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

New Evidence of Two Different Migratory Waves / 197
In the western part of Cuba, Lovén (1935) identified the remains of the aceramic
culture that had been originally described by Harrington (1921) and Cosculluela
(1946). Lovén hypothesized that the aceramic archaeological deposits in Cuba belong
to the Guanahatabey, who settled the island as a consequence of a migration
that took place before the arrival of the Taíno, probably from Florida, and
who had been marginalized by the expansion of the Taíno from Hispaniola (Lovén
1935). However, he concluded that there was no proof that primitive groups were
still living in the westernmost part of Cuba at the time of the conquest (Keegan
1992).
The initial frame depicted after the archaeological investigations was based,
among the others, also on the ethnohistoric sources. Keegan (1992) calls into question
this old- fashioned view of the Ciboney hunter- gatherers in Cuba being marginalized
by the expansion of the Taíno and surviving there until the European
conquest. His detailed review put emphasis on the bias introduced by the ethnohistoric
sources and its misuse in the archaeological realm, in particular with regard
to the Ciboney, who he underscores should be more properly called Guanahatabey.
Indeed, Keegan (1992:8) highlights the fact that the Guanahatabey were the
creation of the Spaniards and/ or the Taíno, so that we should “dispense with the
Guanahatabey until more conclusive archaeological evidence for their existence is
uncovered, and we must explain the aceramic remains found throughout the Antilles
solely on the basis of material evidence.” According to Keegan (1992), at present
we lack sufficient evidence to support the idea that this population still inhabited
western Cuba at the time of the European conquest.
Previous anthropological studies highlighted that the human archaeological
samples that had been originally identified as belonging to the so- called Ciboney
(or Guanahatabey) showed a dental morphological pattern that was remarkably
different from the one described for all the Taíno (Coppa et al. 1992; Coppa et al.
1995; Coppa et al. 2003; Cucina et al. 2003). Such difference motivated the present
investigation on the morphological variation of dental traits of skeletal populations
from different times and regions in the Caribbean and circum- Caribbean
area, which updates the previous ones and aims to expand the understanding of
the biological relationships between the human groups pertaining to different
chronological or cultural horizons that peopled the Caribbean area before the European
conquest.
We assume that, through the analysis of dental morphological traits in this
cultural and diachronic sequence, it is possible to infer on the genetic component
that the human groups inherited from the genetic pool of their direct ancestors
or from gene flow from surrounding areas. We consider that the morphological
differences, when analyzed by multivariate techniques, do possibly result
in to pologies that can be assessed for their coherence with patterns of continuity
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