Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

92 / Linville
and Pichardo in the southeastern zone, and Los Generales in the northeastern
area) (Calvera et al. 1991). Researchers attempted to provide cultural associations
for the rock art images in these caves through a systematic investigation
of the surrounding areas. However, despite extensive survey of the southeastern
area of Cubitas, and excavations in the pictograph-bearing caves in
Camagüey province, no evidence of permanent settlement that could be
¤rmly associated with these caves was identi¤ed (Calvera et al. 1991).
La Rosa Corzo (1994) suggests that analyses such as that completed by
Guarch Delmonte (1987) could advance further by including other variables,
such as style, technique, color, material, and perhaps aesthetic concepts together
with an analysis of motifs and designs. Data on these variables may also
inform efforts to analyze complex images in the caves, sites that researchers
acknowledge must have been frequented by a variety of peoples, not only
throughout the archipelago’s prehistory but also during the past ¤ve centuries.
AMS dating has assisted archaeologists in other areas of the world in their
efforts both to establish chronology and to develop a better understanding of
the sequences involved in the production of complex images. Without ready
access to this technique, rock art researchers in Cuba have, by necessity, relied
on more conventional methods. However, as both Guarch Delmonte (1987)
and La Rosa Corzo (1994) suggest, the use of such methods, particularly in
attempts to identify any diachronic variability, has not generally yielded satisfactory
results.
MAKING INFERENCES
What is its purpose? What does it mean? These are basic questions that pervade
considerations of prehistoric rock art wherever it is found. In their efforts
to understand the meaning in and function of the images, researchers who
have interpreted Cuban rock art have considered theories developed in Europe
to explain Upper Paleolithic Art. The theories range from the early “art for
art’s sake” model to Abbé Breuil’s “sympathetic hunting magic” theory, so
colorfully characterized by Gould as the “if you draw it, it will come” hypothesis
(1996:22). For example, despite the paucity of large terrestrial prey,
pictographs in the Cueva de los Matojos in Guara, La Havana province, have
been interpreted as a hunting scene with a quadruped (Núñez Jiménez 1975).
Although Structuralist theory has not been widely in®uential within Cuban
rock art research, the general idea that caves were systematically decorated
to re®ect symbolic meaning (rather than painted or engraved at ran-