Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

136 / Valcárcel Rojas and Rodríguez Arce
cording to Torres and Rivero de la Calle (1972) there is only one case of
porotic hiperostosis or criba orbitalia and one osteomalacia in the femurs of
an adult female reported from the site of El Porvenir, located 3.5 km from
El Chorro de Maíta. These authors also mention one case of osteitis produced
by reaction to an in®ammation, which is suspected to be related to syphilis,
found in the cranium of an unprovenienced infant, and a bone tumor (primary
osteoma) found in the left humerus of a burial in the zone of Cañada
Honda. It is signi¤cant that despite the large size of the sample, none of these
pathologies was found in the sample of human remains from El Chorro de
Maíta, suggesting some differences in health conditions between sites.
The absence of osteological pathologies related to subsistence stress and the
relatively small number of infant deaths suggest a stable access to necessary
nutrients. A paleonutrition study where strontium is used as a tracing element
indicates the presence in Chorro de Maíta of a diverse diet that highlights the
population’s omnivorous character (Taylor 1990:51–52). This pro¤le agrees
with the analysis of subsistence activities based on the faunal remains (Rodríguez
1987), which concluded that inhabitants depended about equally on
marine and terrestrial species. However, the paleonutrition analysis (Taylor
1990: 51–52) assumes similar dietary practices in the population at large and
did not consider differential access to subsistence products according to sex
or possibly to status differentiation.
OBJECTS ASSOCIATED WITH BURIALS
Burials with ceramic vessels are reported frequently in the archaeological area
of Banes (Miguel 1949:177; Rouse 1942:149; Valcárcel et al. 2002:5), some of
them containing food remains (Miguel 1949:176; Valcárcel et al. 2002:9). The
presence of stone celts and necklaces of stone beads have also been reported
(Miguel 1949:176; Rouse 1942: 8, 88, 95), but they tend to be uncommon. In
El Chorro de Maíta, none of the burials included ceramic vessels and few had
stone beads. Small and isolated fragments of indigenous or European ceramics
were found near some of the burials, on occasion accompanied with pig, boar,
or seashell remains. In the extensive excavations of 1986 and 1987, only seven
burials included stone beads, most of them of quartzite generally used in
necklaces.
The type of object found in the largest number of the burials from Chorro
de Maíta is a small, metallic tube with an average length of 29 mm and a
diameter of 2 mm, produced by the rolling of a ¤ne metal sheet (Guarch