Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

Rock Art Research in Cuba / 75
Ortiz. As these were produced by the only researcher to study the pictographs
before they were subsequently altered by both natural and cultural forces
(Alonso Lorea 2001:47), these documents are an invaluable resource, particularly
because this site, which Ortiz dubbed the “Sistine Chapel” (Alonso
Lorea 2001), remains the most celebrated rock art site in Cuba.
EARLY RUPESTRIAN ARCHAEOLOGY IN CUBA
While the unpublished notes of Ortiz reveal that he was the ¤rst Cuban researcher
to study pictographs in the archipelago, rupestrian archaeology in
Cuba actually predates this work. In 1915, Mark Harrington and his Cuban
research team discovered petroglyphs in the area of Maisí, in the context of
archaeological investigations concentrated in eastern Cuba. 3 Among the rock
art images they identi¤ed in the “Cueva Zemi,” currently known in Cuba as
the Cueva de los Bichos (Caverna de La Patana) (Núñez Jiménez 1975), is a
large petroglyphic sculpture carved from a stalagmite. This sculpture, the
“zemi” or idol for which the site was named, which weighs more than 900
pounds (Ortiz 1935), was extracted from the site and is currently in the collection
of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, the institution
that sponsored Harrington’s research (Harrington 1921).
Harrington recorded these petroglyphic discoveries in his 1921 two-volume
publication, Cuba Before Columbus, which documents his extensive research
in eastern Cuba in 1915 and 1916, as well as his preliminary study in 1919 of
Pinar del Río, in western Cuba. In an effort to establish a cultural af¤liation
for the petroglyphic images, Harrington evaluated other cultural remains in
the cave, inferring from these that both Taínos and their predecessors likely
occupied the cave. Yet the name he chose for the site which, he suggests, may
have been selected for “cavern worship” (Harrington 1921:273), indicates that
he attributed the petroglyphic images to the “Tainan culture” (Harrington
1921:272).
Harrington’s 1921 publication, now a “classic” work in the archaeology of
Cuba (Rouse 1942:36), was generally in®uential among Cuban researchers,
both when it ¤rst appeared, and particularly in 1935, when it was published
in Spanish together with a second edition of Ortiz’s publication (1922b) Historia
de la arqueología indocubana. The history of rock art research in the
archipelago suggests that the work also served as a catalyst that focused attention
on a fertile, if largely untapped, source of knowledge on early Cuban
inhabitants. It also established a precedent for a religious interpretation of