Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

The Organization of Cuban Archaeology / 59
pretive models inspired by their more recent contacts with U.S. and Canadian
archaeologists. In December 2003, the scienti¤c publication Journal of Trace
and Microprobe Techniques devoted a whole issue to the work of archaeologists
engaged in the analysis of prehistoric and colonial period pottery (majolica)
using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INA A) and electron probe
X-ray microanalysis (SEM-EDX) analyses. 5 Three Cuban archaeologists, including
Pedro Godo (Chapter 8), are featured in this volume, which will be
republished in the 2004 edition of Information Science and Technology. Nevertheless,
such analyses are dif¤cult to undertake, since the parts for the Sovietmanufactured
equipment needed to conduct this work are several decades old
and hard to replace. Last, but not least, Cuban archaeologists are reaching out
to North American archaeologists by marketing their national and regional
conferences, which they continue to organize, in professional media. Such
calls for papers and invitations to conferences appear frequently in Anthropology
Newsletter and SAA Archaeological Record, which supplanted SAA Bulletin.
SUMMARY
Cuba’s precolonial, prehistoric past has been studied for more than 150 years.
Throughout this period, Cuban investigators have adopted, incorporated, and
developed numerous methods and interpretive programs that re®ected and
contributed to the construction of their national identity. In the nineteenth
century and much of the twentieth, Cubans interested in archaeology used
Western European and North American models to frame questions, recover
artifacts, and construct explanations. For the most part, archaeology lacked
formal institutional organization and recognition. While the work of these
archaeologists lacked a unifying model, their dedication re®ected the profound
sense of patria that shaped Cuban history. At the turn into the twentieth
century, the work of avocational archaeologists, many of them professionals
drawn from the sciences and humanities, was making signi¤cant contributions
to knowledge and expanding the understanding of Cuban prehistory. In
the ¤rst half of the twentieth century, North Americans conducted research
as an extension of U.S. foreign policy, although it is likely that these archaeologists
(like other scientists who were sent to Latin America during this period)
did not realize that their work was part of a larger agenda and that it
would ultimately be seen in this light. The practice of historical materialism
in archaeology and the social sciences after 1962 paralleled Cuba’s broader
conception of struggle and resistance. Because it diverged from U.S. models,