Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

78 / Linville
investigating the “speleological features” of the Cuban nation and contributing
to the better understanding of the national archipelago, as well as to the
study and dissemination of Cuban natural sciences (Núñez Jiménez 1961:313).
Research expeditions were a mainstay of the organization. In 1946, SEC members
discovered two more pictograph cave sites at Punta del Este, Isla de Pinos.
Four years later, Núñez Jiménez discovered yet another pictograph site on this
island (now known as Isla de la Juventud), the Cueva de Finlay in Caleta
Grande (named in honor of the Cuban who discovered the insect transmitter
of yellow fever) (Rivero de la Calle 1966). During the 1950s, SEC participants
also discovered pictographs in the Caverna de las Cinco Cuevas site (Martínez
Gabino 1990), where they located the ¤rst complete drawings of concentric
circles to be identi¤ed in the La Habana province.
Although political upheaval disrupted SEC efforts in the capital between
1955 and 1959, the group was able to continue in other areas. The group explored
petroglyphs in the Sierra de Quemado in Pinar del Río and discovered
petroglyphs in eastern Cuba, in the Cueva del Jaguey, a large cavern adjacent
to the Cueva de los Bichos (“Zemi”) site described by Harrington (Núñez
Jiménez 1967).
In 1955, SEC researchers con¤rmed the pictograph discovery ¤rst reported
in the nineteenth century by Perpiñá (Rivero de la Calle and Núñez Jiménez
1958). As Figure 5.2 reveals, Núñez Jiménez’s study of these pictographs (in
the Cueva de Pichardo) included drawing or tracing of the images in order to
preserve them for future study, a standard procedure for all SEC rock art studies.
The image represented in Figure 5.2 has been interpreted as a “large mask,
idol, or zemi” of the Taíno peoples of Cuba (Dacal Moure and Rivero de la
Calle 1996:47). Ethnohistoric records provide the basis for the interpretation,
while the representational style it shares with associated remains in the cave
support its cultural attribution (Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996:47).
Among the SEC’s most distinguished researchers was Manuel Rivero de la
Calle (Figure 5.3). Although best known for his expertise as a physical anthropologist,
Rivero de la Calle made many important contributions to pictograph
research in Cuba. In January 1961, he, along with Núñez Jiménez and
Silva Taboada, discovered new pictographs in the Cueva de García Robioú in
La Habana province (La Rosa Corzo 1994). Later that same month, he discovered
two concentrations of pictographs on Isla de Pinos. One was a group of
¤ve red ¤gures conserved in the western part of the island in a rock shelter
located in the cliffs of Puerto Francés, near a cave that served as a freshwater
source for prehistoric peoples. The other paintings were located in a cave near
the city of Nueva Gerona, on the eastern outskirts of the Sierra de Casas, just