Crossing the Borders: New Methods and Techniques in the Study of Archaeological Materials from the Caribbean

100 / Benoît Bérard
existed between the Cedrosan and the Huecan groups, we will need more studies
to deal properly with the internal geographical and chronological variations of
those two sets.
The results of this study are more or less concomitant with those of the ceramic
remains analysis. Cedrosan and Huecan subseries seem to be clearly two
distinct cultural assemblages, but linked at different levels. We cannot expect that
this situation of concomitant evidence will be systematic in the future. With the
entrance of Caribbean archaeology in a time characterized by multiple sources of
evidence, we will have to learn to deal with contradictory data. The story we will
have to write will be more complex but may be nearer to reality.
Notes
1. In this chapter I have chosen to use the term “Huecan Saladoid.” This choice is
not depending on a personal, theoretical position in the important, ongoing debate on
the qualification of this cultural assemblage. The choice has simply been made because
it was easier to make a choice than to use a more careful but a longer definition.
2. Chaîne opératoire: “enchaînement de faits techniques dont les opérations sont
articulées comme des maillons au long d’un processus tendant à un certain résultat, de
telle manière que l’observateur doit pouvoir rapporter un acte technique même isolé
à la série dans laquelle il prend sens, techniquement et socialement” (Balfet in Balfet
1991). English: Chaîne opératoire, or operational sequence: a sequence of technical
facts of which the operations are articulated as a link to a process leading to a certain
result, of such manner that the observer must be able to associate a technical act, even
isolated, to the series in which it makes sense, technically and socially.
3. Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives, Guadeloupe
4. The corticality degree is the part of cortical surfaces present on a flake.
5. For the identification criteria of the two techniques, see Bérard 2001, 2004; Bertouille
1989; and Mourre 1996.
6. Levalloisian method is also associated with a specific preparation of the striking
platform before the removal of the objective pieces.
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