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138 / La Rosa Corzo In the total artifactual inventory from the Havana-Matanzas project there are 27 demijohns, recovered at 20 of the 30 sites. Demijohns came to Cuba filled with gin. They are common at nineteenth-century archaeological sites because they were so often reused for water storage in contexts both rural and urban.6 They abound at sites linked to mercantile activities—ports, garbage dumps used by stores, warehouses , boats, and sites used by contraband runners. The demijohns, plus the botijas (among which the smallest had capacities of over 6 liters), make a total of 47 large containers. Taken together, the capacity of these large jars is over seven times that of the bottles and flasks. Artifacts and Objects of Wood and Vegetable Fiber Wooden artifacts are reported at some fugitive slave sites in Cuba. In particular, decorated wooden combs, rustic beds, and containers cut from short, thick tree trunks that may have served as basins (for water) or mortars (for grinding food) were reported in a cave at Sierra de la Güira, east of Havana, by Ortega and Azcuy in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (October 13, 1985:3).At Kalunga, a palenque in eastern Cuba, during surveys I carried out in 1987 (La Rosa Corzo 1991b), I found a great wooden basin that clearly was used for grinding coffee. I also had the opportunity to study rustic beds at Solapa de la Rinconá in Pinar del Río. Nevertheless, I found no wooden archaeological remains at the sites under consideration in this chapter. I did, however, find fragments of a spoon made from a gourd (güira7 ) at Cimarrón 5 and four tubes for smoking pipes8 made from Tibisí reeds9 at Solapa 1, Cueva del Tambor—a high, dry site that, based on the disposition of the evidence, appears not to have been altered since the moment it was abandoned. The pipe tubes were no surprise, since in the hearth of this refuge I collected two pipes, one rustic, the other imported. And, between the bottom ash lens and the sterile surface of a hearth, I recovered a small fragment of corncob. The singularity of this find—there are no other reports of corncobs in similar archaeological contexts—is difficult to explain. Possibly it represents the remains of a meal, since slave hunters reported corn at fugitive slave refuges; it may also have been used as fuel for the hearth, as it is today in some rural zones. The conservation of these organic artifacts is due to their proximity to the hearths and to the high, dry atmosphere of these sites. Tools and Utensils of Metal Metal utensils include the cast-iron pots discussed in the section on food containers , as well as nails, spurs, a bridle bit, and a key, which could be circumstantial finds—in any event their function within the context of escaped slave hideaways is difficult to interpret. I classify them as miscellaneous objects of uncertain use; they comprise 7 percent of the entire artifactual inventory.10 The rest of the utensils I collected underscore the already discussed characteristics of the fugitive groups that used these hideaways. Archaeology of Escaped Slaves / 139 Knives, machetes, an iron stake, an adze, and five flints—7 percent of the total inventory—are clearly linked to vital activities including defense, hunting, and the procurement and preparation of food. The flints, found at both Cimarrón 1 and Cueva de Avispas, indicate the use of firearms, as reported in the testimonies of slave hunters (Villaverde 1982:57). The use of firearms by the cimarrones is testimony to the transcendental needs of life on the run. Five buttons and a buckle might be the remains of the fugitives’ clothing. The shackles found at the entrances to both Cimarrón 1 and Cueva del Búho link these places with the passage from life in captivity to the life of freedom as an escaped slave. The discovery of shackles in caves also has been reported in Matanzas (Alvarez and Vento 1996). Abiel Abbot (1965:98) wrote in a letter of 1821 the story of a cimarrón who, to remove his shackles,“had filed them with the juice of sour orange and his machete; and one of the sections, which was too big to cede to this method, was broken between two stones.” Dietary Remains As with the rest of the archaeological evidence, the dietary remains provide firsthand information about the social, economic, and cultural characteristics...

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