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7 The Proto-Taíno Monumental Cemís of Caguana A Political-Religious “Manifesto” José R. Oliver Without a doubt, Caguana is the iconographically most complex site thus far known in the Caribbean, albeit not the largest in terms of total area of public/ceremonial space (Siegel 1992, 1999). However, the rigorous study and analysis of Caguana’s rich iconographic corpus has been slow to develop (Oliver 1981), even though 87 years have elapsed since it was ¤rst excavated by J. Alden Mason in 1915 (Mason 1917, 1941). But, by the early 1990s several papers and one monograph devoted to iconographic analyses and interpretations had been published (e.g., Oliver 1998; Roe 1993). Yet these studies remain known to a rather limited circle of Caribbean specialists, and mostly Spanish speaking. This chapter furnishes an excellent opportunity to highlight why Caguana should be of interest to archaeologists beyond the Antilles . To achieve this, the foregoing discussions are framed in terms of how elite political-religious power relates to, articulates with, and is manifested in Caguana’s iconography, and how the Precolumbian Taíno people interacted with them. I am con¤dent that readers will recognize “patterns of familiarity” pertinent to their own regional specialty. Power is, after all, a fundamental concept in human endeavor, past, present, and future. The iconography of Caguana has a story to tell, and it is largely about power and empowerment. The Cultural Landscape of Caguana The scenario for this chapter is the civic-ceremonial center of Caguana (coded Utu-10), located on an old and partly modi¤ed terrace above the Tanamá River in Barrio Caguana, Municipality of Utuado, in northwestern Puerto Rico (Figure 7.1). Caguana is situated precisely at the boundary between the gently rolling igneous hills to the south and the abrupt karst hilly region to the north (Figures 7.2, 7.3) (Ford and Williams 1994:441–447, 507; Lugo et al. 2001; Picó 1975:69). The Tanamá alluvial terraces and colluvial deposits, where Utu-10 is located, were heavily cultivated with sugar cane in the 1930s, with its attendant consequences in the integrity of archaeological sites. Today, the karst region has almost entirely been reclaimed by a dense Humid Northern Karst Forest (Little et al. 1977) that is frequently perceived, incorrectly, as a “pristine” virgin forest. The karst topography to the north of Caguana is characterized by a spectacular network of underground caves and rivers that occasionally surface at some locations only to disappear again under the landscape. Tall conical hills (mogotes) sprinkled throughout the region surround small circular depressions (dolines) formed by the differential erosion and solution of calcium carbonates (Ford and Williams 1994:441–447, 507). The mogotes are home to numerous caves and rockshelters (Picó 1975:69ss ). Some caves were selected by Precolumbian natives as veritable canvases for painting pictographs with red, black, and/or brown pigments (Dávila 1980), for engraving petroglyphs, and/or for burying humans (Aitken 1917; Oliver et al. 1999; Oliver and Narganes Storde 2003). This cave-studded landscape provided the Taíno numerous gateways between the worlds of the ordinary surface and the extraordinary underground. For the Taíno it was from caves that humanity emerged (Pané 1999:5–6) and, judging by the archaeological data, caves were also the places to where some selected few would return upon death (Aitken 1917; Oliver et al. 1999). And it is also from caves that, according to Taíno mythology, bats, the souls of the nonliving beings (opías), emerged every night to roam through the forests and feast on the astringent but sweet guava fruits (Psidium guajava) (Pané 1999:18–19). This is why, in the darkness of the night, the Taíno “feared” to walk around the forest alone, lest they might chance an encounter with these dead spirit beings (operitos, opías) (Pané 1999:18–19). The mogotes often present a pro¤le that is replicated in the ubiquitous three-pointed stone objects (Figure 7.3), a sculptural shape that was probably imbued with supernatural cemí power (Figure 7.4). The karst landscape is more than simply a geomorphic province; it is a vibrant, dynamic (animistic) landscape full of meaning and symbolism (Saunders and Gray 1996). The limestone slabs framing the eastern row of the central plaza at Caguana, once containing about half of the iconography of the site, were quarried, cut, and transported from this karst domain. Likewise, the huge slabs framing the The Proto-Taíno Monumental Cemís of...

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