What was life like in the Caribbean before Columbus arrived? This was the question the archaeologists asked while investigating the archaeological site of El Cabo, in the south-eastern part of the Dominican Republic. They looked at lifeways and deathways, the daily interaction and the ritual behaviour of the Indigenous people living there.
The archaeological site of El Cabo San Rafael is located in the south east of the island of the Dominican Republic between Punta Cana and Yuma. What makes El Cabo special, among a lot of other things, is the fact that it is located amidst an abundance of coastal waves. What El Cabo shares with for example the site Anse à la Gourde in Guadeloupe is that they are both coastal settlements that are protected from the waves by a reef just off the coast. We see this in more sites across the Caribbean, showing us that the coast was a popular place to settle in the region. The reefs are often not a coincidence, since they can serve as wave breakers and calm the sea the closer it gets to the coast.
The people buried at El Cabo were locally born. Through their material culture, archaeologist have gained a clear picture of life at El Cabo. The artefacts found at El Cabo include ceramic vessels, stone tools, beads, three-pointed stones and stone idols. The ceramics belong to styles of the Ostionoid (AD 600 to 900) and Chicoid (AD 1000-1500) series, but some early Spanish ceramics were also found, dating to early 1600s.
From the evidence we have we can conclude that the site of El Cabo has been inhabited for a long time, from around 600 AD to the 16th century. In total, 2000 post holes were excavated. Post holes are holes dug in the ground to place a pole, often recognisable by discoloration in the soil. With this blueprint of postholes, an archaeologist can take on the role of an architect and predict what the houses looked like. From these 2000 post holes, more than 50 structures could be (re-)constructed. 30 of these were identified as houses. These houses dated between the 9th and the start of the 16th century AD and can be recognised by their symmetry, regularity and recurring shape. The other 20 were interpreted as storage units, fences and work huts.
All house structures were circular in shape and looked very similar, with symmetrical foundations and other features like entrance facades, prepared floors,swept and clean interiors and a consistent orientation. To protect themselves from the winds from the ocean, the people at El Cabo would build windbreaks around the houses, and the openings face away from the dominant wind angle.
The house plans that archaeologists made of El Cabo show that the house structures overlapped through time. What this means for the settlement is that houses, but also other structures, were built and rebuilt time and time again. This resulted in a traceable trajectory per individual structure, which we can trace by looking at the postholes in the soil. This traceable trajectory is what makes El Cabo special and interesting to look at for archaeologists.
When the houses were abandoned, the empty postholes were used to leave personal items. This was possibly done because the people who used to live there would still hold sentimental value of some sort to the old house. It seems like the rebuilding process of the houses was more a ritual, than a practicality. While being rebuilt, the community that lived at El Cabo made new post holes, instead of re-using the old ones, which is in line with Indigenous traditions. This constant renewal seems to have been coordinated across the houses of the whole community. This house trajectory is thought to have been a long-lived estate, functioning as social reproduction and cultural transmission. This system was very succesful, with some of the house trajectories lasting up to 500 years.
El Cabo was under investigation for a long time. The first excavations, or rather investigations, were carried out in the late 1970s by the Museo del Hombre Dominicano. Leiden University started working at El Cabo in 2005. Their research project was funded by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and was conducted in collaboration with other European universities and Caribbean specialists. The passion for this research was well received in the Dominican Republic, because it ended up being well represented by institutions and organizations like the Ministry of Culture, the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, the Office of Monumental Heritage, the INTEC, the Eduardo León Jiménes Cultural Centre, and most importantly by the local community of El Cabo.
Text by Blanca Pesman & Koen van Rijn, based on original published research (see further reading).
Ernst, M., & C.L. Hofman, 2019. Breaking and Making Identities: Transformations of Ceramic Repertoires in Early Colonial
Hispaniola. Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Hofman C.L., M.L.P. Hoogland & J.R. Pagán-Jiménez 2020, En la víspera de la colonización Europea: Los sitios indígenas El Flaco, El Carril y El Cabo, República Dominicana, Boletín del Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 48, 146-165.
Hofman, C.L., J. Hung, E. Herrera Malatesta, J.S. Jean, T. Sonnemann & M.L.P. Hoogland, 2018. Indigenous Caribbean perspectives: Archaeologies and legacies of the first colonised region in the New World. Antiquity, 92, 200-216.
Samson, A.V.M., 2010. Renewing the house. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Samson, A.V.M., C.A. Crawford, M.L.P. Hoogland & C.L. Hofman, 2015. Resilience in Pre-Columbian Caribbean House-Building: Dialogue Between Archaeology and Humanitarian Shelter. Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 43(2), 323-337.