̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

'Extreme sleepover #17' – going underground in search of zombies

lw355 — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 08:37:51 +0000

Isla de Mona has been many things: a source of melons and cotton hammocks for conquistadors in the 16th century; a pirate haunt in the 17th and 18th centuries; an industrial island fertilising the fields of the Western world with the fossilised guano of giant fish-eating bats in the 19th; a US air base in the 20th; and now, both a nature reserve and a destination for migrants seeking a better life in the USA.

This tiny island, just seven miles by four, with no permanent settlement, lies in the dangerous Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and it is the prehistory that brings us here.

̽��ֱ��plateau of limestone and dolomite is riddled with caves filled with signs of human activity. Much of this is pre-Columbian (i.e. before the Spanish arrived in the late 15th century) and consists of painted images, finger-drawn designs and extensive extractive finger scratches, which are sometimes deep within the ‘dark zones’, where no natural light falls.

I am with archaeologists Dr Alice Samson from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Dr Jago Cooper from the British Museum for their summer fieldwork. As a conservator with specialism in the materials and techniques of painting, I am here to analyse the pigments used to make pre-Columbian markings and with the team look at the layer structures of engravings and painted images.

I’m using an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer to examine the elemental composition of the pictographs, and will later take tiny samples away for further analysis. I want to find out whether the people who made these images used materials that were at hand in the caves, or transported them in from elsewhere.

Mona’s prehistoric peoples appear to have lived on the island from at least 2800 BCE, surviving a century after the arrival of the Spanish at the end of the 15th century. ̽��ֱ��inhabitants at the time of the conquest, commonly referred to as Taínos, brought us the words hurricane, barbeque, hammock, canoe, potato and cannibal.

Caves feature prominently in Taíno mythology and it is likely that many of the anthropogenic images in the caves are zemís (considered by some the origin of the word ‘zombie’). Zemí refers to any object, animal, vegetable or mineral, which was animate and could be called upon to intervene in human affairs. Zemís were found, constructed or painted in 3D and 2D form. Although the presence of human-like figurative designs is common in Caribbean rock-art, Alice and Jago’s work is bringing to light a staggering amount of physical modification to the caves from the pre-Columbian era, particularly the extraction of soft white lime from the walls and ceilings. ̽��ֱ��purpose of this extraction and what the material was used for are not yet known.

Each morning I wake at 5.30am to the sounds of subtropical birds. It’s the only time of day cool enough to go for a run. ̽��ֱ��coastguards and rangers all eat early; for them, life on Mona is a cycle of week-on-week-off at work, with a small aircraft bringing them to and from the Puerto Rican mainland to Mona via a bumpy grass airstrip.

At the camp, there’s a small study centre (happily, with solar-powered Wi-Fi) as well as basic accommodation where the workers live, and where migrants can rest before they are moved from the island. Mona throws together strange combinations of people: border police, rangers, military personnel, scientists, cavers, immigrants and boy scouts.

We set off early in the morning. Some of the caves are nearby, but others involve more effort to carry our equipment, as they are some distance from our camp. Mona’s environment can be inhospitable and it has a fearsome reputation. There is little natural water, except sometimes deep in the caves. It is dry, hot and thorny, and the rocks are sharp. As we walk to the caves, we often disturb one of Mona’s endemic and therefore incredibly rare iguanas. They typically scuttle away from us into a hidden cave mouth.

Our team also includes Masters’ students from the Centro de Estudios Avanzados in Puerto Rico, and we work together analysing, documenting and photographing the evidence in the caves. Colonists, buccaneers, guano-miners and boy scouts have all left their mark, often with dated graffiti. On several days, we join a team of cavers who year on year visit this most cavernous location on earth to map the island’s 200-plus caves. It’s a great opportunity to learn about cave mapping and geology from experts.

If possible, lunch is taken in a cliff-side cave mouth, with a view out over the sea. On occasion, two nosy Red-Footed boobies wheel round and round to get a better look at us. ̽��ֱ��caves themselves are extremely hot, humid and dirty. At the end of the day we walk into the Caribbean sea, fully dressed in our ‘cave clothes’.

Images: Finger drawings and Lucy Wrapson

Credit: Alice Samson/El Corazon del Caribe Research project

Lucy Wrapson reports on her fieldwork analysing the curious cave paintings found on Isla de Mona, in the Caribbean, and their equally enigmatic artists.

Finger-drawn designs and extensive extractive finger scratches are sometimes deep within the ‘dark zones’, where no natural light falls

Lucy Wrapson

Alice Samson/El Corazon del Caribe Research project

Cave painting, Isla de Mona

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Island of broken figurines

lw355 — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:05:36 +0000

On a June morning in 1963, Colin Renfrew stepped from a caïque boat onto the scrub-covered Aegean island of Keros on the basis of a tip-off. In search of material for his graduate studies, the young Cambridge graduate had been intrigued by rumours of a recent looting of the almost uninhabited island relayed to him by a Greek archaeologist.

Sure enough, evidence of looting abounded. As he reported back to the Greek Archaeological Service, on whose permit he had been surveying the Greek Cycladic islands, smashed marble statues and bowls and broken pottery lay scattered over the hillside.

Despite the destruction, it was clear that the fragments were Early Cycladic, an interesting find in itself. In fact, as he was to discover, he had also stumbled upon the first evidence of an astonishing Bronze Age ritual.

Broken bodies

A year later, the Greek Archaeological Service carried out a major recovery, finding fragments of a type of sculpture found previously mainly in Cycladic Bronze Age graves. ̽��ֱ��simplicity of these eerily beautiful figurines, with their folded arms, sloping feet and featureless faces, are said to have inspired Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore.

On Keros, however, apart from a single intact figurine, all others were broken. There were ‘body parts’ in their hundreds – an elongated foot, a single breast, a folded arm, a pair of thighs, a face – all jumbled together with broken bowls and pots.

When the ‘Keros Hoard’, a collection widely believed to be part of the looted material, appeared on the antiquities market in the 1970s and all the fragments were also broken, the mystery deepened. Was the site on Keros an ancient burial ground that, perhaps in haste, had been destroyed by looters, or was the site something else entirely?

A special deposit

A new opportunity to investigate came in 1987, when Renfrew, by then a Professor in the Department of Archaeology, and two Greek archaeologists were permitted to excavate and survey the looted area, which they called Special Deposit North. “We recovered great quantities of broken material and yet as we excavated more we found no indications of tombs,” said Professor Renfrew.

Not only were the fragments not grave goods but the first of several astonishing features came to light, as Professor Renfrew explained: “As I studied the marble materials for publication, I realised that nearly all of the breakages seemed to be ancient and not the result of the looting. They had been deliberately broken before burial.”

“Although this excavation didn’t resolve the puzzle, it did emphasise how rich the site was and how puzzling.” ̽��ֱ��archaeologists felt sure that more light would be shed by the investigation both of an area a few hundred metres further south that also seemed to be a Special Deposit and of the tiny steep-sided islet of Dhaskalio that lay 80 metres offshore from Keros.

Return to Keros

It was another two decades before Professor Renfrew was able to return, this time for three seasons of excavation, ending in 2008, and with an international team of almost 30 experts. ̽��ֱ��post-excavation analyses of the finds are now nearing conclusion.

In the first year, the Cambridge–Keros project team excavated at the southern site and confirmed the presence of another Special Deposit, but this time undisturbed by looters. Many of the materials were bundled together in small pits up to two metres in diameter. ̽��ֱ��breakages were old and deliberate. Moreover, the absence of marble chips, expected in the case of breakages on the spot, showed the fragments had been broken elsewhere. As later radiocarbon dating confirmed, they had been deposited over a 500-year period from 2800 BC to 2300 BC.

“But the strangest finding of all was that hardly any of the fragments of the 500-odd figurines and 2,500 marble vessels joined together,” said Professor Renfrew. “This was a very interesting discovery. ̽��ֱ��only conclusion we could come to was that these special materials were broken on other islands and single pieces of each figurine, bowl or pot were brought by generations of Cycladic islanders to Keros.”

Bronze Age guesthouse?

Meanwhile, across the short stretch of water to Dhaskalio, a very different picture was emerging. From the outset, the islet showed evidence of having been a major Bronze Age stronghold with structures built on carefully prepared terraces circling a summit, on which a large hall was erected. ̽��ֱ��settlement dates from around the time of the Special Deposits, and then continued to operate before being abandoned around 2200 BC.

Examination of its geology showed that the beautifully regular walling of the settlement was imported marble rather than the flaky local limestone found on Keros. Remarkably, in the same era that the pyramids were being built and Stonehenge was being erected, Cycladic islanders were shipping large quantities of building materials, probably by raft, over considerable distances to build Dhaskalio.

Here, too, there were puzzling finds: a stash of about 500 egg-shaped pebbles at the summit and stone discs found everywhere across the settlement. And, although there was evidence that the olive and vine were well known to the inhabitants of Dhaskalio, the terrain there and on Keros could never have supported the large population the scale of the site implies, suggesting that food also was imported.

One answer is to hypothesise a largely transient population. Several strands make this plausible, as Dr Michael Boyd, who is collating the results of the post-excavation analyses, explained: “Archaeobotanical evidence implies that the site was not intensively occupied year-round, and the imported pottery and materials suggest the possibility of groups coming seasonally from elsewhere.”

“A possible attractor to the site,” he added, “would of course be the Special Deposit on the immediately opposite shore.” In fact, team geologists believe that Dhaskalio and Keros were probably one land mass during the Early Bronze Age and that tectonic movement and rising sea levels created the divide.

Sanctuary

As the team members conclude their analyses of the finds, all indications point towards Keros having been a major ritual centre of the Cycladic civilisation. “We believe that the breaking of the statues and other goods was a ritual and that Keros was chosen as a sanctuary to preserve the effects,” said Professor Renfrew.

He speculates that the objects were used repeatedly in rituals in the home islands, perhaps carried in ritual processions in much the same way that icons are paraded today in Greek villages: “They had a use-life, probably being painted and repainted from year to year. Perhaps the convention was that when a figure had reached the end of its use-life, it could not simply be thrown away or used conventionally, it needed to be desanctified in an elaborate process.”

“Strangely,” he added, “there seems to have been some obligation to bring a piece of the broken figure and deposit it on what must have been the sacred island of Keros, possibly staying a few days on Dhaskalio while the ceremony was completed.” ̽��ֱ��missing pieces of the statues, bowls and pottery have never been located on other islands, and Professor Renfrew wonders if they were thrown into the sea during transit and have long since disintegrated.

This wouldn’t be the first time a sanctuary has been identified in the Greek islands - Delphi, Olympia and Delos, for instance – but it would be the earliest by about 2,000 years and certainly the most mysterious.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge–Keros project was authorised by the Greek Archaeological Service and supported by the British School at Athens, with funding from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Society of Antiquaries of London, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, British Academy, Leventis Foundation and Leverhulme Trust. For more information, please visit

https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/current-projects/keros-project

Why were Bronze Age figurines smashed, transported and buried in shallow pits on the Aegean island of Keros? New research sheds light on a 4,500-year-old mystery.

I realised that nearly all of the breakages seemed to be ancient and not the result of the looting. For some reason, all of the objects had been deliberately broken before burial.

Professor Colin Renfrew

Cambridge-Keros Project

Fragments of figurines found on Keros

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