Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

Early Ceramics in the Caribbean / 121
Rímoli and Nadal (1983) have rejected the high diagnostic value attributed to
the lithic industry by some investigators of early ceramic sites in Cuba, mainly
the sites of Canímar and Aguas Verdes (Kozlowski 1975). This approach emphasizes
consideration of the variety of technologies present in Antillean foraging
cultures and the lack of evidence corroborating a single, unique origin
of cultural practices in early ceramic communities. In fact, the idea of an early
ceramic horizon seems to be correct for the island of Hispaniola. In the case
of Cuba, it is necessary to clarify that the foraging contexts with pottery seem
to appear across a much wider chronological range after a.d. 830, having a
con¤rmed relationship in some regions of the island to the earliest nuclei of
Arawak populations. This situation opens up the possibility of cultural relationship
between these groups, causing the transformations among the ¤rst
ceramists as well as the late acquisition of the pottery or of certain ceramic
features. As part of this process, the assimilation of elements of an incipient
agricultural Archaic population cannot be discarded. In Cuba, the presence
of foraging communities is documented in historical chronicles up through
the sixteenth century.
Marcio Veloz Maggiolo (1980, 1991) has also approached important aspects
of the ¤rst ceramic societies of the island of Hispaniola, especially in dealing
with the particularities of the contexts and their socioeconomic characteristics.
In his opinion, this phenomenon re®ects ceramic communities without
agriculture, at least as traditionally de¤ned. He therefore interprets the arrival
in the Antilles of a pottery without manioc cultivation as part of a cultural
process in which seafaring groups introduced this technology to Antillean
foraging communities. Veloz’s research questions underscore the important
problems: (1) Were these Archaic, preagricultural communities who were interacting
or trading with ceramic populations present on the island from an early
period? and (2) Did these Archaic groups also begin producing ceramics as a
result of a local evolution? In fact, it is possible to grant a certain margin of
possibility to both alternatives as key factors that in®uenced the development
of early ceramics. It would also be appropriate to think of several processes
coexisting at the same time, or at least not to disregard that the development
of the pottery, either through assimilation or reproduction, needs a cultural
base that allows its adoption by the core of a community.
For his analyses of this problem in areas of the Dominican Republic, Veloz
Maggiolo (1992) has used the concept of productive symbiosis by arguing that
the exploitation of ecological niches in the mangrove areas, one of the main
sources of subsistence among Antillean foraging groups, was losing its impor-