Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

The Organization of Cuban Archaeology / 45
American Involvement before the Revolution
U.S. archaeologists have had a lengthy but sporadic involvement in Cuban
archaeology. For example, Squier, who with E. H. Davis published Ancient
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, the ¤rst volume in the series of Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge, was the ¤rst U.S. professional archaeologist
to bring Cuban archaeology to the attention of North Americans. On a train
trip in 1860, he noted elongated 3–6 foot mounds between Bemba and Unión,
which he reported in “Discovery of Ancient Tumulí in the Island of Cuba”
in The Century, June 1860 (Harrington 1921:51; Ortiz 1922a:16). Although, he
did not conduct work in Cuba, Daniel Brinton (1919), who introduced the
four-¤eld approach to American archaeology (Urbanowicz 1992), published
“The Archaeology of Cuba” in American Archaeologist 2(10) in 1898. This work
summarized and reviewed the contributions of Poey, Ferrer, García, and others.
Brinton was the ¤rst North American archaeologist to recognize that a tradition
of archaeological study existed in Cuba. Re®ecting a general national
ideology that knowledge about the world was in the country’s best interest
and should apply everywhere, U.S. archaeological interests extended to the
Caribbean in the early part of the twentieth century. Through capitalist
philanthropy and nationally sanctioned efforts, projects were undertaken
throughout the Antilles. During the late nineteenth century and the early part
of the twentieth, American anthropology was interested in discovering the
origins and antiquity of prehistoric groups in order to link them with contemporary
natives (Parezo 1987:19). Meltzer (1985:252; see also Parezo ibid.) notes
that this goal and the associated method of the direct historical approach
formed one of the major paradigms of American archaeology at this time.
Thus, in 1901, the University of Pennsylvania Museum sent Stewart Culin
(Fane et al. 1991) to Cuba to investigate reports of surviving Indians in Oriente.
During his visit, Culin acquired a small collection of artifacts (Culin
1902:225). Culin’s work also re®ected another dominant paradigm of the
time—salvage ethnography, the idea that native peoples were disappearing
and it was anthropology’s mission to study them before they became subsumed
by Western culture. Anthropologists considered it their moral duty to
collect as much as possible from the groups that they perceived to be on the
brink of extinction.
Through the Platt Amendment, the United States acquired Guantanamo
Naval base and was granted the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever
it was determined necessary (Pérez 1995). In 1902, the chairman of the National
Research Council suggested that American anthropology should “fol-