Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

Rock Art Research in Cuba / 79
5.2. Rolando T. Escardó (left) and Antonio Núñez Jiménez studying pictographs painted
in red in the Cueva de Pichardo, Sierra de Cubitas. Photograph by Manuel Rivero de la
Calle, 1956. Published with permission of Daniel Rivero de la Calle.
north of a house where José Martí once lived. The cave had long been known
as the Cueva del Indio, having yielded human remains, the discovery of which
was recorded by local of¤cials on May 5, 1911 (Rivero de la Calle 1966). 11 The
remains may have been those of indigenous people who had been buried in
the cave, but the report does not clarify this view. Rivero de la Calle and
Gilberto Silva discovered in this cave a drawing of ¤ve concentric circles similar
to those recorded at Punta del Este, which extended the distribution of this
motif on the island beyond the southern zone (Rivero de la Calle 1966:96).
Of Rivero de la Calle’s many contributions to rock art research in Cuba,
perhaps the most signi¤cant is the discovery that he and Mario Orlando
Pariente Pérez made in August 1961 of pictographs in the Cueva de Ambrosio,