Angus's Artefacts of Week 3 2011

The famous Atabeyra as photographed by Joost Morsink.

In the two posts before this, I presented two artefacts that are believed to be representations of some form of Caribbean Mother Goddess. There are those who wish to go further than that by stating depictions like these are representations of “Atabeyra.” Atabeyra is one of the several names of a deity-like being that is mentioned as the mother of the creator spirit in the accounts of Fray Ramon Pané. Depicted here is one of the central figures of the famous petroglyphs (carvings in stone) at the ball court at Caguana, Puerto Rico that was identified as Atabeyra. Since then the petroglyph and Atabeyra have gained a prominent status in Puerto Rico as a symbol of national pride, especially for those Puerto Ricans who are in favour of Puerto Rican cultural and political independence from the United States.

Taken from Mason's 1936 book on the Archaeology of the Santa Marta.

Recently, Puerto Rican archaeologists Reniel Rodríguez Ramos has pointed out the similarities between elements of Greater Antillean representations of “Atabeyra” and Pre-Colonial Colombian depictions of a figure that is perhaps some kind of sun deity, such as can be seen in this turtle bone plaque. It does seem that many elements — like posture, frogs (the figures have frog-legs and the plaque is shaped like a frog with its two huge eyes at the top) and birds being depicted (birds are easily visible on the plaque and Rodríguez Ramos has suggested that the earspools and hands of the Puerto Rican Atabeyra are shaped like two big-beaked birds) — of the two figures are the same, which leaves us with some interesting questions. Why is there such a similarity between two cultures that were geographically separated by a huge stretch of water? Were there perhaps regular contacts between the Greater Antilles and the South American mainland? This would be no mean feat seeing that sailing didn’t exist yet in Pre-Columbian times; all transport between islands had to be done by canoe.

Photo courtesy of Arie Boomert.

On the other hand it also leaves us with some interesting problems on what constitutes evidence for cultural contact in situations in which we have no written sources. Traditionally, archaeologists have always stressed “style” as one of the most important indicators of cultural contact, but there seems to be no correspondence in styles between the two regions. Still, many feel that in this case the similarities in form and symbolism between the two representations are too great to be explained as a simple factor of chance. We should not forget, however, that the frog has been an important symbol in many different places and times in the Caribbean. For example it is clear from the archaeological record that the frog is one of the most important symbols of migrant groups that came from the Mainland into the Antilles some centuries before the birth of Christ. Perhaps this means that the frog and its symbolism is just a Caribbean-wide phenomenon and that there were no contacts between the Greater Antilles and Colombia? On the other hand, in the absence of “memory banks” such as books, it is extremely rare for symbols and traditions to remain the same for more than thousand years.

To put it short, we do not know yet how exactly the figure that we recognize as “Atabeyra” in the Greater Antilles is connected through the different times, places and cultures of the Caribbean or what this connection means. Any ideas?