Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

2 / Three Stages in the History of
Cuban Archaeology
Ramón Dacal Moure and David R. Watters
The periodization used in this work, as in any other, is a somewhat arbitrary
form of analysis, in this case employed to bring out elements important for
contextualizing Cuban archaeology. As history consists of a continuous interrelationship
of factors, alternative periodizations could be de¤ned from other
points of view (see Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996:27–31).
FIRST STAGE: LOCAL ANTIQUARIANISM (1841–1898)
In the ¤rst stage, Cuban archaeology could not yet be considered a formal
discipline since it consisted almost exclusively of the study of historical documentation
and occasional discoveries. The chronicles of the Indies were the
main source of information, and the accounts of aboriginal peoples they contain
were used to extend Cuban history back prior to the Spanish conquest.
Writers described material evidence of the island’s prehistory in forms as diverse
as novels, poems, and scienti¤c articles on new discoveries. The discoveries
of John L. Stephens (1841) in the Mayan area in October 1839 spurred
dreams of greatness about the pre-Hispanic past on the part of Cubans. In
prose and verse, the Cuban Indian served as the symbol of an emerging nationality,
as seen in the works of José Fornaris y Luque and Juan Cristóbal
Nápoles Fajardo. José Fornaris Luque (1827–1890), an attorney, poet, and
professor, wrote several books including Cantos del Ciboney. Juan Cristóbal
Nápoles Fajardo (1829–?), a self-educated scholar, was one of the ¤rst students
of rural popular song and author of Rumores del Hórmigo. Both writers praised
the virtues of the Cuban natives as part of the Movimiento Siboneyista.