Crossing the Caribbean Sea and Tracking Intellectual History: a Discussion

Journal of Caribbean Archaeology Copyright 2010 ISSN 1524-4776 CROSSING THE CARIBBEAN SEA AND TRACKING INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: A DISCUSSION Peter E. Siegel Department of Anthropology Montclair State University Montclair, NJ 07043 USA [email protected] Introduction omy, society, and polity” could be ad- In this forward-looking compilation, dressed (Keegan, this volume). One thing I Hofman and Bright assembled a group of emphasize to my students is that if you archaeologists to take a fresh look at the cannot say when something happened then regional context of Caribbean pre- it is tough to say anything believable about Columbian archaeology. And Caribbean what happened in the past, without taking a has been defined in a broad geographic “bungee jump into the Land of Fan- sense for the discussion. I will address tasy” (Flannery and Marcus 1993:261). To what I see to be some of the major points in this end, some archaeologists laudably these papers, including history of ideas, have been emphasizing the importance of geographic scales of analysis, and modes broad suites of radiocarbon dates in refin- of interaction. ing our chronologies (Fitzpatrick 2006; Hofman and Hoogland 2010). Those ar- History of Ideas, Chronology, and chaeologists who are dismissive of Rouse’s Reporting the Facts work confuse time-space systematics with I think we can and should finally dis- underlying social processes. One reviewer pense with one of the cherished starting of my paper observed that “as many schol- points for some discussions in Caribbean ars are noting, the cultural historical frame- archaeology: that is the lengthy preamble work developed by Rouse still persists … bashing Rouse and ideas of large mono- [thus] mask[ing] the complexity behind lithic migrations of unitary cultures riding migrations in the Caribbean.” First, Rouse the big arrows of directionality out of did not develop a monolithic or static cul- South America. Rouse is dead, ideas have tural-historical framework. He did develop changed, we have moved on, get over it. multiple frameworks, as appropriate, for In recent years, Bill Keegan has spent a different portions of the Caribbean. And as fair amount of time in creating a cartoon new data became available he revised figure out of Rouse, all the while saying frameworks accordingly. Second, I do not that he “always had the greatest respect for understand how time-space systematics Ben Rouse as a scholar and a per- “mask complexity behind migrations.” I son” (Keegan, this volume). Keegan got have addressed complexity in pre- one thing right: in Rouse’s mind it was im- Columbian Caribbean migrations (I am portant to nail down time-space systemat- now finding the term “colonization” to be ics before “higher-order categories of econ- more satisfactory) and, more generally, un- Journal of Caribbean Archaeology, Special Publication #3 2010 156 Crossing the Caribbean Sea and tracking intellectual history Siegel derlying social and political processes quite Based on four decades of field work that is readily within a cultural-historical frame- the date we are now talking about. work (Siegel 1999, 2010). In fact, it would In the context of pre-industrial small- be meaningless to do so otherwise. We scale horticultural societies, I think we may quibble over dates, timing of things, should dispense with views of large-scale whether people in the Archaic made pot- monolithic migrations. In doing so, we are tery or not, and so on; that is fine. But as more likely to address underlying proc- David Anthony (1990) suggested we risk esses or historical circumstances of island throwing the baby out with the bathwater colonization. Keegan seems to promote by taking overly reactionary perspectives. models of distinct “migratory waves” of Most of the papers in this volume stress cultures: Archaic waves of migration, Early the importance of mobility, exchange, and Ceramic Age wave, Late Ceramic Age interaction between groups at dramatically wave, Ostionan wave, Meillacan wave, etc. different geographic scales. I will address (see also Keegan 1995). This perspective scales of analysis later in my discussion. may not be surprising, especially for the First, I want to discuss some of the debates Early Ceramic Age Saladoid cultures, for in migrations, origins, and modes of disper- which there is remarkable consistency in sal that continue to consume attention and artifact assemblages, cosmology, and social how these issues might relate to interaction organization from Venezuela through and exchange. Puerto Rico (Rouse 1992; Siegel 1989; Keegan suggests that Rouse’s contention Wilson 1997, 2007a). However, there is that ancestors of the Taínos can be traced great diversity in the island ecologies, to lowland South America and the Orinoco ranging from desert to low-coral to high- Valley was disputed by Lathrap (1970) and volcanic tropical-island settings. This di- Ford (1969). Let’s look more closely at versity is crucial to address in the context these works, especially Lathrap’s Figure 5c of understanding colonizing strategies, and accompanying text: “Others moved up variability in human-land relations, and the Negro and … [then] along the interregional connections (Boomert 2001; Casiquiare Canal and down the Orinoco … Hofman et al. 2007; Hofman and Hoogland ultimately out into the Antilles, where they 2010). became the Taino” (Lathrap 1970:75). In terms of underlying processes, espe- More recently, Michael Heckenberger con- cially in pre-industrial settings, I think it curred with Lathrap’s general distributional makes more sense to view migration (or pattern in his discussion of the Arawakan colonization) as a series of non-mutually diaspora: “early pioneer groups moved rap- exclusive “pulses” or small-scale excur- idly throughout floodplain areas of the Ne- sions rather than as distinct population gro and Orinoco (by c. 1000-500 BC) and, waves riding on the backs of big direc- from there, up and down the Amazon, into tional arrows. That is, I would expect that the Caribbean and Guiana coast, and along in the band and tribal-based social context several major southern tributaries of the of the Archaic and Saladoid settling of the Amazon” (Heckenberger 2002:106-107, Caribbean, exploratory forays by small Map 4.2). What is remarkable is that when groups of people into the islands were Lathrap wrote his book in the 1960s he made as an additive process of “landscape speculated that the dispersal of Early Ce- learning” (Rockman 2003). As camps and ramic Age folks (proto-Arawakans) into settlements were established by these pio- the Antilles occurred around 500 BC. neers or scouts, lines of communication Journal of Caribbean Archaeology, Special Publication #3 2010 157 Crossing the Caribbean Sea and tracking intellectual history Siegel were maintained with homeland communi- Orinoco … remains to be determined, ties. In the Caribbean, lines of communica- as does the route of their penetration tion between pioneering settlements and into western Venezuela… It is not homeland communities may have been re- unlikely that each of these [Tropical inforced through the exchange networks Forest] groups drew inspiration from recently addressed by Hofman and her col- the center of Circum-Caribbean devel- leagues (Hofman et al. 2007). opment adjacent to it, in Colombia and In embracing the short chronology for Meso-America respectively. They may Ceramic Age cultures in lowland South also have indirectly influenced each America, Keegan accepts the late selec- other, via the intervening Tropical For- tively reported radiocarbon dates associ- est tribes… The extent to which they ated with some archaeological deposits obtained their Circum-Caribbean traits (Barse 2009). Uncritically accepting the as the result of independent evolution, Meggers-Evans-Barse-Sonoja-Vargas parallel diffusion from the distinct cen- “green hell” scenario of the Amazon Basin, ters to their west, and mutual influence, allows him to then conclude that the dis- is a matter for future research to de- persal of ceramic-age people into the Antil- cide.” [Rouse 1953:196] les was really not from the Orinoco but in fact from the “Isthmo-Colombian region of This does not sound like the closed- South and Central America” (Keegan, this minded, “oid” consumed, and unwilling-to- volume). I encourage Bill to look at Anna consider-alternative-ideas person that Roosevelt’s publications on this issue Keegan and now Rodríguez Ramos con- (Roosevelt 1980:193-196, Table 15, 1995, tinue to portray. I do agree with Bill when 1997:73-95). There are too many intact ar- he states that there are problems when archaeological deposits in the Orinoco Val- chaeologists “uncritically appl[y] his ley containing assemblages of pre-500 BC [Rouse’s] approach (often without under- Saladoid artifacts to so readily find alterna- standing it) to produce simple-minded clas- tive sources of island colonization. sifications of Caribbean prehis- In another critique, Rodríguez Ramos tory” (Keegan, this volume). However, if observed that in Rouse’s 1953 invention of archaeologists working in the Caribbean the Caribbean culture area, Rouse uncritically follow what Keegan implies is “debunked” the Circum-Caribbean model a rigid mechanical structure fabricated by proposed by Steward with his “fixation on Rouse then that should not be Rouse’s the Orinocan corridor as the exclusive an- problem. Rouse in fact was eternally open cestral homeland of Antillean indigenous to changes in the time-space diagrams or societies” (Rodríguez Ramos, this volume). charts and would be the first to condemn Let’s take a look at the questionable nearly the slavish following of a scheme in light six-decade-old article of Rouse’s: of new data. Within his primary area of interest – culture history – Rouse allowed “Whether these [Early Ceramic Age] for, indeed demanded, flexibility. people originated in Amazonia and Overly general models, like cartoons, moved from there into the upper Ori- tend to mask the complexity of debates and noco via the Río Negro and the ignore the nature of the database available Casiquiara Canal, or else originated in at the time.

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