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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR. FRED OLSEN Fred Olson was born 28 February, 1891 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. At the age of 15 he emigrated to Canada, where he entered the University of Toronto and was the recipient of the Edward Blake Scholarship in chemistry—defeating 3,000 examinees in a nation-wide competition. Olson received his BA and MA in chemistry in 1916 and 1917, respectively. Dr. Olson was awarded an honorary doctorate from Washington University, St. Louis, for his many research achievements in chemistry. In 1917 he married Florence Quittenton of Toronto. During World War I, Dr. Olson was loaned by the Canadian govern­ ment to the United States to assist in the manufacture of munitions. He was put in charge of US Army research at the Picatiny, New Jersey arsensal, where he became aware of the high incidence of explosions and consequent injuries and fatalities in the powder factories. As a result of his observations, Dr. Olson developed a safe and widely adopted technique for manufacturing explosives under water (ball powder). This innovation greatly reduced the hazard of explosion in the powder factories; in fact, during World War II not a single casualty was incurred by US Army personnel during the manufacture of munitions. After the War, Dr. Olson was employed by Olin-Matheson as Vice President in charge of research until his retirement. In 1960 he bought a house at the Mill Reef Club, Antigua, West Indies. There he discovered the Mill Reef archaeological site, which he called to the attention of Professor Irving Rouse of the Department of Anthropology, Yale University. Dr. Charles Hoffman, Northern Arizona University, was brought to Antigua by Dr. Olson to conduct excavations at the site. At Mill Reef, Dr. Olson collected the first C-14 sample from the Antilles, and arranged for its analysis. Dr. Olson's interest in archaeology derives from his long-standing interest in modern (abstract) art. He established the Olson Foundation to prepare traveling art exhibits for world-wide exposure. He has also donated large art collections to such noted institutions of higher learning as the College of William and Mary and Yale University. The contributions of Dr. Olson to Caribbean prehistory are many. He founded the Antigua Archaeological Society and the Mill Reef Diggers Digest. He has written two books, ON THE TRAIL OF THE ARAWAKS, and INDIAN CREEK: AN ARAWAK SITE ON ANTIGUA, WEST INDIES (both published in 1974 by the University of Oklahoma Press). In 1979, Dr. Olson was elected Honorary President of the International Association for Caribbean Archaeology, and was chosen to deliver the Bradshaw Memorial Lecture at the Eighth International Congress on St. Kitts. Although not a professional archaeologist, Dr. Olson's important contributions to Caribbean prehistory are widely recognized and appreciated by amateurs and professionals alike in this growing area of research. 2 THE ARAWAKS - THEIR ART, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE Fred 01sen I have spent considerable time during the past twenty years becoming acquainted with the Arawaks. My personal adventure began in the neighboring island of Antigua. Also, I have known several highly competent archeologists who specialize in the Arawaks. Among these scholars who have been particularly helpful to me were Professor Irving Rouse of Yale, Dr- José Cruxent of Venezuela, and Dr. Reichel Dolmatoff, formerly of Colombia. I have read their scholarly works, so I know that the proper thing for me to do is to talk about potsherds. However, I shall refer to these only briefly. I am sufficiently keenly aware of my amateur standing in this field that I must make it thoroughly clear that what I am going to do today is to try and conjure up as plausible a story as possible to show you what I think, or feel, or imagine might be the way these ancient Arawak peoples regarded their art, their religion, and their science. But I am also going to try and make it clear just what is fact and what is fancy. First of all, I consider that the Arawaks had a high degree of artistic competence, and also an esthetic understanding of both painting and sculpture. I shall begin by showing two photos of the artistic achievement of one Arawak tribe that I like to call the Painter Arawaks (Figures 1 and 2). Obviously, the design is good. The forms have a simple and pleasing elegance and are competently executed. Today, they would be accepted by my artist friends as makers of a highly acceptable product of the current 'hard-line' school. Actually, the pots were first covered with a red paint and later with a coat of white. They used a sharp tool to scrape through the white coat to reveal the red below. Indeed, the marks of the tool are clearly shown as it removed the top white coating. These sherds were dug during our excavation of the Indian Creek site, Antigua, in 1973- Figures 3 and 4 show animal heads, used as handles for pots, made by the Sculptor Arawaks at the villages of Barrancas and Los Barrancos in Venezuela at the apex of the Orinoco Delta. These heads are gener­ ally referred to as 'adornos.' They are certainly well-sculptured, and I submit that they are competently and esthetically the work of real artists. Figure 5 shows a bowl which was reconstructed from 65 sherds dug in St. Croix in the Lesser Antilles. Actually, it is two-thirds Arawak potsherds and one-third plaster. 3 Figure 6 shows a similarly reconstructed bowl of the Sculptor Arawaks; it is about 90 percent original sherds and 10 percent plaster, dug at Mill Reef in Antigua. I think these two restored pots give a fair picture of the kind of dishes these early Arawaks probably used for serving their daily food; I consider that they compare quite favorably with what people of cultivated taste would use today. I will add a tiny piece of speculation here as to the possible origin of these Painter and Sculptor Arawaks. The sculptors' earliest record in South America is at Puerto Hormiga • in Colombia, where elaborate adornos in the form of crocodile heads have been found as early as 3000 BC; and is, as far as I know, the earliest pottery in South America. As to the origin of the painted ceramics, I feel much less confident but will hazard a guess that the painted pottery originated in the upper reaches of the Amazon tributaries, or even in Valdivia in Ecuador- Now I wish to turn to the religion of the Arawaks. We are all familiar with the elaborately sculptured zemies, in the form of carved stone figures of the male deity, Yocahu (Figure 7), who the Arawaks say gave them manioc. He frequently has a well-defined male head (Figure 8) but almost always has a tall conical, peaked back, usually described as like a volcano (Figure 9). These stone zemies are found abundantly in Puerto Rico and in Haiti, but they are not found on the South American mainland. At least, I have no knowledge of any such zemies having been excavated in Venezuela or Colombia. At first this is quite puzzling, but I am inclined to reason that Arawaks, long accustomed to the flat llanos and savannahs of Venezuela, were astonished when they started up the chain of islands of the Lesser Antilles, to encounter the large number of volcanic peaks (Figure 10). I think we can justifiably picture the surprise of the Arawaks when they witnessed their first volcanic eruption. The issuance of fire from the cone of the volcano and of molten rock rolling down its side very likely stimulated the idea that such phenomena could not be the work of man, but must be due to their gods. I have mentioned that we have come across no examples of these volcano-shaped zemies during any of our digging in Venezuela. But in every place in the Lesser Antilles we discover zemies of carved stone, becoming simpler in form the deeper we dig. In the lower layers, if 400 AD or even earlier, the stone zemies give way to conical forms carved from the prongs of conch shells (Figure 11). Frequently, these are quite numerous (Figure 12) and some of them are so simple in form that they consist of little more than the cut-off prongs of the conch (Figure 13). Occasionally, in both the Lesser and the Greater Antilles Islands, other carved stones are found which show the male figure but without the volcano-peaked back. Some authors refer to these as Yocahu in the h form of a sun god. One of these as a head surrounded by the sun's rays (Figure 14) occurs on a long 'marker stone' from the Ball Court at Capa, Puerto Rico. With the mention of the Ball Court markers, I must cite another Yocahu head on an L-shaped marker stone, also from Capa, with part of the circle of stones shown in the background (Figure 15). Two more male heads were found, one ceramic from Mill Reef, Antigua (Figure 16), and the other a beautifully carved conch shell head, presumably used as an amulet, from Montserrat (Figure 17)- The collections of carved stones which are found in Puerto Rico and Haiti show another kind of figure readily recognizable as being female, since several female characteristics are apparent, even including examples of the emergence of the babe at childbirth (Figure 18). The Arawaks gave the name of Atabeyra - 'The Mother Deity' - to this female deity. Atabeyra was apparently just as important a deity as the male god of Yocahu, judging by the number of carved figures found.

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