ON THE NATURE OF TAINO STONE COLLARS: THE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY

Jeff Walker

ABSTRACT

Three classes of Antillean artifacts —stone collars, elbow stones and three-pointers— may be the cemis Father Ramón Pané reports were central to Taino religion. This paper focuses on the production sequence for stone collars and stylistic messages they conveyed. Production centers are identified. A chronology is hypothesized based on stages of manufacture. Evidence suggests the complex collars were made by religious-craft specialists.

RESUMEN

Tres clases de artefactos antillanos —aros Uticos, codos y trigonolitos— parecen ser los cemíes reportados por Fray Ramón Pané como claves en la religión Taina. Esta ponencia se enfoca en la secuencia de producción de aros Uticos y sus mensajes estilísticos. Presenta una cronología hipo­tética basada en las etapas de producción. La secuencia y centros de producción están identifica-^ dos. La evidencia indica que los aros Uticos los hicieron artesanos especializados en artefactos religiosos.

RÉSUMÉ

Trois classes des artifactes des Antilles peuvent être les cemies Moine Ramón Pané paut nous indiquer comment prévoit liée á la religion Taina. Ce repporte ce centre sur la production de colliers de pierre et ces messages estélistiques qu'ils peuvent convoiyer. Les produits central sont identifier. Un cronologie est hypotizer et les evidence provee que les colliers sont fabrique par les especialistes d'artifactes religieux.

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PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY AND STYLISTIC CONSIDERATIONS

This paper investigates the production sequence and technology used to make stone collars; elsewhere I discuss the production of elbow stones and three-pointers. It is based on my study and observations of over 200 stone collars and elbow stones (Walker 1993).

It is important to determine how stone collars were made. Otis Masons's 1877 article is apparently the first published mention of unfinished stone collars. A brief description of pieces in the Latimer collection states: "Four of them are in a rough state... None of the characteristic marks of the collars are visible... they serve to show what an immense amount of labor it must have taken to reduce a stone of such great size and hardness to the slender and graceful finished object" (O.Mason 1877: 385).

Fifty years later the manufacturing sequence for stone collars was further described by Marshall Saville (1926:177-188). His rarely cited article presents a sequence of eight photo­graphs of stone collars during different stages of manufacture.

Saville s examples do not include the preparation and pecking of the stone collars' design panels, nor the final smoothing and polishing process. His photographs give a basic under­standing of how these artifacts were made, but his text does not elaborate.

Production Sequence of Stone Collars

I have identified as many as fourteen possible steps used in the production of stone collars. The steps are detailed elsewhere (Walker 1993), but briefly the general sequence and technolog­ical traits are as follows.

Based on the examples I studied, the production sequence began by choosing an appropri­ately sized flat river boulder of suitable raw material. It would have been checked for structural flaws which might cause it to break during production.

Next, the hole was formed by pecking and grinding oval concavities on opposite sides of the flat boulder. The resultant oval carries a fundamental message —ring or circle— symbolic of closure or completeness.

The rough shaping of the exterior of the collar followed. An outline was created by flaking and pecking, which complimented the interior. This shaped the prominent "boss" (Figure 1 gives nomenclature), and reduced the thickness and shape of the cross-section of the artifact's ring. On slender collars the shaping at this stage began to reduce the exterior outline of the incipient "decorated" and "undecorated panel" areas.

Single or paired "projections" on the exterior edge of most collars have repeatedly been identified as skeuomorphs for overlapped wooden limbs. Some argue the stone collar proto­type was a Y-shaped fork whose limbs were joined and bound into a loop. Various ligature and hook arrangements were rendered symbolically in stone.

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124 JEFF WALKER

The alteration of a section of the symmetrical cross-section, on massive collars (exclusive­ly), to form a horizontal or slightly outward sloping "bench" may have followed the formation of the cross-section. But more probably it was done later, because it would have been cumber­some to reduce away the lower flattish bench before first achieving the circular or oval cross-section from which it was pecked, and to which it had to be properly pitched and oriented. This bench-making step was largely a functional step. It has been hypothesized that three-pointers were lashed to stone collars, for which I have presented evidence (Walker 1993).

Exclusive to slender collars, and apparently a compliment to the bench on massive collars, was shaping an "undecorated panel" for the attachment of a three-pointer. It may have includ­ed forming the roughened oval indentation (upp) as well as the outline of the feature.

Most stone collars have some design element, motif, or compound theme which was ren­dered in bas relief. The pecking, grinding and occasional excising involved at this stage re­quired some skill, but probably not vast amounts of energy expenditure. Many writers recog­nize and comment upon the symbols portrayed in this manner as the first "decorative" or de­sign feature on the collars. In fact, as indicated above, this was not the first symbol on collars, merely the first iconographie symbol.

Very few specimens give any indication of how or when during the sequence the decorated panels were elaborated. What may be a massive stone collar blank from the Tibes Ceremonial Site in Ponce (Figure 3) may provide an example of this rarely seen step. Though the artifacts is said to be a petroglyph slab from one of the courts —double-sided petroglyphs, and the use of exclusively geometric designs in making petroglyphs in bateys, are very atypical. The Tibes artifact is of a flat sandstone-like boulder (possibly tuffaceous siltstone) which is broken in half. It has a large oval central hole created by making concave depressions on opposite sides. Un­like most stone collar blanks, this one has a series of broad shallow lines pecked into both flat surfaces. I infer that the lines demarcate where it was necessary to remove excess material from both ends, and also to define areas where extra mass was to be left protruding. The lines seem to be a "blueprint" or guide lines to produce a design motif. By following the shallow grooves, apparently the artisan planned to make a bas relief design typical to stone collars (Walker 1993).

Occasionally margins of the collars have drilled holes or perforations, a feature which gave added visual dimension to a piece. Some perforations might have served secondary functions for attaching a strap or for dangling shells or feathers.

Polish of the stone collars was not a universal trait, but when effected, polishing may have included several minor steps employing fine grinding and rubbing, possibly using sand or other abrasives. This may have been followed by applying and buffing wax, resin, or other material to produce a shiny surface. On some examples it is clear that engraving of fine lined glyphs on the decorated panels occurred after a final polish.

Inlaid pieces are rarely found on archaeological specimens from the Antilles, but the re­cessed areas on many pieces suggest it was common, and the Chronicles indicate it was a rou­tine treatment for sculptured artifacts. On stone collars the teeth, eyes and earspools all may have been represented in shell, gold, or brightly colored, shiny stone. The visual contrast, reflec­tive quality, and colorfulness of these inlays —and in the cases where guanin or exotic stones were used, their rarity— must have added visual dimension and symbolic importance to the collars.

The last steps might include application of plaster, permanent paints or adhesives, and impermanent paints or other compounds, with the final step of tieing feathers, beads, cloth, shell and other adornments for "dressing the idol" (Benzoni 1857:79-80 cited in Wilson 1990:88).

I argue that the stages in the technological sequence follow exactly the same order as the steps in the invention and evolution of stone collars. Because these are symbolic artifacts, the concepts most basic to their meaning, function and origin are those which are fundamental to their form. These basic concepts occur in the same exact order as the stages in the technologi­cal reduction sequence. I argue that the basic steps were also the first steps, and the earlier the

ACTAS DEL XV CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGÍA DEL CARIBE 125

step, the more imbedded the message it conveys, the more ancestral and central the concept being communicated through symbols.

The evolution of design on collars is not merely a progression from simple to complex, but actually an elaborate series of technological processes introduced in sequence. Each new step reveals the introduction at some point in the past of that technological process. The earlier the step the more significant the message it conveyed to its users.

FUNCTION, MESSAGE, AND SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL PATTERNS FROM A TECHNOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

The information communicated by the technological traits used to produce stone collars is significant. One passive style message (Sackett 1990:36-37) in stone collars, and to a lesser degree in elbow stones and three-pointers, is the time it takes to make the object. The "hole" in the center of a stone collar represents a considerable amount of work —surely this passive style message about the amount, quality, and specialty-type labor that went into fashioning a stone collar was not lost on the original Taino observers.

Other messages conveyed through technology include the esthetics, creativity, symmetry and careful craftsmanship exhibited on the majority of the collars. The symbolism of the Helms (1987) discussed how highly polished black wood surfaces were elite social markers. Her astute observation regarding the importance of high surface polish is key to interpreting artifacts in the Antilles —regardless of the media. She notes that "in the indigenous societies of the Greater Antilles, then, items made of polished black wood were apparently associated with active and passive expressions of rank and associated elite prerogatives" (Helms 1987:70). Surely the high polish on stone artifacts had equal symbolic significance.

It is important to determine if the variations in stone collars are due to temporal or spatial factors. One approach is to study the geographical distribution of massive versus slender class­es of stone collars to see if they differ. If they are from markedly different sub-regions, then we assume the differences are stylistic markers that have to do with cultural or political bound­aries. If instead, they co-occur throughout the region, then we assume the differences result from temporal styles and reflect design changes over time.

The most common provenience information for stone collars in the collections is by island. From Puerto Rico I recorded 152 stone collars, 30 collars in process, and 20 elbow stones for a total of 202 (Walker 1993). The next level of locational data based on museum catalogs and published references is usually by municipality. There are 67 examples of collars and 10 elbow stones spread over 24 of these modern political divisions on the islands of Puerto Rico and Vieques (Figure 2). This map shows the distribution of slender and massive collars, and elbow stones; those municipalities with ball court or plazas are shaded (following Alegría 1983; This data is based on the 202 specimens mentioned, since then several other stone collars have been reported to me, but the basic patterns seem unchanged). Of these there are multiple occurrenc­es of two or three artifact classes in nine municipalities. Of these, five have both slender and massive varieties of collars, two have massive collars and elbow stones, one a slender collar and an elbow stone, and only one municipality (Sta. Isabel) has all three classes. The remaining 15 municipalities having these artifacts have only one class of artifact each, though there may be several artifacts in each case (e.g., Arecibo with four slender collars). There seems to be no marked patterns of distribution by class, with a possible exception that slender collars may be absent in the extreme western end of the island. When we consider that in the collections from the Dominican Republic to the west, massive collars are more common, this westward decrease in slender collars may not be artificial. Even with this possible exception, the near island-wide distribution of all three classes indicates that slender and massive collars and elbow stones were not strict regional types, but are legitimate formal classes. The map demonstrates the co­occurrence of the three classes in all regions, indicating that they were time sensitive style classes.

126 JEFF WALKER

There are clear voids where no stone collars nor elbow stones have been reported; fully two-thirds of the municipalities have none of the three classes. These voids, could in part be due to recording biases, because several of the larger collections lack provenience information to the level of municipality. Consider that of the 202 artifacts in these classes recorded for this study, only 86 (43%), have provenience to the level of municipality— over half of the study group has no provenience beyond the level of "Puerto Rico". Voids in the distribution of collars are most notable in the northwest and southeast of the island, but gaps also show along the southern and northern coasts.

Given the separations between clusters of these artifacts in certain parts of the island, one logical explanation is that stone collars and elbow stones concentrate around centers of socio­political or religious power, for example the seats of principal caciques or important ceremoni­al sites. The municipalities of Salinas (19) and Utuado (18) each have over three times as many of these artifacts, with the next largest groups being of 5 or 6 artifacts each (Cabo Rojo, Ponce, Sta. Isabel, Luquillo), an indication that the concentrations may be significant. It has long been speculated that the Utuado area was a ceremonial focus because it has a disproportionate num­ber of sites with ball courts/plazas, and the rare multi-court site of Caguana (see Alegría 1983; García Goyco 1984; Oliver 1992); this might explain the concentration of collars and elbow stones for the interior region.

It is interesting to compare the above information on the distribution of stone collars and elbow stones with the distribution of large, elaborate three-pointers. Significantly, the large three-pointer types have a very similar distribution to that seen for the collars and elbow stones —the lone exception is Utuado.

The distributions of stone collars and elbow stones do not closely coincide with the distri­bution of ball court/plazas (shading) as mapped by Alegría (1983:60). Nine of the 20 municipal­ities he records as having courts do not have any stone collars or elbow stones; 13 of the 24 municipalities with stone collars and elbow stones do not have ball courts/plazas (Figure 3). In these two comparisons about half the cases tend to draw into doubt the alleged association between the ball game and stone collars. The numbers are very similar when one compares municipalities with ball courts/plazas and ones with large and elaborate three-pointers; indi­cating that an association between these three-pointers and ball courts is equally as probable as a link between collars and ball courts, though it has never been suggested. Conceptually this weakens the argument that stone collars are associated directly with ball courts, though the true test is on a site by site rather than a regional basis.

There is much to be learned by finding out where stone collars, elbow stones and three-pointers were produced. It is important to distinguish between artifacts in process, versus artifacts which were distributed once completed. If many specimens in the initial stages of manufacture are found at a few sites, then this suggests centralized religious centers, whereas if a few specimens each are found at many different sites this suggests that religious power was dispersed among many individuals throughout the region. Available data is limited, but it does suggests a tentative pattern.

Nearly a dozen stone collars in the early stages of manufacture are located on the grounds of the Caguana ceremonial site in Utuado (Figure 4). This group of stone collar blanks is appar­ently what remains after repeated modern gleanings of stone collar specimens; there are re­ports that a few finished stone collars in museum collections are from the Caguana ceremonial site (Ricardo Alegría, personal communication January 1992). Presumably these ten or eleven unfinished and/or broken examples in various early stages of manufacture were being pro­duced at the site. The group does not give the impression of being an archaeological feature, but looks like a collection of pieces from different parts of the site. Hector Moya, who worked on the restoration of Caguana in 1969, recalls having found several of these scattered about the site (personal communication March 1992). The others were probably found later and added to the group because of their similar nature.

This is corroborated by the fact that J. Alden Mason, the first archaeologist to excavate the site, does not show any such group of stones at this location in his two very detailed site maps

ACTAS DEL XV CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGÍA DEL CARIBE 127

of Caguana, nor does he make mention of such a group in his comprehensive report (Mason 1941). Mason, during the 1914-15 excavations of the site did find two pieces of stone collars. Rouse reports purchasing "a piece of a massive stone collar, and two sections of slender stone collars" (1952:477) from the Caguana ceremonial site.

This group of stone collars in various initial stages of reduction at Caguana is strong evi­dence that production centers or workshops for stone collars did exist. It highlights the possi­bility that stone collars were: 1) produced only during gatherings at ceremonial sites; or 2) produced by specialists who lived at ceremonial sites. The collar blank from Tibes is another example of a collar in process from a ceremonial site.

CONCLUSIONS

I argue that the production sequence outlined here parallels the evolution of the stone col­lar, and that each of the various steps in the manufacturing process was vested with symbolism. Development of styles over time, not over space, is indicated by the distribution of massive versus slender stone collars —massive being earlier than slender collars. Separate analysis of designs on stone collars substantiates this finding, as well as the parallels with time-sensitive designs in other media (Walker 1993).

Though finished stone collars are fairly uniformly spread throughout Puerto Rico, the evi­dence suggests that they may have been produced at only a few central ceremonial sites — possibly by specialists— rather than made by artisans dispersed throughout the region. The implication is that Taino religion might have been centralized, in a manner parallelling the hypothesized "paramount chief' in the Taino political realm.

Elsewhere (Walker 1993), I present a detailed analysis of the stylistic implications of the designs and design fields, Taino myth, and the symbolism of the Taino iconography.

REFERENCES CITED

Alegría, Ricardo E. 1983. Ball Courts and Ceremonial Plazas in the West Indies. Yale Univ. Publications in An­

thropology No.79. Dept. of Anth., Yale Univ., New Haven. Fewkes, Jesse Walter

1907. The Aborigines of Porto Rico and Neighboring Islands. Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

García Goyco, Osvaldo 1984. Influencias Mayas y Aztecas en los Tainos de las Antillas Mayores. Ediciones Xibalbay,

San Juan, Puerto Rico. Helms, Mary H.

1987. Art Styles and Interaction Spheres in Central America and the Caribbean: Polished Black Wood in the Greater Antilles. In Chief doms in the Americas, editors R. Drennan and C.Uribe, pp.67-83. Univ. Press of America.

Mason, J. Alden 1941. A Large Archaeological Site at Capa, Utuado, with Notes on other Porto Rico Sites

Visited in 1914-1915. Scientific Survey of P.R. and V.I., 18(2):209-272. N.Y. Academy of Sciences.

Mason, Otis T. 1877. The Latimer Collection of Antiquities from Porto Rico in the National Museum. An­

nual Report of Smith sonian Institution for 1876, pp. 372-393. Washington, D.C. Oliver, José R.

1992. The Caguana Ceremonial Center: A Cosmic Journey Through Taino Spatial & Icono-

128 JEFF WALKER

graphic Symbolism Paper presented Xth International Symposium of Latin Amer. Indian Literature Assoc, San Juan.

Rouse, Irving 1952. Porto Rican Prehistory: Introduction; Excavations in the West and North and Excava­

tions in the Interior, South and East. Scientific Survey of P.R. and V.I. 18(3-4): 305-578. New York Academy of Sciences.

Sackett, James 1990. Style and Ethnicity in Archaeology: The Case for Isochrestism. In The Uses of Style in

Archaeology, editors M.Conkey and C.Hastrof, pp.32-43. Cambridge University Press. Saville, Marshall H.

1926. The Stone "Collars"of Porto Rico. Indian Notes III(3):177-188. Mus. of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, N.Y.

Walker, Jeffery B. 1993. Stone Collars, Elbow Stones and Three-pointers, and the Nature of Taino Ritual and

Myth. Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Anth., Washington State Univ., Pullman. Univer. Microfilms, Ann Arbor.

Wilson, Samuel M. 1990. Hispaniola, Caribbean Chief doms in the Age of Columbus. Univ. of Alabama Press,

Tuscsaloosa.

b - boss dp - decorated panel dpg decorated panel ridge dpb - decorated panel border dpbp - decorated panel border perforation s shoulder upp undecorated panel pit up - undecorated panel upg - undecorated panel groove upb - undecorated panel border sb - shoulder band or shoulder ridge p projection

Fig. 1. Nomenclature for Parts of a stone collar (after Fewkes 1907:160).

ACTAS DEL XV CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL DE ARQUEOLOGÍA DEL CARIBE 129

Fig. 2. Distribution of stone collars and elbow stones in modern Puer­to Rican municipali­ties; shaded zones have recorded major courts (after Alegría 1983:60).

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Fig. 4. Group of stone collars in process on the grounds of the Caguana Ceremo­nial Site, Utuado.