Traces Behind the Esmeraldas Shore

1. Backward

1 BACKWARD Ifonly there were even an old ruin someplace on the land, some indication that someone had been here before us and that we were part of a human chain; but only stone would last in this steaming vat of organic dissolution, and there is no stone here except river gravel. In the midst of my longing for human continuity in those first days, I found a broken fragment of a plate three feet underground in a hole we were digging for the foundation of my new house. I experienced a moment of elation, of belonging, but it didn't last. On the back of the plate was inscribed "Turin 1923" (Thomsen 1989: 22-23). As a retired Peace Corps volunteer homesteading along the Esmeraldas river, Thomsen reminds one of a Conrad character slowly sinking into terminal tropical torpor. The insects bite, the midday sun burns, and nightly rains carpet the forest floor with knee-deep mud, but above all, the misplaced European is unnerved by the prospect that the jungle has no history A major goal of this book is to lay foundations for a history or, more specifically, a prehistory of the SantiagoCayapas region of northernmost Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. Pursuant to this goal, a chronological framework, one extending well before 1923, is needed. This purpose may seem passe, even strangely antiquated, in an age when postmodern critiques invade all quarters. Yet it is a task that needs to be done, not merely to allay Thomsen's angst but to give archaeology some semblance of scientific footing. For much of Ecuador, basic chronological work remains underdeveloped and, as a result, processual-much less postprocessual (the postmodern in its archaeological guise)--concerns often resemble clever ruminations more than approaches anchored to any knowledge of what happened in the past. Many years ago, my Shipibo friend and coworker, Manuel Rengifo (a Don Lathrap protege), commented: "Well, Ricardo" [my name in Ucayali Spanish], "if you don't know how old it is, you're not a good archaeologist, but if you want to know what it means, my brother-in-law is a pretty good shaman." Wanting to be a good archaeologist, I here follow the first part of Manuel's advice. At the time, I regarded his second recommendation as more parody than prophesy, but today, of course, archaeologists-as-shamans are flying everywhere. The construction of a space-time framework for prehistoric Ecuador is a particular challenge. Unlike Peru to the south, ancient Ecuador was largely free of those periodic "horizon styles" that serve to correlate regional cultural sequences. Except for a poorly defined "Chorreroid" horizon during the early first millennium B.C. and the brief Incan intrusion at the end of prehistory, Ecuador always remained a patchwork of local polities. Sometimes these polities emulated each other in terms of material culture, but, as often, they maintained a distinctiveness that obscures their interconnections. In this mosaic cultural landscape, the ar- 2 BACKWARD ICM I . . _ o Fig. 1.1 The Santiago and Cayapas rivers and theirmajor tributaries. The same base map is used throughout the text. BACKWARD J chaeologist is well advised to begin by documenting local sequences reliably. This we will attempt to do for the Santiago-Cayapas region. Figure 1.1 maps this region. In addition to the major drainages, this map plots two landmarks of significance: La Tolita, the largest and most famous archaeological site of the region Cofwhich more below), and the modem town of Borb6n, which is connected by a road to the provincial capital of Esmeraldas. Borb6n is the gateway to the Santiago-Cayapas river system. From this bustling and sweltering port, redolent of rotting fish, fruit, and other offal, one continues by boat, either downstream to the Pacific or upriver to the interior. It is toward this interior , a region that I frequently refer to as "La Tolita's hinterland," that our archaeological work turns. This inland concentration is based, to a certain extent, on a division of labor. Francisco Valdez and his team of Ecuadorian archaeologists have been carrying out a long-term project of excavations and survey at La Tolita; thus our inland focus is complementary in an areal sense. Furthermore, our wish to sketch a full sequence for the region's prehistory with an emphasis on changing settlement patterns over time calls for broad-scale coverage rather than intensive excavation at a few sites. Although not to...