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.

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?