Guaízas part III: Making Faces

Shell Face distribution in the Antilles

Another week, another post about guaízas.  The previous two weeks I discussed the material properties of the guaíza and two of its functions: as an ornament and as a gift for outsiders.
In my Master thesis I catalogued all known occurrences of shell faces in the Caribbean. In my thorough survey of collections and literature I found that they had a large distribution area outside of their stylistic heartland in South-East Hispaniola (Dominican Republic). The most southern report of a shell face — I do not like to call shell faces found outside of the Greater Antilles “guaízas” since the information from the historical sources mentioning their name cannot just be copy-pasted to other areas of the Caribbean —  at that time was the tiny Île de Ronde in the Grenadines and the most western report was from Central Cuba. I figured that because they figured so prominently as gifts in the Early Contact period that perhaps this “gift to outsiders” idea might also explain why Pre-Colombian shell faces that were distinctly Greater Antillean looking were found so far away from their supposed place of (stylistic) origin. Indeed the sites in which they were found in the Lesser Antilles seem to be internationally oriented, showing other lines of evidence of partaking in larger exchange networks as well. So, this would suggest that shell faces were distributed through exchange.

Venezuelan Shell Faces

Some time ago, however, I came across Venezuelan examples of two shell faces from the Lago Valencia region. One looks too generic to tell, but the other looks distinctly Greater Antillean in style. If they are indeed connected to Antillean shell face objects then they are puzzling specimens, because their context is much earlier than that of the Antillean shell faces — the Valencioid style of 600/800 AD for Venezuela compared to the Chicoid style of 1000/1200 AD for the Antilles. Then my friend and colleague Alice Samson sent me a couple of photographs, one of her own making and one that was sent to her by former Leiden student Erlend Johnson, that show shell faces, but these shell faces are not from the Antilles or the South American mainland, but from Maya territory in Yucatan, Mexico. Although three of them are, stylistically, likely not Greater Antillean in origin one looks like it might be. This presents me once again with an interesting problem that is at the heart of my dissertation research, which I already briefly discussed in the post about the frog-legged lady on the pillars of New Seville a couple of weeks ago: what artefact similarities constitute evidence for Pan-Caribbean human-to-human interaction and what similarities are due to other factors such as universal human neural wiring, living in similar ecosystems, comparable societal developments, or shared artefact symbolisms that arise out of shared, “deep spiritual” pasts when the first inhabitants of the Caribbean were still colonizing its shores?
Why do similarities in form and style of shell and other type of faces keep appearing in

Mayan Shell Faces

different times and places across the Greater Caribbean? My own hypothesis that I am working from runs somewhat along the following lines. Across the globe we find that the face or parts of the face have an extremely important place in the iconography on buildings, objects and parts of the landscape — especially the eyes are important in this regard. The material cultural remains of the Pre-Columbian Caribbean are exemplary of this human focus on the face. Why is this?

All humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize — “make human” — their surroundings, non-human living beings but other non-living things as well. This is because, going back to humanity’s shared history on the plains of Africa, we as a hyper-social animal compulsively interact with the elements in our world in a social manner, which was perhaps a good survival strategy for group interactions or is a by-product of other fitness enhancing traits. When we anthropomorphize animals and things this often results in us tracing characteristics of the human face in that animal or thing. Examples includes me and my girlfriend’s new puppy that we can see has done something naughty because of the look on her face, the face of Maria that materializes in an old mouldy stain on the wall, or that cloud that is drifting by that I swear looks like my teacher from sixth grade. When we anthropomorphize we focus on the face because it is the most social part of our bodies, providing us with the information that we need to engage in interactions. If we had another social tool that was as highly developed we would perhaps project these parts of our bodies onto other beings and things — if I was my puppy I would probably project dog-like smells onto non-dog things and beings because of my highly developed nose.*

To put it this way, humans have a propensity for “making faces” and I think that is part of the reason why there are so many similar (shell) faces in Caribbean material culture. Additionally, the face is the most recognizable and social aspect of our body and therefore face objects make a very recognizable and social object when offered in exchanges with outsiders. Perhaps this is also part of the reason why Las Casas, Colombus and other Europeans were able to see that what the indigenous people were offering when presenting guaízas was a face that was meant as a gift, while other objects that were offered by the indigenous people of the Greater Antilles were perceived as trade goods.

My sixth grade teacher in a cloud?

Of course this explanation is not completely satisfactorily when viewing the multitude of similar face-depicting artefacts in the Antilles and the wider Caribbean, among which Venezuelan and Mayan “guaízas”, which in the end is best explained through local historical and cultural contexts, but I think that evolutionary theories such as these might provide a starting point for an exploration of Caribbean faces like the guaíza that is more focused and therefore can go further. This is what I will attempt in next weeks Angus’s Artefacts, which will discuss how Caribbean Archaeologists think that the indigenous people thought — difficult isn’t, all that projecting? — Pre-Columbian Antillean face of the living and face of the dead looked like.

*If you want to read more about this I recommend Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained" and Stewart Guthrie's "Faces in the Clouds." For another, similar theory of the "bared teeth-motif", a prominent part of shell and other faces in the Antilles I recommend Alice Samson and Bridget Waller's "Not Growling, but Smiling", which can be found on Alice her blog.