván Cuevas, whose active period at the site lasted from 1978-1981. A resident of Río Piedras, Cuevas' collection includes an important Cuevas large strap handle with facing modelled dog effigies which was associated with a burial (Rodriguez, Per. Co., 172

1983). After Lopez's short project, the next Instituto-sponsored excavations took place in 1980 under the supervision of Jésus Figueroa Lugo. These were extensive, involving 20 or 30 youths from the of Loiza and produced at least four pits, 2 XI m., and apparently one which is still visible (see circle with "x" in Fig. 6) as a 2 X 2m. trench located in zone 5, Quadrant D. Reportedly, two skeletons were found but were backfilled. The material from these excavations, most of it in disturbed contexts, is presumably at the Instituto. No other information is available on it (Figueroa; Rodriguez, Per. Co., 1981, 1983). Shortly thereafter, the Centro field school began 6 weeks work at the site under my supervision with a crew of seventeen students. This season involved the beginning of the first triangulated whole-site sketch map and the first topographic map in the site's history (although the latter was only of one quadrant, D) along with permanent datums for future mapping, complete recovery of all lithic, ceramic, malacological, faunal and human osteological finds, and detailed wall and transect profiles. Some 5, 2 X 2 m. units were excavated, along with a 1, 1X1 m. test pit, were all excavated down to 1 m. using 10 cm. metrical stratigraphy. All excavation was done by trowel with a rate of work per day of less than one 10 cm. level per square. All materials were passed through a 1/4" screen and all ecofacts and artifacts were recovered and saved, labeled and bagged by square and level. All of the 2 X 2 m. units were dug by the 173

alternating block unit-level method and they and the 1 X 1 m. test pit were excavated within the same overall, infinitely-extendable grid system oriented to magnetic north. Each 2 X 2 m. square was, in turn, divided into 4, 1 X 1 m. sub- units for greater spatial control. Three human burials and one dog burial were encountered and retrieved, the dog burial and the more tightly-flexed human burial (No. 1) being taken out intact by fabricating a cradle of plaster-of-paris, aluminum foil and metal sheeting for further laboratory analysis.

The small uniform size and fragmentary character of the bulk of the ceramics and the general poverty of remains compared to the 1948 and 1954 excavations indicate that the 1980 excavations took place in a later peripheral area characterized by a lot of slope wash. The lower midden levels and the burials, however, were undisturbed and provided a clear pattern of cultural succession from Late Cuevas, through Monserrate, to Elenoid and some Chicoid materials. During the 17-19th of October, 1981, Miguel Rodriguez, who had participated in the 1980 Centro field school, returned to Hacienda Grande with a group of 20-25 students participating in his Archaeology 101 course at the University of Turabo in Caguas. This short session was part of the research program of the University Museum and Centro Humanístico directed by Rodriguez there and was designed to correct the imbalance of earlier studies at the site which had deemphasized food remains by specifically collecting all such data for later analysis by 174

specialists at Turabo. Their 2 X 2 m. unit was placed 20 m. to the west of one of our 1980 units and was oriented within our grid system. Designated pit "A," its actual coordinates are S12-13/W21-24. This square was dug as one unit using 10 cm. metrical stratigraphy to a depth of 1.40 m. All materials were saved and passed through a 1/4" mesh screen. Unlike our 1980 squares, this unit actually penetrated an earlier Saladoid (Hacienda Grande/Early Cuevas) component in zone 5, Quadrant D. It encountered the same "crab culture/shell culture" dichotomy which Alegría had found earlier in zone 1. The Saladoid midden was reached beneath 30 cm. of disturbed Pre-Tainan materials and extended to a depth of 1 m. This material is now at the University Museum at Turabo. The faunal and malacological analysis has been largely completed (Rodriguez 1981). Its complete lithic assemblage (an unselected sample) was utilized for comparison in the companion report to this one. In 1982 the Centro field school returned to the site with 14 new students to finish the whole Quadrant D topographic map and to explore the N/S axis of the grid system in a transect through the low-lying inundated section of the site to the southern talus. The objective was to test this region (zone 9) as well as the southwestern periphery near the concrete cattle watering trough (zone 4) to see if they contained the same cultural deposits and to establish a N/S profile of the southern half of the site (Fig. 7). Two 2 X 2 m. units and 1, 1 X 1 m. unit were excavated in an alternating block trench right up to the stone wall of the mogote, cutting through the entire talus. A single 1 175

XI m. test pit was located near the inundatable zone to match the similarly located 1980 1 X 1 m. test unit to the north and establish what happened to the talus midden as it reached the area. A separate 2X2 m. unit (S63-64/W64-65) was placed between the area and the path but was terminated at 20 cm. when it proved to be located in a modern trash dump. A single IX 1 m. test pit was placed close to the cattle trough (S66/W89) to probe this region. All 2X2 and 1X2 squares were internally divided into 1 X 1 m. units as had the 1980 ones and were dug to a 1 m. depth using similar methods. The southern talus zone 9 excavations proved that occupation to be the latest at the site with a preponderance of Elenoid and Chicoid material and served as further testimony to the site's complex spatial and temporal organization. It is now apparent that during the latest phase of the site's occupation settlement spilled over the slope of zone 6 and huts clustered above the inundatable zone along both peripheral tali (zones 7 and 9). In stark contrast to this late picture, the isolated 1X1 m. unit (S66/W89) penetrated an early Saladoid midden (Hacienda Grande/Early Cuevas) which correlates with the zone 8 occupation and extends beneath the path into Quadrant C, zone 4.

Unfortunately, after these excavations saqueador activity has continued with such collectors as Cosme, Hector Rivera (of Rio Piedras) and Oswaldo Flores having been active in the 1980s (Rodriguez, Per. Com., 1983). Their work has revealed yet another cultural deposit in zone 3, Quadrant C. Further scientific work is urgently needed to explore zones 2 and 3 of Quadrant C and 176

zone 4 of Quadrant D, as well as to establish an E/W profile to the eastern talus (zone 7, Quadrant D). Exploration in these areas will more fully delineate the site's margins (still unmapped) and test the chronological and spatial intricacies of this much ravaged but still unexhausted site.

MAPPING

Since Hacienda Grande had never been sketched-mapped or topo-mapped, a major goal of the Centro's work there was to prepare both an accurate triangulated sketch map and a detailed topographic map of the whole site and the excavated quadrant respectively. Indeed, detailed topographic maps are very scarce in the archaeological work on the island (the sketch topo-maps of the Scientific Survey belong in another category). Outside of the early published maps of Mason for Utuado and Rainey for Canas there are only the maps for El Bronce (Robinson, Lundberg and Walker 1983) and Fig. 6. The other three I know about: an early one of Monserrate commissioned by Alegría in 1947; a 5 cm. contour map of Las Flores by Aguilu; and one commissioned by Gonzalez at Tibes, are all unpublished. This paucity of detailed site topographic maps makes locating the work of previous and subsequent excavations at a site practically impossible as the earlier section on the site history of Hacienda Grande shows. Moreover, this lack of relief data makes the construction of transect profiles, or even the rough correlation of pit levels in different sections of a site impossible. One of the aims of the 177

field school has been to teach the fundamentals of topo-mapping and its necessity to archaeologists active on the island and neighboring regions. The whole site topographic map prepared by Miguel Rodriguez and Virginia Rivera of Sorcé, Vieques, presented at this conference and the just completed whole site topo-map of Ojo del Buey prepared by Hernán Ortiz and Harry Alemán (Underhill 1983:3) are the first fruits of such an approach.

All mapping at Hacienda Grande was done with a transit and a theodolite, using two permanently made concrete datums and three instrument stations. An extremely fine 10 cm. contour interval was chosen, partly for didactic purposes, partly to document the ravages of the pot-hunters and also to pick up local changes in relief. Although extremely laborous, this method proved useful in locating the relict scientific excavations among the welter of irregular saqueador pits. It remains to topo-map the last unmodified quadrant, Quadrant C, to the same contour interval and using the same datums once work resumes at the site. The mapping and subsequent surface collecting and excavation did reveal the two major aspects of this part of the report: the methodological issue of horizontal stratigraphy and the substantive matter of demographic expansion. The 1980 and 1982 Centro excavations documented the extreme internal diversity of such a major site as Hacienda Grande with the object lesson it forms in the necessity of determining occupational zones, as well as activity areas, as a prelude to avoiding the confounding of horizontal with vertical stratigraphy. Such confusion may be partly behind the frequently reported "mixing" of cultural 178

components within Caribbean sites. The horizontal plane of a site takes on added significance given the encountered pattern of settlement "oscillation," whereby groups of people within the same evolving cultural series may move about within the confines of a site leaving discrete middens each of which forms sections of the chronological column represented by that site. Such was the case at Monserrate where the five mounds (to which a sixth could be added) clustered in the center of the site did not represent contemporaneous settlements, but rather historically different, and often reoccupied, middens built up by related peoples moving about within the same area over time in response to local environmental and cultural circumstances (Roe 1979a). Such a mechanism, somewhat effaced by subsequent living disturbance and the lateral coallescing of middens, could have also produced the Hacienda Grande pattern we have just examined.

The second product of the Centro excavations at Hacienda Grande was to form a crude, but probably correct, impression of demographic increase at the site over time. To the extent that midden expansion can be linked to population growth, Hacienda Grande continued to expand as a site throughout its long history. The early concentration of a deep midden on the apex of the hill in Quadrant A, zone 1 during Hacienda Grande Style times, its expansion to only isolated areas on the slopes of Quadrant C like zone 4, in phases extending to Early Cuevas is consonant with such a process as is the spilling over of the occupation to the hill slopes in Quadrant D during Monserratean and Elenoid times. The most eloquent evidence for increasing population density 179

forcing people to spread into ever more marginal site zones such as slopes or low areas only slightly elevated from the seasonal inundations comes in the final precarious clustering of settlement along both tali in Late Elenoid and Chicoid times while the rest of the site continued to be occupied.

The fact that the site continued to be the headquarters of a famous female cacique during contact times, then one of the earliest Spanish encomiendas on the island, followed by being one of the first places where black slaves were brought, and finally endurance as the environs of a modern town, all argues for its continued demographic importance. Thus, despite the outward migration of the river and the alteration of the surrounding vegetation Hacienda Grande may be one of the longest, if not the longest, continuously inhabited sites in the Caribbean (Rouse, Per. Com., 1983).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr- Ricardo E. Alegría, Executive Director of the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe for his generous support in running the field school, and its attendant methods, seminar and osteological courses. His commitment to furthering the study of Puerto Rican prehistory is a continuing support to the Centro's program of excavation and instruction. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Irving Rouse of Yale University for introducing me to Caribbean archaeology and sharing with me his wisdom on diverse topics. 180

Thanks also go to Luis A. Chanlatte Balk for his kind cooperation and the benefits of his extensive field experience, to Gus Agamemnon Pantel for his aid in matters lithic and for his friendship, and especially to Miguel Rodríguez López for his comradeship, unique command of site history, and for generously sharing the results of his 1981 Hacienda Grande season with me. Last, but not least, 1 thank the motivated and capable students of the Centro who sweated through two hot Puerto Rican summers and generously forgave a gringo's faulty Spanish to explore their past. They have been a pleasure to associate with. For the 1980 field season they were: Ruth Acevedo, Manuel Alonso, María Alvarez, Antonio Curet, Radhamés de la Cruz, María Elvira, Luisa Foa, Nilsevady Fussá, Thérèse López, Edgar Maíz, Norma Medina, José Muñoz, Antonio ("Mao") Ramos, Virginia Rivera, Miguel Rodriguez and Evelio Valeiras. For the 1982 field season they were: Rita Aparicio, Aida Chévere, Jesús Figueroa, María García, Santos Maldonado, Dessie Martínez, Eric Martínez, Ronald Martínez, Víctor Martínez, José Pérez, Hernán Ortíz, Rossana Santos, Orlando Tomasini and Luis Torres.

Editors' note

For the figures and bibliography, see the paper by Walker that follows, p.181.