Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

46 / Berman, Febles, and Gnivecki
low American interests overseas” (MacCurdy 1902:534, cited in Vincent 1990:
134). U.S. expansionist policies allowed for new areas of research (Hinsley
1981; Patterson 1995:41; Vincent 1990). The acquisition of the Philippines,
Guam, Puerto Rico, and Guantanamo Bay from Spain opened up previously
uninvestigated areas for scienti¤c exploration. In 1904, the Bureau of American
Ethnology sent Jesse Walter Fewkes to Puerto Rico to “investigate the
aboriginal economy of the island and to report just how America could use
her new acquisition” (Noelke 1974:175, cited in Vincent 1990:134). Fewkes
went to collect data and specimens that “would shed light on the prehistoric
inhabitants” of Puerto Rico (Fewkes 1907:17), but it was necessary to visit
other islands and obtain collections to attain comparative insight into the origins
and spread of Antillean cultures. Thus, he visited Cuba and in 1904 published
an American Anthropologist article titled “Prehistoric Culture of Cuba.”
The work described a small collection of artifacts he purchased from Nipe Bay
(Fewkes 1904:395–396). The purchase of collections was not unusual at this
time, and many major museum collections, such as the Smithsonian’s, were
created this way (Parezo 1987).
In February 1914, Theodore de Booy of the Museum of the American
Indian–Heye Foundation visited Cuba. In the fall of 1914, he returned and
conducted several excavations in the province of Baracoa (northeastern Cuba).
His enthusiasm about the abundance of sites prompted Mark Harrington’s
trip in 1915. During this visit, which lasted almost a year, Harrington concentrated
his efforts in the Baracoa area. For two months in 1919, he returned for
a brief stint in Baracoa and then conducted some preliminary work in Pinar
del Rio, Cuba’s westernmost province. He presented his ¤ndings and interpretations
in two volumes, Cuba Before Columbus (1921).
In 1932, Herbert Krieger, curator of ethnology at the National Museum of
Natural History, went to Cuba, but he never published his ¤ndings and they
remain in the Smithsonian’s ¤les, now accessible on the Internet (Krieger
1933). The following year Yale University established its Caribbean program
“as an attempt to improve the methodology of archaeology through intensive
research in a particular area, as well as to resolve the historical problems of
the aboriginal populations of the West Indies and related peoples in North
and South America” (Osgood 1942:5). Under the program, archaeological research
was conducted throughout the northern Antilles. In 1936, during
America’s Great Depression, the U.S. Congress established the Division of
Cultural Relations to establish links with Latin America (Patterson 1995:78). 1
This of¤ce established and funded the Institute of Andean Research, which
oversaw archaeological research in South America and the Caribbean. The