Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

94 / Linville
stone “idols” found in caves (Guarch Delmonte 1972, 1973, 1974; Guarch Delmonte
and Querejeta Barceló 1992; Núñez Jiménez 1975, 1985).
CURRENT TRENDS IN ROCK ART RESEARCH
In recent years, Cuban archaeologists have begun to reevaluate past approaches
to rock art research in the archipelago. La Rosa Corzo (1994) cites,
among other shortcomings of early research, the abuse of descriptive analysis
and the establishment of parallelisms based on simple aspects of morphology.
Yet he notes that after a long period of emphasis on the discovery, registration,
and description of rock art sites, Cuban scholars are questioning the conventional
style-based methods used to place rock art in the chronology of
prehistoric occupation of the Cuban archipelago. Indeed, they have begun to
look for other methods with which to evaluate the “enigmatic drawings” that
have been so painstakingly recorded throughout the country (La Rosa Corzo
1994).
This does not mean that stylistic analyses no longer play a role in evaluations
of rock art in Cuba. On the contrary, considerations of style remain
integral to such studies, which increasingly also include technical and stylistic
analyses of mobiliary art (Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996; Núñez
Jiménez 1985, 1990). 19 Cuban researchers are combining these analyses with
other factors in their efforts to infer meaning, as well as to identify the cultural
context of the production of rock art in Cuba.
Some Cuban researchers have focused on the correlation between an image’s
style, technique, and content and its physical context (location within
the cave or geographical distribution). For example, Izquierdo Díaz and Rives
Pantoja suggest that both abstract and geometric images are associated with
coastal sites, while ¤gurative images occur predominantly in interior regions.
They also associate the color black with closed caverns and the color red with
those that are somewhat open (Izquierdo and Rives 1990).
Despite these efforts, some current foci of rock art research have not yet
taken root in Cuban scholarship, such as gender-based analyses, ethnographic
analogy (including hallucinogenically induced altered states of consciousness),
and AMS dating. 20 However, other approaches, identi¤ed as “emerging
trends” (Ross 2001:543) have long been integral to research efforts of Cuban
archaeologists. Among them are the emphasis on the context of rock art images,
or “rockscape” (Ross 2001:545), which requires that images be inter-