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9 Rock Art of Puerto Rico and theVirgin Islands Michele H. Hayward, Peter G. Roe, Michael A. Cinquino, Pedro A.Alvarado Zayas, and Kenneth S.Wild History of Rock Art Research North Americans, particularly Jesse W. Fewkes (1903), Irving Rouse (1949), and Monica Frassetto (1960),along with Ricardo Alegría (1941) from Puerto Rico,provided initial surveys and commentaries on the nature and dating of Puerto Rico’s rock images in the first half of the twentieth century. Since the 1970s,rock art investigations have increased in volume and scope,involving nonlocal and local avocational and professional archaeologists. Resident avocational groups include the Fundación Arqueológica, Antropol ógica e Histórica de Puerto Rico (which has published notes on individual finds in its Boletín Informativo) and the Sociedad Guaynía de Arqueolog ía e Historia.These two groups include most of the older generation of archaeologists on the island including Juan González Colón, whose 1979– 1980 island-wide survey updated that of Rouse (1949). By the 1980s,cultural resource management (CRM) programs (see below) were initiated.Both the federal entity,the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), and the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (ICP), the commonwealth counterpart, have archived many reports that mention rock art loci. These reports, the results of government-required local surveys and excavations , while not widely available, can be consulted locally. The sites are also identified in a comprehensive listing of rock art locations and associated bibliography compiled by Dubelaar et al. (1999). The Departamento de Recursos Naturales of the ICP formed another institution that began to publish information on rock art sites (Dávila Dávila 2003) and to foment several local avocational groups, including the Sociedad Sebuco.Many of the publications of such groups,however,are ephemeral and difficult to acquire, even locally. Much was known in the oral tradition, including information about some of the most impressive sites like Cueva Lucero in the south highlands, which remained unpublished until recently (see 116 / Hayward, Roe, Cinquino, Alvarado Zayas, and Wild below).The archaeological program of the University of Puerto Rico,at the San Juan Río Piedras campus, has largely neglected rock art research. Investigation of the island’s carved and painted images has instead been a focus of another graduate center, the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. Marlén Díaz González (1990) and José Rivera Meléndez (1996) completed their Master’s theses on the pictographs of the Cueva la Catedral and a series of rock figures in the Cayey region, respectively .Another Centro graduate under ICP’s auspices and a co-author of this chapter,Pedro Alvarado Zayas (1999),is involved in an island-wide survey of rock art sites that will expand upon existing inventories. In the 1980s, a new private foundation, the Centro de Investigaciones Ind ígenas de Puerto Rico (currently inactive), also became involved in rock art research under Peter Roe’s direction (Roe 1991, 1993a; Roe and Rivera Meléndez 1995; Roe et al. 1999). The other authors of this chapter have, in the past few years, conducted various rock art studies and conservation efforts (Cinquino et al.2003;Hayward et al.2002;Hayward et al.1992a,1992b; Hayward et al. 2001, 2007;Wild 2003). Local investigators are also engaged in active research. Carlos Pérez Merced (1996) wrote his Master’s thesis on a collection of rock images at the ICP and subsequently surveyed sites along two rivers (Pérez Merced 2003).Ángel Rodríguez Álvarez has undertaken a survey for rock art sites along the Río Blanco,has devised a classificatory scheme for petroglyphs,and is also investigating the astronomical implications of rock art alignments in the Caribbean (respectively,Rodríguez Álvarez 1991,1993,2007).José Oliver’s (1998,2005) iconographic studies at the multiple–ball court site of Caguana (summarized below) deserve special mention;he is also engaged in a survey of settlements and associated rock art in the Caguana area (Oliver 2006). Cornelius N. Dubelaar’s 1995 survey of the Lesser Antilles and Virgin Islands , in addition to his U.S.Virgin Islands 1991 article, provides a comprehensive review of sources concerning the then-known rock art of the archipelago , where observations began as early as 1793. He also provides detailed descriptions, measurements, photographs, line drawings, and other data for three of the six sites in the island grouping: Congo Cay and Reef Bay on St. John and Salt River on St...

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