Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

196 / Singleton
2002). They have been found on several slave sites in the Americas, including
Tennessee (Russell 1997:75), Jamaica (Armstrong 1990:137–138), and Montserrat
(Pulsipher and Goodwin 1999:17, 30n.57). These artifacts have been interpreted
as gaming pieces, and in the Caribbean they are associated with games
of chance. Lydia Pulsipher and Conrad Goodwin describe a gambling game
that modern Montserratians play that they call “Chiney Money” in which
three ceramic disks are thrown on a table and the arrangement in which the
pieces land determines the thrower’s score.
How these ceramic discs were used in Cuba is unknown. Throwing objects
(e.g., cowries, beads, or seeds) and using the arrangement in which the objects
fall to determine the course of action is a key principle of divination in
African-in®uenced religions in the Americas. I have observed modern-day
practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion Santería use pieces of coconuts in this
way. The number and arrangement of the white interiors versus the brown
exteriors of the coconut pieces that land facing upward indicate how the
person seeking advice is to proceed. In a similar vein, all of the ceramic discs
are decorated on the exterior side and undecorated on the interior side. It is
possible that in Cuba these discs were used in a fashion similar to the coconut
fragments and other objects used in divining. Gambling games, however,
should not be ruled out as a possibility for the use of these artifacts in
Cuba. Juegos de envite (betting games) that utilized gaming pieces were played
throughout the Spanish colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
(Lourdes Domínguez, personal communication, 2002).
The ceramic discs, tobacco pipes, and ceramic glass bottles that once contained
alcoholic beverages are suggestive of slave recreational activities and
perhaps religious activities as well. José Antonio Yarini, a Cuban slaveholder,
observed enslaved Cubans on his sugar plantation using “a bottle of brandy,
a pipe with tobacco, a cudgel belonging to a former overseer, and rooster
feathers” in a funeral offering for a deceased slave (Barcia Paz 1998:27). While
making a claim that these items were used in religious practices requires
¤nding them in a context suggestive of a religious offering, Yarini’s account
reminds archaeologists that many of the objects recovered from slave sites had
uses other than what appears to be obvious. Objects like the ceramic discs,
pipes, and even bottle glass are examples of multivalent artifacts—those containing
multiple meanings and purposes (Perry and Paynter 1999:303–304).
Slave Resistance
Slave resistance took many forms in slave societies throughout the Americas,
including Cuba. The wall enclosure around the slave village at El Padre was