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

166 / Rodríguez Suárez and Pagán Jiménez
In the case of tentative identifications of yautía, or malanga, in the Macambo II
fragment (Figure 12.3), we would propose the same food treatment we explained
before, since, as has been pointed out (Pagán Jiménez 2005b), starches can be
released from plants and their respective organs through deliberate action like
pounding, grating, or grinding in the preparation process. As the starches of yautía
and other documented plants were found on the surface of the burenes, it is very
probable that the tubers were previously converted into dough for the preparation
of some kind of bread or paste. If it would have been preferred to consume boiled
tubers and seeds, then the pounding, grinding, or grating of the tubers would not
have been required. If the plant tubers would have been pounded later and worked
over the burén (after boiling them) their starches would not display the characteristic
extinction cross that was observed on the samples. This particularity, and
the shape of the starches, is lost when they are submitted to temperatures up to 40
to 60°C. Considering the making of bread, it is reasonable to think that the flour
would have been mixed with some substances that could have acted like a gluten
and given flavor, while the paste could have been pounded and mixed for food
preparation, but perhaps they were covered with leaves or some other type of covering
to be cooked by means of boiled water or over an open flame.
De Las Casas (1909) tells us that bread rolls were produced after pounding and
fermenting dough made from the tuberous trunk of the zamia. The presence of
this plant in the analyzed burenes of Laguna de Limones (Figure 12.3b4) is not surprising,
given that diverse species of that plant were clearly being used on other islands
of the Antilles much earlier (Pagán Jiménez 2005b; Pagán Jiménez et al. 2005;
Veloz Maggiolo 1992). The interesting thing is that this plant’s starches were now
documented on some burenes. For the first time, this provides direct evidence for
the possible preparation of dough that coincides with some descriptions referred
to in the literature (see Veloz Maggiolo 1992). The Zamia pumila, as a wild plant,
is concentrated right in the southern zone of the Guantánamo region in evergreen
forest and xeromorphic subspinous brush over serpentine (González 2003); even
more to the northeast, in the province of Holguín, it is found in two other locations.
Z. amblyphyllidia is also very abundant in the eastern extreme of Cuba,
which would mean that generally all of the precolonial population in this area
must have had a well- established tradition of using these plants. Even today, this
plant’s use is prolific in eastern Cuba.
The presence of maranta starches in Laguna de Limones (Figure 12.3b.4) and
other precolonial Antillean sites (see Pagán Jiménez 2005b; Pagán Jiménez and
Oliver this volume) shows that it is a plant that was underestimated by some investigators
of the region (e.g., Sturtevant 1969) because it was considered a late
introduction from South America during the colonial period. Sturtevant (1969),
recognizing the nutritional and medical properties that the Antillean indigenous
peoples attributed to the flour extracted from the rhizomes of this plant, deduced,
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