Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

116 / Ulloa Hung
ecological points of view, characterized by restrictive typological concepts and
individual sequences that have been used to generalize the rest of the island.
Under this approach, the beginning of the Neolithic transition in Cuba has
generally been de¤ned by the presence of ceramics and of certain traits in
®intknapping techniques and the typology of lithic manufacture. The lack of
analysis of early plant domestication has contributed to an uncritical acceptance
of these other two elements as valid and diagnostic indicators of this
stage.
(2) The position that lithic technology is an absolute, indicative trait of
homotaxonomy. Instances of contemporaneity of sites have caused some local
sequences to be assigned to cultural traditions de¤ned by points of reference
similar to site types. When the protoagriculturalists of Cuba are analyzed
with reference to certain lithic typologies, the areas where diagnostic types are
not manifested appear as a kind of black hole. Long-distance migrations have
been proposed to explain these gaps. This approach to the problem does not
take into account the geographical conditions of those supposedly empty
spaces and the characteristics of the foraging populations that occupied them.
In addition, communities that do not ¤t into the lithic sequence will be classi¤ed
as something different.
(3) As part of the process of the Neolithic transition in Cuba, variations in
aspects of the archaeological record have been isolated, particularly some features
of ceramic and lithic technology and of settlement patterns. This has led
to an elaboration of successive variants or phases. However, the technical
parameters of the Archaic traditions were not abandoned. What actually
changed was the relative importance of some technologies. In considering the
archaeological record of communities with these characteristics, it seems reasonable
to contemplate their settlement and subsistence patterns as closely
related, speci¤cally the former as deriving from the latter. In that case, some
of the contextual differences may result from alternative solutions applied to
concrete problems that demanded either a gathering or a predation strategy.
Some of these strategies could have become consolidated with transformative
consequences, leading to stable and discernible patterns.
(4) Some of the cultural groupings that form the Cuban protoagriculturalist
stage are de¤ned by relationships of homotaxonomy between different archaeological
contexts. For the purpose of interpretation, these cultural groupings
are almost always treated as equivalents. Their signi¤cance has been
deduced according to a lineal focus, where homotaxonomy corresponds to a
supposed synchronism.