Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

50 / Berman, Febles, and Gnivecki
1995). Scholarships and other educational support were made available. Estrella
Rey was awarded a doctorate in historical sciences from the Institute of Ethnography
(Miklujo Maclay) of the USSR’s Academy of Sciences in 1968 and
thus was the ¤rst student of prehistory to have a Ph.D. in Cuba. Ernesto Tabío
received his doctorate in historical sciences from the same institution shortly
after Rey. His dissertation was published by the Cuban Academy of Sciences
and is considered a landmark work. Tabío and Rey’s coauthored work, Prehistoria
de Cuba (¤rst published in 1966, then reissued in 1979), played a role in
the formation of a movement in Latin America known as Latin American
Social Archaeology (Dacal and Watters, Chapter 2; Fernández Leiva 1992;
McGuire 1992; Oyuela-Caycedo et al. 1997:366). The advocates of this approach
saw the practice of archaeology as “a way to link their revolutionary
politics with archaeological practice” (McGuire 1992:65). José Guarch, another
notable scholar, also received his doctorate from the USSR Academy of
Sciences. In 1987, Jorge Febles, a former barber, received his doctorate from
the Institute of History, Philology, and Philosophy of the Siberian Branch of
the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Numerous others received master’s degrees
from the USSR prior to the 1990s.
During the period of close relations with the Eastern Bloc, archaeologists
from these countries were welcomed and both independent and joint research
encouraged. The Polish archaeologist Janusz Kozlowski published his ¤ndings
in Cuba (Kozlowski 1972, 1975) and Poland (Kozlowski 1974). A set of papers,
based partly on collaborative work among archaeologists from the Siberian
branch of the Soviet Academy of Science’s Institute of History, Philology, and
Philosophy, was published in Russian (Vasilievski 1986). The bulk of the work
focused on artifact analysis, although one study examined prehistoric crania
(Alexeiev 1986). During this time, the Poles and Russians supplied microscopes
and other equipment to support technical analyses. Radiocarbon samples
were submitted for dating and a series of dates published (Panichev 1986).
Collaboration with the Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Science
also allowed Cubans to do archaeology in Siberia. Three Cuban archaeologists,
Lourdes Domínguez and Jorge Febles (in 1980), Alfonso Córdova and
Jorge Febles (in 1986), and Jorge Febles (in 1987) participated in the joint
Cuba-USSR Archaeological Excavations in Western Siberia between 1980
and 1987.
The system of training archaeologists instituted during the early days of
the Revolution remains today. Archaeology is taught in the Faculty of Marxism
and History and the Faculty of Historical Sciences at the University of