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

Plants and Ceramic Griddles / 165
It is worth noting that in a study by Pagán Jiménez and Oliver on Taíno sites
in Puerto Rico (this volume), starches of sweet potato were identified on various
lithic artifacts for grinding/ pounding, for example, in the lateral protrusion of
one of them and in the central concavity of the other. These data give ground to
the previous affirmations regarding the pounding of this plant’s tuber to release
its starches. However, it does disregard that the sites here studied have used other
techniques like scraping, seeing as how we have not yet conducted studies on lithic
artifacts related to this process.
The presence of maize starch grains on some of the burén fragments (Figure
12.3a.3, a.4) contrasts with what chroniclers and some archaeologists (e.g., Newsom
and Deagan 1994; Rouse 1992) have said about the consumption of fresh, boiled,
roasted, or creamed maize. In effect, these cases do not require any shell or stone
artifacts for their preparation or previously mentioned treatment. Yet the presence
of maize on some of the analyzed burén fragments reinforces the idea that there
was some other type of treatment of the grains for which artifacts for grinding,
pounding, or grating were used. This would account for a possible culinary practice
related to maize not clearly documented for the Greater Antilles by the chroniclers.
1 Keeping this point of view in mind, there have been other documentations
of grains of maize starch in the same Puerto Rican Taíno archaeological sites,
found on six of the seven analyzed grinding and pounding artifacts. This point
confirms, even if from a different late agro- ceramic context, previous processing of
maize by means of grinding and pounding with the goal of freeing their starches
in order to generate some type of dough. In Venezuela, Perry (2002a, 2004) also
found starch grains of maize on the microflakes related with the guayos associated
with the grating of tubers (e.g., manioc), an aspect that points to possible grating
of the maize husk while it was, perhaps, still tender.
In the light of what we have proposed and based on the above results, we think
that in future investigations the following must be considered: that the processing
of maize in whatever state (e.g., mostly tender, softened, or in some kind of “flour”
variety [of soft endosperm]) could have been carried out with artifacts like edgeground
cobbles, guayos, grinding stones, mortars, and stone pestles. The fact that
traces of dry seed pounding, like those of dry maize, are absent could well indicate
that a variety of soft endosperm seeds or still tender and/ or soft seeds was
pounded after prolonged water immersion. Rodríguez Ramos (2005b) has conducted
an experiment to prove that a paste made from hard maize, but previously
immersed in water and pounded, can be made in an efficient manner with edgeground
cobbles over a flat stone- grinding base, the edge- ground cobbles being a
relatively common artifact in aceramic and agro- ceramic Antillean sites. This information,
together with what we have shown, offers new possibilities on the production
and consumption of other products (nutritional and/ or ritual powders?)
derived from maize not considered by the investigators of the region.
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