THE CUEVA DE MORA (COMERIO, PR) PETROGLYPHS & …ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/06/19/61/00651/17-2.pdfThe Mora Cavern is located 2.11 km to the northwest of the unlabeled light duty-paved

THE CUEVA DE MORA (COMERIO, PR) PETROGLYPHS & PICTOGRAPHS: A DOCUMENTARY PROJECT

Peter G. Roe, José Rivera Meléndez, and Peter DeScioli

ABSTRACT The Cueva de Mora, between Cidra and Comerío, Puerto Rico, is a huge limestone solution cavern

famous for its large and complex pictographs, as well as two "flanking" assemblages of petroglyphs cut near both its entrances. Long known to Puerto Rican and international scholars, this assemblage has inexplicably remained undocumented despite the nearly life-size elaborate pictographs, painted on a natural ledge and near the cave ceiling some 7 and 13 m respectively above the current floor of the main chamber. A Centro de Investigaciones Indígenas de Puerto Rico (CIIPR) team has conducted a campaign of documentation there since 1996, presenting here photographs and drawings based on 1:1 clear polyethylene tracings of the pictographs as well as photographs, rubbings and tracings of the petroglyphs. The principal chambers have been mapped and the rock art located using a battery of portable electronic instruments. The findings establish, for the first time, a hierarchy of rock art, central complex pictographs ¡peripheral, simple petroglyphs :: main cult images:portal-guardian images.

ABREGE La Cueva de Mora est une énorme caverne formée d'une solution de roche calcaire qui se trouve

entre Cidra et Comerío à Porto Rico, célebre par ses larges pictographies complexes et ses deux assemblages de pétrogliphes coupés près de ses deux entrées. Connu depuis longtemps par des studieux portoricains et étrangers, cet assemblage est inexplicablement resté sans aucune documentation malgré ses élaborées pictographies à taille presque naturelle peintes sur un bord naturel près du toit de la cave à quelques 7 et 13 m du sol de la chambre principale. Une équipe du Centro de Investigaciones Indígenas de Puerto Rico y conduit depuis 1996 une campagne de documentation présentant ici des photographies et dessins faits après de claires traces des pictographies en polyethylene, et des calques et des traces de pétrogliphes. Nous avons établi les cartes des chambres principales et localisé les peintures rupestres à l'aide d'une gamme d'intruments électroniques. Les trouvailles établissent pour la première fois une hiérarchie d'art rupestre, des pictographies centrales complexes:des pétrogliphes simples et périphériques :: des images de culte principahdes images de gardiens de portes.

ABSTRACTO La Cueva de Mora, localizada entre Cidra y Comerío en Puerto Rico, es una enorme caverna de

piedra caliza famosa por sus grandes y complejas pictografías, como por sus dos conjuntos de petroglifos que bordean ambas de sus entradas. A pesar de ser conocido desde hace tiempo por estudiosos puertorriqueños y extranjeros, inexplicablemente, este conjunto de petroglifos no ha sido documentado, esto, a pesar de sus elaboradas pictografías de casi tamaño natural, pintadas en un borde natural cerca del techo de la cueva a algunos 7 y 13 m respectivamente del suelo de la cámara principal. Un equipo del Centro de Investigaciones Indígenas de Puerto Rico ha conducido allí una campaña de documentación desde el 1996 y presenta en este trabajo fotografías y dibujos basados en 1:1 trazados de las pictografías hechos en polietileno, como también fotografías, calcos y trazados de los petroglifos. Se trazó un mapa de la cámara principal y se localizaron las pinturas rupestres mediante la utilización de un grupo de instrumentos electrónicos. Los hallazgos establecen por primera vez, una jerarquía de arte rupestre, complejas pictografías centralesrsimples petroglifos periféricos y simples :: imágenes de culto principal: imágenes de guardianes porteros.

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Roe, Meléndez, and DeScioli 21

KEY WORDS: Iconography, Puerto Rico, Rock Art, Spatial Analysis.

INTRODUCTION

A huge limestone solution cavern located in the rugged interior of the eastern-central cordillera of Puerto Rico, the Cueva de Mora's formation dates from the early Oligocène to the middle Miocene age (Cox and Briggs 1973:1). The cave lies between the highland towns of Cidra and Comerio in the mountains that loom above the Rio Arroyata (Figure lb-the roundel), a tributary of the Río de La Plata. The site and its rock art have long been known to local aficionados and archaeologists alike, but have never been accurately documented. La Mora also begs interpretation since it is the only cave in the Antilles that spatially segregates petroglyphs from polychromatic pictographs, suggesting both a hierarchy within these two genres, and dynamic dualism whereby the two kinds of images were placed in distinct zones within the cave as a microcosm of the macrocosm outside.

FINDING AND DOCUMENTING THE CAVE AND ITS ROCK ART

The Centro de Investigaciones Indígenas de Puerto Rico, Inc. (CIIPR) team began its documentary fieldwork in the summer of 1996, continuing through January, and ended during June-July of 1997. The crew consisted of 6-10 people: a draftsman, a cartographer, a mapping assistant, an excavator, a rapeller and 1-3 field assistants. Dividing the project into several phases, the CJJPR team researched both geographic and cultural information about the site. After locating La Mora and determining its elevation through electronic instrumentation in conjunction with the USGS (1982) Comerio 7.5 minute (1:20,000) topographic quadrangle, the CJJPR team produced an accurate planometric map of the cave floor and all its chambers. Next we located and documented the "guardian" petroglyphs carved at either entrance, as well as the large and complex pictographs in the cave's two principal chambers. We followed our documentary analysis with a cultural interpretation of the rock art. This iconographie assessment (componential and structuralist) utilized the animistic concept of "naturefact transformation." The pre-Taino artists employed natural features of the cave to "suggest" images' form. Next, modern folklore, when layered upon this rock art, provides direct historical ethnographic analogy with early cronista reports (Arrom 1997). Our interpretation supplements semantic analysis by revealing the "syntactics" of the placement of these two types of rock art within the cave's vertical and horizontal zones. Finally, a consideration of the social implications of the designs reflects changes in late pre-Taino culture.

The Mora Cavern is located 2.11 km to the northwest of the unlabeled light duty-paved road that departs across a bridge from Route 172, a medium duty road that connects Cidra and Comerio and runs along the Rio Arroyata. The cave lies between these two highland towns in a region covered by dense humid subtropical forest. Using a global positioning satellite (GPS) unit the coordinates of the lower cave mouth are 18° 12.47' North Latitude and 66° 13.06' West Longitude. As measured by two electronic altimeters (both within 10 m on all readings, calibrated to sea level on that day), the road closest to the trail head ascending to the cave is 255 m above sea level while the elevation of the lower cave mouth on the mountain above it is 348 m. The difference in elevation between road and cave is 92 m, the distance .53 km.

22 Proceedings of the 17th Congress for Caribbean Archaeology

The site existed in a symbiotic relationship with the closest known residential settlement. The settlement lies on a river terrace near the present bridge of Route 775, where it crosses the Río de la Plata in Comerío to the northwest (Figure 1 a-arrow to triangle). Currently the location of a school athletic field, the site occupied one of the few stretches of flat land in this mountainous landscape. It was the locus of a 1988 salvage excavation when a small cemetery was discovered upon construction of the sports facility. Unfortunately, all the artifactual collections (dating its principal occupation to pre-Taino times) were later swept away in a major flood (Miguel Rodriguez, personal communication 1997). Our seriation of rock art yielded a similar date for both the pictographs and the petroglyphs in La Mora, the late Elenan Ostionoid-early Chican Ostionoid (Taino) period (A.D. 900-1300). La Mora lies within ritual pilgrimage distance of the village. A CDPR walking GPS and laser rangefinder-assisted trek, using natural features to approximate aboriginal paths, took just 42 minutes over a distance of 2.51 km.

The cavern has two levels: one dry and partially illuminated, with a huge resident bat colony that pelts hapless rock art researchers in a constant rain of urine and feces, and a wet and dark lower cavern devoid both of bats and aboriginal occupation. This paper treats just the rock art from the upper section: Cueva Clara.

The partially illuminated cave is large and complex. From lower to upper entrance, it measures 120 m long. The two principal chambers (1 and 2) are 40 x 10 m and 50 xl5 m respectively. The cavern has eleven chambers as well as several "windows" caused by rock falls. The principal window, at the western end of chamber 1 (Figure 2f), provides faint illumination up to a light boundary half way into the elevated chamber 2 (Figure 2g). All the rock art was executed within this zone of dim light: on the intricate stalagmites and stalactites of chambers 10 and 11, lit by a window on the northern side of chamber 5 (Figure 2a), on the western ceiling of the portal of chamber 6 (Figure 2b), on the northern ledge of chambers 1 and 2 (Figure 2d), and near the ceiling of the southern wall of chamber 2 (Figure 2c). Yet the Indians also needed torches as they penetrated the depths heedless of the Histoplasmosis that mandates modern respirators (Figures 3 and 4).

Mora cavern is difficult to reach, involving a 45 minute assault from the road below up 30 degree slippery slopes in the winter wet season (20 minutes during the summer dry season). The arduous ascent through dense forest filled with bromeliads, along narrow paths guarded by poisonous spiders and wasps, has also helped to protect the cave from excessive vandalism. However, remoteness also creates a logistical nightmare since all equipment has to be backpacked in, requiring portable and collapsible chairs, drawing tables and tents. Articulated aluminum ladders and improvised camera-tripod mounted instruments, such as a rotatable protractor fitted with a laser level, helped to determine ceiling height via trigonometry at 13 m (chamber 1) and 7 m (chamber 2). Chambers 5-11 averaged only 3 m in ceiling height. The ceiling irregularity and low reflectivity defeated the effectiveness of the laser rangefinder. Each solution tube entrance forced investigators to crawl in. Once inside the cave, where the GPS signals could not penetrate, the CDPR team employed two digital electronic compasses to set up interconnected north-south/east-west base lines in each chamber. Lateral transects diverged at right angles from the baselines at 50-cm intervals, taped level to the walls in both directions. The result is an accurate planometric map of all the chambers (Figure 2, stippling=bat guano taluses), with their associated major rock detritus.

Yet an accurate map is useless without precise renderings of the rock art. Therefore, each example was photographed, both day and night, with multiple 35 mm cameras (a small rangefinder was the most helpful with its built-in flash, being easy to handle while perched high on ladders or


hanging from rappelling rope). The night photos proved the most illuminating for the petroglyphs, revealing their subtle incisions via heightened shadows.

All the rock art was also videotaped using a Digital Hi8mm camcorder equipped with a video light. The tapes were viewed in conjunction with the still 35 mm prints and slides and the rubbings/tracings for the final renderings. The taping was informative due to the higher light sensitivity ( 1 Lux) of the videocam's CCD over photographic film. Then each of the petroglyphs was captured via a rubbing, while both petroglyphs and pictographs were traced using clear polyethylene and permanent fine-point markers at 1:1 scale. For accuracy, all the drawings were xerographically reduced and redrawn on tracing velum, with 10- cm scales attached.

Every specimen of arte rupestre was cataloged according to number, placement and genre. Each petroglyph was mapped in situ and assigned a catalog number beginning with the prefix "PET"=petroglyph. Then a number infix signaled the chamber it was found in (1-11). Next, a letter indicated which wall, according to the cardinal directions, the petroglyph was cut into (N, S, E, and W). Lastly, a unique number suffix designated each carving, going from top-to-bottom and left-to-rightfor every assemblage. Thus, Figure 3a, "PET11 Wl," translates as "the first petroglyph recorded on the west wall of the 11th chamber." The same logic applies to pictographs= "PIC" so that Figure 10a, "PIC1N2," means "the second pictograph recorded on the north wall of chamber 1." While the rock art was accurately recorded, this set does not include all the examples (only about 90 percent) as some depictions were either unreachable (even with rappelling) or so badly damaged by vandalism or poor preservation as to be undecipherable. Another expedition armed with infrared film could profitably attack them.

The petroglyphs, many of them simple human faces (Figures 5a-c, 7c, 8d, 1 la-h, and 12a,e), cluster exclusively near both entrances to the cavern, up and down slope (Figures 2a and e). They bracket the more complex pictographs (most of them full-body depictions bristling with social stratification-indicating feathered crowns) painted between the petroglyphs. The pictographs graced one ancillary chamber (Figure 2b) and filled the two main "medial" chambers (1-2) (Figures 2c and d). Moreover, while all the petroglyphs were carved into low cave walls and stalagmite-stalactite formations near the entrance floors, in small chambers lit by rock fall windows, all the pictographs were drawn very high up, from 7 m on natural ledges on the north wall to 13 m above the cave floor in solution pockets near the south wall ceiling. The exception being the small western group painted above head-height on the ceiling of the western "doorway" into an ancillary chamber. The ledge pictographs are only accessible today by chaining two folding 16-foot aluminum ladders together. Even then, some of the paintings were done on the lower cave ceiling itself in such a manner as to have required the artists to have reclined backwards above the cane scaffolding (note the "crowned" ancestor, Figure 34a, above the senior author's head in Figure 3 as he does a polytracing of Figure

37). Unlike the monochromatic petroglyphs, which were originally highlighted with chalk, the

pictographs were true polychromes, although many have now weathered to monochromes. Beginning with the simpler western pictographs, they were executed in white chalk (Figures 13b, here rendered as black~the "sun," utilizing a natural depression, and c, may be modern) and reddish-brown (cordovan) manganese paint (manganese occurs in these limestone formations as seams and drip concretions [Cox and Briggs 1973:3], easily broken off and ground down to a powder with either water or an organic fat binder). Diagonal parallel lines code the manganese paint (Figure 7a). The humanoid lizard, arms upraised, of this pictograph recalls the inverted anthropomorphic lizard of


petroglyph Figure 7b two chambers away. Were-animals are classic shamanic themes. The preserved polychromes were executed in a specific order. First, a black organic paint

composed of carbon with bat excrements as a binder1 outlined the figure. Because of its organic nature this paint has almost completely disappeared, only discernable as an underline in some of the figures. Then form lines were added in reddish-brown inorganic manganese paint and a level of white chalk overpainting applied. The resistant manganese pigments are all that remain (save for some fugitive white) on the deepest pictographs in chamber 2 (Figures 36 and 37), almost beyond the light boundary. While they appear as white drawings today, the pictographs were thus originally brilliant black-red-white polychromes of great intricacy and complexity!

The southern pictographs represented a much greater documentary challenge than the lower northern images since they were painted high above the cave floor of the huge central chamber 1, near the ceiling. Today they can only be reached by a CIIPR professional rapeller (Figure 4) with modern rope and steel ratchet-guides on a sheer wall face some distance beyond an approaching ledge. Their placement affords proof that the ancient pre-Taino also rappelled, probably via lashed lianas, or "bush rope." Indeed, one pictograph on the northern wall of chamber 1 (PIC1N1) could never be reached (and is thus unpictured), even by our rapeller! In the interests of conservation we decided not to use permanent bolt anchors, the only way this figure could have been reached (all ascents were made by removable lashing on rock projections to avoid defacing the walls). Hence, these pictographs were truly remote, and therefore very powerful, never revisited once they had been ritually drawn.

Yet despite these spatial differences, both genres of rock art share the same pictorial devices and iconographie themes. Thus they are contemporaries, with distinct functional, rather than temporal, roles. The most prominent of the shared devices is "narurefact transformation." This is a metaphoric act of disassociation whereby a natural feature of the cave's interior (a stalagmite or a stalactite, a seepage concretion, a solution cavity or depression) becomes "detached" from its natural origin and is "appropriated" as part of a composition. Due to the simplicity of their technology, which made stone carving difficult, and their animistic identification with nature, ancient Caribbean Amerindians minimally modified their landscape, "reading in" form by lightly altering Nature to "suggest" Culture. For example, Indians used a joined stalagmite-stalactite column (Figure 6) to carve a number of faces, one above another, in series up the formation, taking advantage of the roundness of the pillar to suggest volume in the visages. Its central face, Figure 7d, is an important petroglyph since its V-shaped hairline dates these carvings to late Elenan-early Chican Ostionoid times, the same as the pictographs.

If stylistic themes are shared so too are pictorial elements. The "guardian" or "portal marking" petroglyphs from chamber 10 share the same "ancestral" and "shamanic" themes as the larger central pictographs. The most prominent theme is a "wrapped ancestor" (Figures 7a and e). In the other entry tube, Figure 12c joins the "body" of 12d to form another, albeit "eared," enveloped figure. Creatures emblematic of these revered-but-feared death spirits abound, such as bats, the "devolved" souls of the Opia death spirits (Figure 8a).

Human visages that suggest this-worldly hierarchy also appear in the petroglyphs, their complex semicircular crowns and large ear spools (Figures 9 and 10a) recalling similar El Bronce Elenan Ostionoid images while presaging the more complex, and later, classic Chican Ostionoid faces at Caguana. Nested images, rich in "pictorial dualism," also appear. For example, two petroglyphs "share" elements, as where one of the faces shares an eye that defines an ear in an


overlapping visage (Figures 12a and b). The pictographs manifest these same elements but present them in a more complex manner,

at larger scale and in a more "central" and "elevated" setting. They were all drawn life-size or greater, and placed very high in the two main chambers, accessible only by ancillary passages, as is the case for the "ancestral rayed skull" of Figure 14a and the thematically-related "wrapped ancestor" of 14b, both parts of the same grouping that includes Figures 15a and b. They were also painted along very narrow high ledges, as in the simple partial face of Figure 15c (recalling in paint the simple petroglyphic faces below), the next pictograph on the north wall of chamber 1. Others, such as the complex on the south wall of the same chamber, could only have been reached by rappelling. These impressive pictographs, in pristine condition due to their inaccessibility, form a balanced composition (Figure 16). The main figure, its centrality denoting importance, is a very rare life-sized male figure with a plumed crown and a prominent phallus suggesting shamanic potency (Figure 18). To his right is a large plumed and eared face with the curious below-face lobes characteristic of this complex and perhaps evocative of a necklace. As with many of these pictographs, its features are defined negatively by masses of white paint, positively-applied (Figure 7), an enduring Cedrosan Saladoid stylistic device!

Between the central figure's widely spread legs a curious "testicular" face appears (Figure 9a), while to his right sits a humanoid (Turtle Woman progenitress?) with one out-curved arm and another fugitive one (Figure 9b). Her "goggle" eyes are a common motif that appears alone on petroglyphs dating to this period. Above this grouping, "framed" by a natural solution concavity whose flat interior formed a convenient canvas for the painter, is another set of pictographs centered on a small anthropomorph with a serrated (plumed) head, left hand raised (Figures 20 and 21a). Aligned dots are unique La Mora pictographic motifs. Thus, above the humanoid appears another "turtle" with the dots indicating its tail and, higher still, an additional turtle has aligned dots above and below its shell (Figures 24 and 25). Do these figures evoke Pane's "Turtle Woman?"

Death and life are linked, not opposed, in Taino pictographs. We have just seen the erect phallus of the skeletal shaman in La Mora, his skull orbits framed as "goggles." The behique, emaciated from dieting, fasting and vomiting to purge his body of profane food to make it a suitable "vessel" for the "pure" foods of tobacco smoke and hallucinogenic cohoba powder, communicated as an intermediary with the wrapped dead ancestors proliferating in this cave. A slightly later classic Taino pictograph from Cueva Espinal on Mona Island shows the skeletal shaman (also with an erection) carrying the egg-like bundles of the hammock-wrapped dead in his upraised arms (Roe 1997:Figure 3). This image forms the iconographie link between the shaman of the southern ceiling and the wrapped ancestors of the northern ledge in Cueva Mora. These ancestors, precisely because they are dead, are "pregnant" with the fertility of descendants to come, the lineage's progeny in "genealogical circularity." Hence northern-ledge pictographic "rayed skulls" appear with wrapped ancestors, and above the figures of fertility on the southern ceiling, in the highest and most awesome setting, on a triangular eminence that, via "nature fact transformation," suggests its form, is a huge triangular skull image (Figure 22).

The shape of this face suggests a 3-pointer seen on end (Figure 23; a similar 3-pointer appears on the "beach petroglyphs" of Maisabel). The 3-pointer is the only Taino stone artifact specifically mentioned by Pané and magically augmented manioc fertility. This ancient Antillean practice of interning stones to promote the increase of underground tubers recalls current ethnographic practice in the culturally-related Guianas (Waiwai asháwa stones). Fertility thus comes


out of the ground, from caves, from beneath the mounded conuco (miniature mountains?) plots, and from central plaza cemeteries ("caves" within the "mounded middens" associated with the encircling huts?)~all to nourish the living. So too were the dead "planted" in the earth.

Fertility and "ancestral" themes are further intertwined in the main group on the northern ledge of chamber 2 (Figure 26). This huge scene, executed life-size, shows three "eared" wrapped ancestors (Figures 26a and c: two complete, b: one partial), as well as an overlapping Múcaro owl, their nocturnal "herald." A single human heart-shaped face appears in the lowest position as their "descendant" (Figure 26d). These paintings, accessible aboriginally via lashed platforms, are characterized by massed-yet-thin parallel, nesting curvilinear lines that recall (Figure 31 a), in cross-media fashion, later classic Taino bas-relief woodcarving designs.

Owl imagery continues in the next grouping, where the pre-Taíno/early Taino artist skillfully utilized, à la "naturefact transformation," a vertical manganese concretion seepage to suggest the bird's bill (now broken off, Figure 27a). Below it is a smaller stylized profile bird (Figure 27b), signaling the Owl's role as the "Master of Crepuscular Birds," as well as a miniature turtle (Figure 27c). The latter links the twin themes of water and the Underworld (subaquatic) domain of the dead, fertile in the "womb" imagery of the turtle's "hollow" gourd-like shell (hollow and round fruit, skulls and reptilian carapaces are primordial "First Woman" artifactual wombs in both Amazonian-Orinocan and Antillean mythology). Such symbolism derives from a shared "phallocentric" folk model of conception and gestation whereby males actively "construct," via repeated ejaculations, fetuses in the passive "containers" that are women (the couvade and "plural genitors" are only explicable by this model).

Fittingly, therefore, the next northern ledge assemblage combines a tri-lobed motif (Figure 28a), oddly "ovarian" in imagery (similar motifs appear on female-produced Boca Chica pottery), with a profile fish (Figure 28b)—evoking the "bones as fish" that spilled from a ruptured gourd in Taino creation myths (Arrom 1997:68). A partially-effaced "wrapped ancestor" with the owl's goggle eyes (Figure 28c) provides congruent imagery. A large "simple face," like the contemporary lower petroglyphs (Figure 28d), is painted across a manganese seam, again recalling the living descendants of these ancestral and aquatic images.

A Guabá cave spider, a huge arachnid still feared in folk belief, though harmless, next appears in the pictographs (Figure 29a), as it does in the cave. An "infantile" full human figure follows, neotenous in its large head and leg position, again defined "negatively" by positive painting (Figure 4, above the rapeller; Figure 29c). Next, an élite ancestor's crowned head evokes social hierarchy (Figure 29b). Its style connects, cross-media, with a lower petroglyph (Figures 9 and 10a), while presaging later Caguana images (Roe 1997:Figure 2h).

Most spectacular and best preserved is the human visage with a plumed headdress, rendered larger-than-life (Figures 30 and 31b). The presence of a "nose" on this depiction is important as a seriational marker because it is like the one on a contemporary El Bronce crowned head. Below and to the left was another face, as well as other complex motifs, but they are now unrecoverable due to vandalism (Figure 32). Beneath it and to the right is a huge humanoid face, the "dead" (skull-like) counterpart (Figure 33) of the "live" plumed face of Figure 31b above. The serrated inverted triangles that fringe this macabre image are headdress feathers.

Further Ufe and death ancestral imagery trails off deeper into chamber 2, almost into darkness as the light boundary is reached. On the inclined ceiling is a well-preserved full figure of a wrapped ancestor with a curious laterally-pointed crown (Figure 34a), below him a huge eared wrapped


ancestor, largely red with fugitive white over painting (Figure 35), as well as a smaller poorly-preserved one with "teared" eyes (Figure 34b-evocative of Boinayel, the Taino "Rain Giver," Arrom 1997:Plates 54 and 55). The last image, faded into red monochrome, is a most unusual wrapped ancestor (Figures 36 and 37) with a down-curving crown and triangular upper-torso body. This is a fitting spectral image as darkness takes over ruled by the chirping of millions of bats in the high chimney just beyond (Figure 38). No other images so movingly reflected the "other worldliness" of pre-Taino cosmology as do those oí La Mora with its massed, yet segregated, petroglyphs (27) and pictographs (37).

Both ethnohistoric (chronicler) and archaeological evidence indicates that caves were important ritual centers for Taino and pre-Taino shamanism. As dark, underground, primordial places they were connected with the ancestors' cult. The mythic origin of the Taino derived from a cave (1997:72). Caves are full of petroglyphs, and more rarely pictographs, many representing "wrapped ancestral" figures. These were associated with the fertility of their living descendants, as mediated by the figure of the shaman, or behique (Roe 1997:Figure 3). Much ritual paraphernalia has been discovered in caves, most of which pertained to the partaking of the hallucinogenic snuff cohoba, as shamans used caves like "portals" into the other world of the ancestors. Their "shamanic flights" were accompanied by images of birds, including nocturnal avian "Masters of the Dead" like the Múcaro owl modeled on Taino ritual ceramic vessels, as well as bats, the animal symbol of the Opia spirits of the dead. Mora Cavern coheres with this picture while providing the most striking graphic depictions of Taino supernaturals and the first clear case of their spatial segregation and different, yet complementary roles.

The cave's symbolic importance endures in modern Puerto Rican folklore. In the interior, there is a legend, adopted from Spain that provides the etiology of the cave's name (Sra. Raquel Martínez de Heywood, personal communication 1997). A young Moorish princess {La Mora) took refuge in the cavern after a tragic love affair with a Christian knight. Her cries of anguish still issue from the cave, and a siren's song drawing residents near; from the cave they are magically transported to the river {El Nuevo Día, 23 May 1997). An acoustic feature inside the cave embodies these strange sounds. Called La Campana, "the Bell," it is a large boulder adjacent to one of the northern ledge-entrances (Figure 2d) that rings when struck, echoing throughout the main chamber. Another legend from the days of slavery has the cave affording, thanks to the aid of the princess, an aquatic escape route for fleeing slaves. The cave is said to connect with the river below. Here too there is a geological referent to folklore, as beneath the presently accessible "lighted" cave, Cueva Clara, there is another dark cave filled with underground streams (Figure 38); these streams may have permitted the escape.

Such stories are relevant to the upper cave's archaeology as they not only conserve some aboriginal beliefs but also have helped to foster local reverence for it. These attitudes, along with its relative remoteness, have aided the preservation of the cavern's Precolumbian art. Yet they did not protect the floor of the bat-infested cave from guano extraction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the fate of most Puerto Rican caves during that period of intensive highland coffee and tobacco production). CIIPR test excavations, therefore, failed to recover aboriginal artifacts associated with the rock art. Only by lifting up the large boulders, weighing several tons, that fell as detritus from the cave ceiling could one probe Indian layers, providing that Indians ever occupied the areas with ambient light via ephemeral camps. Water flows in a small boulder-strewn rivulet some 50 m below the cave to sustain such an occupation. Change also marks the rock art. The


present lack of earlier guano soil levels makes the pictographs less accessible today than when they were executed, perhaps by 1-2 m.

WHY GO DOWN INTO THE EARTH TO LOOK UP AT ANCESTORS?

The differential placement of the two kinds of rock art in Cueva Mora was no accident. Judging from surviving cognate South Amerindian cosmology, the pre-Taino and their Taino descendants had a triple-tiered world view. This is an ancient system (dating back to the Formative, at least 1000 B.C.) consisting of three floating "platter worlds": Sky World (or sky dome), Earth World and a sub-aquatic Underworld, all connected by the "armature" of the sacred Ceiba (Kapok) tree, either in phytomorphic form or as petrified World Mountain stumps à la the tepeus of the Guianas, or the sacred Cauta mountain of Taino mythology (Arrom 1997:72). Moreover, Pane's texts and South Amerindian mythology both provide evidence that caves are "portals" into the Earth World from the Underworld below and the Sky World above. Given dynamic dualism, these three main platters can mutate into a larger series of inter-graded levels via overlap.

The "artifactual dualism" of pre-Taino and Taino pottery (Roe 1997: Figure la and b), sculpture (1997: Figure lc) and rock art (1997: Figure 2i) betrays this same "cognitive style" unique to South Amerindian culture and its derivatives, past and present. Such "Dual Tridadic Dualism" (DTD) utilizes the same "figure/ground" shift as the "perceptual ambiguity" of positive-negative ceramic designs. In the art of the Antilles everything has a double meaning. This "design dualism" (via opposing dual adornos; 1997: Figure 2a), bi-view rotation (1997: Figure 2h-i), and perceptual shifting date back to the Saladoid and continues, as a remarkable demonstration of cultural continuity, into the "reversible" pre-Taino and Taino ceramic lugs (1997: Figures 2g and h).

But this persistent "double vision" is not the static dualism of Western thought, which pits mutually exclusive dyads against each other (Good/Bad, Man/Woman, Life/Death). Ancient Antillean Amerindians were as interested in the conceptual "bridges" between dyads as they were in the "poles" (the opposed concepts) themselves. Their more "processual" view allowed them to traverse the cognitive landscape between "life" and "death" from both directions, and back again, via intermediary "overlap categories." Thus we have "rotatable" Taino images in petroglyphs, whose "belly roundels" can be transformed, via rotation or horizontal reflection, into common sub-rim banded designs on pottery, or those same "decorative" designs can be rotated again to produce "stylized" herons! Or, we find "reversible" images carved into stone collars that must be inverted to reveal contrasting images. Supposedly "static" images come alive as true "kinetic sculpture" via simply changing the angle of perception. Janus-headed depictions with dual "life/death" faces look in opposite directions just as wrapped ancestral figures are carved both "right-side-up" and "upside-down" next to each other on the same river boulder, or 3-pointers appear with dual stacked "alter ego" faces one above the other (1997: Figures lc3 and 4).

This "perceptual ambiguity" allows each artifact to condense several different meanings polysemically, enabling the "thing made" (the artifact) and the "thing told" (the myth) to mutually reinforce each other via "myth-material cultural mutual referentiality." That is, the myth provides the "sacred etiology" of the artifact, explaining the history of its origin, while at the same time using it tautologically as "mythic empirical" (tangible) proof that the sacred-story-believed-to-be-true (the myth) is true. Simultaneously, the artifact "calls up" the myth it instantiated, informants narrating the tale as tíiey make or handle the artifact. The artifact becomes animated; as it is "read" in shifting


perspectives, the story it represents is told; object equals myth as "embodied narration." Such dynamic dualism means that the focus of interest, perceptually and cognitively, is as

much on the "bridge" of the "shifts between," the liminal overlaps, as it is on the "rungs" of the figures or symbols (the polar categories) themselves. Death is not the "end" of life, but a step in its recreation. Carved or painted ancestors (sacred efficacy still "inside" society although "beyond" it) thus "procreate" new life in descendants; by being dead they are the most "alive," the donators of life force=fecundity. Similarly, current spirits (sacred force and will outside of society), like the Taino Opía, Spirits of the Dead, are lethal (or harmful) via seduction (Roe 1997)!

How does this system "animate" the planes of the Antillean universe and the placement of rock art? Not only did the ancient visitors to Cueva Clara carve the petroglyphs on either side of the pictographs, in plane-view (Figures 2a and e versus 2b, c and d), but, in profile perspective, they also painted the pictographs high above the petroglyphs (Figures 38a and b versus 38c and d), just below the cave ceiling. This pattern suggests a "spatial logic." Thus, while "Earth" opposes "Sky" and "Underworld" opposes "Earth," they also overlap to provide cosmic "bridges" to each other that both facilitate the "shamanic flight" of the behique and mirrors the lashed scaffolding, the "sky ladder" of the artists who painted these images. One moves back and forth between these realms by "shifting figure and ground" between each paired dyad by constructing two sets of dyads and the dual triadic overlap between them. Ideas reflect the same intentional ambiguity as designs.

Consider the dyad of "Earth/Sky." What is the overlap between "Earth" and "Sky" from the point of view of Sky? It is "Lower Atmospheric Heaven," the Cloud World that hangs close upon the mountain peaks of the island's interior (Figure 38e). Similarly, what is the "conceptual overlap" between "Earth" and "Sky" from the point of view of "Earth?" That is "Upper Earth" (Figure 38f), those same mountain's peaks, sacred armatures that connect the earth to the sky above. By an identical dualistic logic the caves within the mountain peaks act as microcosms of the geographical macrocosm outside. Thus, the entrance chambers with their petroglyphs are "Lower Earth" filled with the carved visages of the human "pilgrims" and the ancestral "guardians" that give them passage, while the ledges and solution pockets of the main chambers high above are "Upper Earth" like the Mountain World outside, alive with the large and powerful pictographic ancestors. Shamanic heroes also appear and shuttle back and forth to the ancestors from their human descendants below, bringing fertility with the aid of awesome avian familiars. Above these figures lies the cave ceiling itself, "Lower Atmospheric Heaven," its myriad solution "cups" presenting the same curved surfaces (but negatively) to an observer below as the "positive" bulbous cumulus formations of the Cloud World without. Lastly, the high, dark solution "funnels" filled with millions of chirping and jostling bats (anomalous "birds" that give birth to live young, like humans, and are covered, like them, in the soft "feathers" of hair). These vents provide the bats' exit as they swarm vertically into the night sky beyond. Such dangerous sinkholes, which have claimed human lives, are like the vertical burial shafts dug into the soil for the dead. Yet bats go out the earth, as well as into it.

What are these furry visitors that enter the earth vertically like human dead? They are the fruit-eating Opía, nocturnal and erratically flying ancestral "souls," Spirits of the Dead. Abundant iconographie isomorphisms link bats, Opía and owls. The most common bat in Hispañola and Puerto Rico (and of Cueva Mora) is Artibeus jamaicensis, whose favorite food is the same guava fruit (Psidium guajava) beloved of the similarly nocturnal Opía. If the ancestors were the "quiet dead," benevolent in their care for their descendants, then Opía acted as the "unquiet dead," a danger to them. Perhaps via some delict in life such as incest or stinginess, they underwent an act of "sacred


devolution" and became bats, mirroring, as drab and nocturnal structural inversions, the colorful and diurnal "solar" birds that soar high in the daytime Upper Heaven above the mountain.

No wonder the cavern was a sacred zone of pilgrimage and shamanic ritual, no wonder also that worshipers had to go down, into the earth to look up at their ancestors "floating" in colorful polychrome near the Lower Atmospheric Heaven of the cave ceiling ! Thus, in Cueva Clara we have a "sacred topological ladder" via whose rungs the shaman may ascend or descend through the planes of his universe to converse with the spirits and perhaps recapture the souls of the afflicted they have kidnaped.

This is the famous "chromatism" of Lévi-Strauss, but now translated from the Western Cartesian idiom of classical structuralism into the more dynamic dualism of Indian thought. One takes "little steps" to go from one opposite pole of meaning to another within the "ladder" of a concept's semantic range (Figure 38g). To recapitulate, we now have "Upper Heaven," the remote sky of the sun and wheeling frigate birds, then the Cloud World, the "Lower Atmospheric Heavens." Below that is the cloud-enshrouded "Upper Earth" of the mountain tops and, beneath it, "Lower Earth," the earth plane of the village and surrounding forest and sea. Amerindians thus generated four linked entities out of a single dyad. The same "rungs" can also be created, via overlap, between the next levels down, "Earth" and "Underworld." One ascends, or descends, bidirectionally, between each opposed pole by using the overlapping rungs of the liminal concepts that connect them.

The lower placement of the carved petrogyphs, often depictions of similar "wrapped ancestors," but simplified in monochromatic carving rather than polychrome painting, cohere with "Lower Earth." The cave entrances/exits connect, both symbolically and geologically, with the next zone down, the subterranean waters of the "Dark Cave" and the "Underworld River" below. The dead continue their aquatic journey via river boulder petroglyphs replete with wrapped ancestral figures as they wind their way in a jumble to the sea, and thence to the beach rock petroglyphs that frame the river mouths. If this model of the spatial system holds, perhaps the parallel lines of ball park petroglyphs (the last type) were denizens of these same "dry rivers" (often located along real rivers). These alignments are filled with aquatic imagery like sharks, dolphins, herons and "Frog Women." All these beings populate the aquatic boundary (the watery periphery) of the "Earth Platter" and the site for the ball game, symbolic of the movement of sun and moon over the terrestrial plane of the earth in daily (diurnal/nocturnal) and seasonal (equinoctial/solstitial) reenactments of the cosmic gyre. As invariably connected with water, though of stone, all four genres of rock art "precipitate" that cosmology.

This water in the stone is why the Taino afterworld of the dead (Coaybay) was variously located in the bowels of a mountain valley or on an island in the western sea. Its cardinal position, the zone of the setting sun, indicates entry into the Underworld, laced with west-to-east flowing waters, the Milky Way of the night sky (the Underworld turned "inside-out" in the dark transformation of the nocturnal heavens) whose silvery stars many current lowland groups still envision as both celestial fish and the souls of the dead. Both fish and sea turtles also abound near wrapped ancestors and their owl heralds in the pictographs near the cave "sky"=ceiling.2 This "celestial river" falls to the earth as rain (often showering in the Caribbean at night) while the underground waters well upward into the earth plane in dark pools and springs, or issue as rivers flowing out of caves from the sub-aquatic realm, coursing downward to the sea from the "Upper Earth" crests of hollow limestone mountains. This eternally circulating "water gyre" is nothing more than the conduit of the "living dead," the ancestors, as they bequeath new life when shamans make


pilgrimages to the cave to take cohoba, then draw, sculpt and thus communicate with them in their underworld and watery "portals." In Taino myth not only do the ancestors emerge from caves, but bones of their dead descendants are "reborn" as fish swimming in the amniotic fluid of the ocean-gourd, the hollow cave metonymically replicating the ancestral "watery womb."

But not all meaning is atemporal structural order. Since human views of the hereafter model upon their own changing social world, so too should these opposed and aligned sacred rock art figures change in style as the society that produced them evolved in time. Rock art and monumental architecture, in the shape of the ball park, emerged as an expression of a "material culture of the assertion of public power" as "complex tribes" or "incipient chiefdoms" appeared with the demographic explosions and internal insular colonization consequent to the "Shell Culture" insular adaptation. Hence the Elenan Ostionoid large-scale artifactual assemblage replaced the small, jewellike material culture of "personal presentation" of their "simple tribal" Saladoid antecedents.

As early ballparks like Tibes, with their simple human face boundary-marking petroglyphs (Phase A, ca. A.D. 600-900), evolved into middle-period parks such as El Bronce with full body, but still crude "menhir" petroglyphic boundary stones, aspects of hierarchy began to emerge in the rock art, mirroring increasing social stratification. While the earlier carving's "simple faces" signaled relatively egalitarian social relations (three pits for eyes-and-mouth within a round head democratically portray the shared physiogamy of all humans), Phase B (A.D. 1000-1300) shifts visual emphasis to the head's accouterments that denote hierarchy. These are accessories that invidiously divide people via sumptuary codes, such as the right to wear (and be shown with) simple (feathered?) semicircular crowns, beaded necklaces (the "rayed faces") and large ear spools. By the time of the protohistoric Taino, and their "complex chiefdoms," a true ranked society with full-time occupational specialists represented itself with finely executed full-body menhir petroglyphs possessing complex crowns, more detailed facial features (hairlines producing a "heart-shaped face," goggle "dead=closed" eyes, a "winged" nose), as well as élite and gender-indicating accouterments like guaizas—pectoral necklaces and furniture such as duhos.

The placement and execution of both types of rock art in Cueva Mora recapitulate the pre-Taino pattern of emergent hierarchy. As we have seen, five independent lines of evidence support this argument: (1.) the technical simplicity/complexity of the two media, pictographs being polychrome and additive are more complex than the petroglyphs, which are monochrome and reductive in execution as in perception; the petroglyphs are perceived as simple positive designs, whereas the pictographs embody difficult positive-negative designs (2.) the relative iconographie (thematic) development of the two types, first in terms of their "syntagmatic" relationships (the petroglyphs are isolates versus the frieze assemblages of the pictographs) and (3.) in relation to their paradigmatic (deep structural oppositions/congruencies) nature, the pictographs oppose and align more figures (fish, owls, ancestors, 3-pointer, shaman, skulls, turtles, birds), the petroglyphs fewer figures (bats, lizards, humans) (4.) the sheer differences in scale (size) between the two forms of rock art, the petroglyphs appear less than life size, the pictographs are shown greater than life size, and (5.) the spatial context of their cave syntagmatic placement (the petroglyphs are placed lower, where one looks down on them; the pictographs are placed much higher, forcing one to look up at them; the petroglyphs are peripheral, the pictographs are central). Significantly, the petroglyph's most complicated human portrayals, the "crowned head" of Figure 10a, and the "nested face" of 10b, were placed further inside (in chamber 5) than the simpler western peripheral carvings. Thus, even within the petroglyphic genre the same equation holds-centralityxomplexity :: peripherality:simplicity-that


governs relations between the two media. By combining all these vectors we can derive the same equation for pictograph/petroglyph

interrelations as we obtained from spatial simple/complex petroglyphic associations-pictographsrpetroglyphs :: central complexity:peripheral simplicity. This, for the first time, assigns functionally specific roles for each rock art genre (petroglyphs as outer "portal guardians" and "supplicants" versus pictographs as inner shamanic "intermediaries" and ancestral "totemic" spirits, cult images flanked by their animal harbingers and familiars).

CONCLUSIONS

The Cueva de La Mora in Comerío, Puerto Rico, is one of the most important caverns in the Caribbean thanks to its unique assemblage of pictographs and petroglyphs. Because they embody violence upon stone, perhaps the petroglyphs "cut-into" rock were "toxic" images for the Indians who carved them (Guss 1989)3. They were the masculine "guardians" of the cave's entrance portals, while the "additive" (not "subtractive") paintings in the inner chambers are "therapeutic" in a gestational sense, "feminine" (adding layers of contrasting paint, "building up" life), although appropriated by masculine shamans in a logic of endless overlapping dualities. Maybe the death-in-life of the portals ("cutting into," "reducing," is like killing and butchering) yields to the life-in-death ("painting-on," "layering," is like nurturing) of the central chambers and their "Upper Earth/Lower Atmospheric Heaven" domains of the high cave walls and ceilings. They were metaphoric rungs on the lashed ladder to heaven ascended by the shaman in visions. We can only guess at the complexities these carvings and paintings represent, yet by their "fixity," the stationary character of in situ rock art, we glimpse the "syntax" of spatial relations beneath the "semantics" of iconography. Human figures of lesser elaboration (worshipers?, descendant pilgrims?) characterize the flanking petroglyphs, posted as they are by the two entrances, the upper and lower solution access tubes. They perform "boundary-marking" functions, guarding the entrances to the cave, and spatially bracketing the larger and more complex pictographs whose friezes tell a syntagmatic tale of mythic proportions. With their binary placement of the two principal genres of rock art, Cueva Mora is a portal into the past and into future research on the spatial systems that are caves and their language of images, voices in the stone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank the Centro de Investigaciones Indígenas de Puerto Rico, Inc., for its generous support. We also thank the Office of Undergraduate Research, the College of Arts and Sciences and the International Studies Program of the University of Delaware for tiiree Grants-in-Aid to support die participation of Mr. DeScioli (the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe [CEAPRC], donated lodging). Thanks also go to Sr. Modesto de Huertas Torres ("Moré") for his rappelling skills. The CnPR team extends thanks to the family of Sr. Juan and Sra. Modesta Serrano for their generous support in lodging and fieldwork.


REFERENCES CITED

El Nuevo Día (END) [San Juan, Puerto Rico] 1997 De princesas y aparecidos en Comerío. 23 May. San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Arrom, J. J. 1997 The Creation Myths of the Taino. In Taino: Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the

Caribbean, edited by F. Bercht, E. Brodsky, J. A. Farmer, and D. Taylor, pp. 68-79. Monacelli Press, New York.

Cox, D. P., and R. P. Briggs 1973 Metallogenic Map of Puerto Rico. Miscellaneous Geologic Investigations, Map I-

721. U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.

Guss, D. M. 1989 To Weave and To Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rain

Forest. The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Robiou-Lamarche, S. 1992 Chemin la tortue: La Via Láctea entre los Caribes Insulares. Paper presented at the

1 Oth Symposio Internacional, Asociación de Literaturas Indígenas Latinoamericanas (LAILA/AILA). Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Roe, P. G. 1997 Just Wasting Away: Taino Shamanism and Concepts of Fertility. In Taino: Pre-

Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean, edited by F. Bercht, E. Brodsky, J. A. Farmer, and D. Taylor, pp. 124-157. Monacelli Press, New York.

United States Department of the Interior, Geological Survey (USGS) 1982 Comerío Quadrangle, Puerto Rico. N1807.5-W6607.5/7.5 (7.5 Minute Series,

Topographic), 1:20,000, 10 foot contour interval. PR Catalog No. 000127. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Department of Transportation and Public Works, San Juan, Puerto Rico.


ENDNOTES

1. Identifications are courtesy of Dr. Charles Swann, the Bartol Research Foundation, University of Delaware. 2. Robiou-Lamarche (1992), citing the Island Caribs of Dominica, notes that the Milky Way was called "the Path of the Turtle." Perhaps the pre-Taino and Taino shared a similar belief since the most prized of the sea turtles, Chelonia mydas, crawls onto beaches to lay its eggs in June, coinciding with the heliacal setting of the Pleiades, the beginning of the horticultural year for both groups. Beach petroglyphs, like those at Maisabel Playa, Vega Baja, actually show sea turtles oriented to the land, and fish to the sea, all in association with wrapped ancestors. 3. For the Cariban Ye'cuana of the Guianas, as for their Waiwai cousins, all designs in culture are taken from "generous" or reluctant ("stingy") animal donors in mythic time. If these "cultural custodians" are dangerous or impressive the designs taken from them become human "trophies," symbolizing both identification with nature and triumph over it. Because of the carnivorous diet of these "donors," their designs are "toxic," too strong and "natural," for women. This taboo applies particularly to those females entering vulnerable times in their life cycle, such as menstruation, when they could easily be seduced back into their natural natal world (as Fish Women, Frog Women, Wooden Brides, etc.). Yet there are no megafaunal carnivores, design donors like the anaconda or jaguar, in the impoverished fauna of the Antilles. Lesser animal symbols are present, in analogous but harmless insular forms, that act as "mythic substitutes" for these major lowland animal symbols. Thus a lesser evil figure among the Ye'cuana is the vampire bat, Dede. Despite his small size he has fangs like the jaguar and also dines on human blood. As an anti-cultural cannibal, the bat is a "toxic" design for the Ye'cuana. Vampires do not exist in Puerto Rico, but there are species of harmless fruit-eating bats, such as those that inhabit Cueva Mora, that also have canines and can be made to take the place of their more formidable lowland kin. Hence, the fact that one finds a bat effigy in the lower "guarding" petroglyphs, but this animal symbol is absent among the central "therapeutic" pictographs, may reinforce its "death-in-life," portal-protecting imagery.


COMERÍO QUADRANGLE PUERTO RICO

7.5 MINUTE SERIES (TOPOGRAPHIC)

SCALE 1:20000

CONTOUR INTERVAL 10 METERS DATUM IS MEAN SEA LEVEL

THIS MAP COMPLIES WITH NATIONAL MAP ACCURACY STANDARDS FOR SALE BY U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, DENVER, COLORADO 8 0 2 2 5 , OR RESTON, VIRGINIA 2 2 0 9 2

AND DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC WORKS, SAN JUAN, P. R. 0 0 9 1 0 A FOLDER DESCRIBING TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS AND SYMBOLS IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

ROAD CLASSIFICATION

Heavyduly Light-duly

Medium duty _ „ . ... Unimproved dirt,

I, J Insular Route

000127

COMERÍO, P. R. N 1807.5—W6607.5/7.5

1957

PHOTOREVISED 1982

DMA 1322 I SW-SERIES 6835

Mapped, edited, and published by the Geological Survey

Control by USGS and NOS/NOAA

Topography by photogrammetnc methods from aerial photographs

taken 1941. Field checked 1943. Revised 1957

Polyconic projection. Puerto Rico Datum, 1940 adiustment

2000-meter grid ticks based on Puerto Rico coordinate system

1000-meter Universal Transverse Mercator grid, zone 19

Barrio and municipality boundaries by the Puerto Rico Planning Bo;

Kilometric reference distances shown in red

Revisions shown in purple and woodland compiled from aerial photographs taken 1977 and other sources. This information not field checked. Map edited 1982

Figure 1. The location of the Cueva La Mora on the Comerio USGS quadrangel, 7.5 minute series, a.) The location of the supporting residential site (triangle marked by arrow), b.) The location of the cave site (marked by a roundel).

Upper Entrance & Petroglyphs

Lower Entrance & Petroglyphs

Figure 2. A planometric map of the La Mora cave showing all 12 chambers (numbered), bat guano taluses (stippled) and major rock-fall detritus boulders, a.) The lower solution tube entrance and associated petroglyp b.) The western pictographs executed on the above-portal wall between chambers 5 and 6. c.) The southern ce pictographs painted in solution pockets above a sheer wall face, d.) The northern ledge pictographs high abov floor of chambers 1 and 2. e.) The upper solution tube entrance to the cave with associated "guardian" petroglyphs. f.) The major rock-fall "window" into the principal chamber 1. g.) The light boundary is indicat diagonal lines. All rock art falls within it.

1

Figure 3. The senior author (Roe) doing a polyethylene tracing of the last wrapped ancestor (Figure 37) painted on the northern wall just before the light boundary beyond. The arrow indicates another wrapped figure (Figure 34) and below an even larger enveloped ancestor (Figure 35).

Figure 4. The CIIPR rapeller, Sr de Huertas Torres (Moré) securi below the pictograph of an "inf (Figure 29c), indicated by the ar on the north wall of chamber 2.

PET11W1 PET11W2

PETllSl

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Figure 5. Three "simple face" petroglyphs from the lower chamber 11, western and southern walls. Scale 10 cms. a.) PETl 1W1 b.) PET11W2 c.) PETllSl.

Figure 6. A group of petroglyphs carved into stalagmite-stalagtite formation on the wester chamber 10.

Roe, Meléndez, and DeScioli

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39

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Figure 7. Drawings, based on rubbings and polyethylene tracings of the petroglyphs on the chamber 10 pillar, all scales 10 cm. a.) PETlOWl, a "wrapped ancestor", b.) PET10W2, an inverted anthropomorphic "lizard", c.) PET10W3, an enclosed "simple face", d.) PET10W4, an enclosed face with a late Elenan Ostionoid "V"-shaped hairline, e.) PET10W5, a legged "wrapped ancestor" with a plain body, f.) PET10W6, a double volute face.


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Figure 8.Petroglyphs carved into the western wall of chamber 10 near the pillar Scale 10 cms. a.) PET10W7, a complex "bat" effigy, b.) PET10W8, an eared simple enclosed face, c.) PET10W9, an incomplete "simple face" circle with channel, d.) PETIOWIO, an enclosed face with a nose indicated, a late Elenan Ostionoid trait.

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f.)


PET12E1

PET12E2

PET12E4

PET12E5

Figure 12. Upper solution entrance tube "guardian" petroglyphs carved into an eminence on the eastern wall of the tube near its orifice. Scale is 10 cm. a.) PET12E1, an oval enclosed simple face with an "outlined" eye which is the "ear" of an overlapping face (PET12E2). b.) PET12E2, the "eared" enclosed simple face that overlaps PET12E1. c.) PET12E3, an "eared" enclosed face with indicated nose, a late Elenan Ostionoid stylistic trait. The elongated figure below (PET12E4) is probably the "body" of this head, making a "wrapped ancestor", d.) PET12E4, the probable "body" of the head of PET12E3. e.) PET12E5, a simple face with a partial "headdress".


Figure 13. The peripheral western pictographs, painted on the above-portal area between chambers 5 and 6. These drawings, unlike the petroglyphs, had to be acessed via ladder. Scale 10 cm. a.) PIC6W1A, a faded manganese red "shark", ventral view, b.) PIC6W2, a white chalk anthropomorphic "lizard" with upraised hands and arms, overlapped with a St. Andrew'! cross, c.) PIC6W3, a chalked "solar" image that takes advantage of a natural concavity; this i not an Amerindian graphic convention for the sun, so that alhtough it utilizes "naturefact transformation", it may not be aboriginal.

I I I I U

FIGURE 14. "Death" and "life" in ancestor themes in pictographs on the northern wall, in a solution cavity high on chamber 1. These drawings can be reached from the rear via a solution "window". Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC1N2, a "rayed" skull, b.) PIC1N3, an "eared" wrapped ancestor with horizontally-striped rectangular "bundle" body.

P1C1N4

p m m m « i

PIC1N5

PIC1N6 (SS) Figure 15. Associated and isolated pictograp the northern ledge of chamber 1. All scales 1 a.) PIC1N4, a possibly "female" wrapped an associated with Figs. 14a,b. b.) PIC1N5, a " eared" (earspooled) human face, also associa Figures 14a,b. c.) PIC1N6, an isolated parti enclosed simple face on the sheer wall face o chamber 1, further into the cave.

Figure 16. The "shamanic" group of southern ceiling pictographs painted onto a solution concavity above a sheer wall face (note rapelling rope). This photograph provides the placement context for Figures 17, 18, 19a,b.

PICISI

Figure 17. ICI SI, the lower right (viewer's p "eared" face with tri-lobe lower projections. late Elenan Ostionoid stylistic trait in the pic the petroglyphs. Scale 10 cm.

Figure 18. PIC1S2, the central "shamanic" male figure, crowned (3 feathers) and eared, with arms and legs extended and an erection. Scale 10 cm.

Figure 19. The between-legs and left-fl (viewer's perspective) pictographs asso PIC1S2. Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC1S3, th "testicular" face between the male figu b.) PIC1S4, the "turtle woman" with o preserved arm and another fugitive.

Figure 20. A photograph of the next higher group to the left of the shamanic group, centered on a small anthropomorphic figure with a serrated crown (Figure 21a), and showing the lower portion of Figure 21b above it and to the left.

P1C1S5

P1C1S6

• • • • KJ

Figure 21. The two lower figures of the grouping, the slightly higher "greeter" g below the ceiling of the south wall of ch Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC1S5, the small hu with serrated "crown", stick body, and l raised in "greeting", b.) PIC 1S6, anoth "turtle woman" effigy with dual stacked flippers, head and "carapace face".

PIC1S7

Figure 22. A photograph of the highest of the pictographs (Figure 23), on a natural triangular eminence near the ceiling of the south wall of chamber 1. Note how the pictograph (see arrow) takes advantage of that space via "naturefact transformation".

Figure 23. PIC1S7, the "3-pointer" seen on en skull-like human visage and bi-lobed "crown" Scale 10 cm.

Figure 24. A photograph of another probable "turtle woman" effigy, like Figure 21b, but inverted, between the "3-pointer" and the "greeter group" turtle. Note the use of masses of white paint, applied positively, to produce dark lines in a "negative" fashion, an inheritance from ancient Saladoid times.

P1C1S8

Figure 25. PIC1S8, the upper partial " woman" with unique aligned dots for neck". Her upper flippers are missing to record. Scale 10 cm.


Figure 26. The "wrapped ancestor" group from the northern ledge of chamber 2, with owl herald and descendant. Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC2N1, an eared ancestor with diamond body bundle markings. The presence of a nose is a late Elenan Ostionoid trait, as are the presence of "ears", b.) PIC2N2, a poorly preserved eared wrapped ancestor that at one time was complete but is now too fragmentary to reconstruct in its entirety. The serrations are a kenning for the plumes of a feather headdress, c.) PIC2N3, a large eared wrapped ancestor with negatively-defined lozenge-shaped body wrappings. Note the eyebrow motifs, another late trait, d.) PIC2N4, a simple heart-shaped face that cross-dates with petroglyph PET10W4 (Fig. 7d). Because of its lower placement and partial nature (head only) this image probably represents one of the descendants of the superior ancestors above, e.) PIC2N5, the central and most arresting image, the Múcaro owl, a bird of evil omen that even in modern island folklore announces by its eery call that someone will die, and therefore a herald of the dead. Note the "goggle eyes" that mark many petroglyphic images derive from this important nocturnal avian symbol.


Figure 27. The owl group, with an over-arching Múcaro owl cleverly painted around a natural seepage con-cretion (à la "naturefact transformation") whose central eminence stands for the owl's beak, now broken off. Within its body it carries smaller and lower, and therefore subordinate, images of a turtle and a profile small bird. Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC2N6, the owl, once again defined by its goggle eyes, b.) PIC2N7, the bird, too generic to be identifiable, but perhaps a crepuscular bird. c.) PIC2N8, a turtle that echoes the more anthropomorphic turtles of the southern ceiling. It broaches the aquatic theme that is linked, along with flight, to the ancestors.


PIC2N12 • • • • »-|

Figure 28. Further pictographs along the northern ledge of chamber 2. Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC2N9, a tri-lobed motif that has stylistic similarities with vaginal depictions (inverted triangle, although here without a medial vertical line) and ovaries. If so, this is a clear fertility image linked with the erect male genitalia of these ancestral and shamanic depictions. The elegance of the curving parallel thin lines recalls later classic Taino woodcarving designs, b.) PIC2N10, a profile fish that recalls the fish of the beach petroglyphs of Maisabel, and references the aquatic nature of the subterranean world/night sky, the rivers of death of the ancestors (the Milky Way?), c.) PIC2N11, appropriately enough, associated with the fish is a plumed wrapped ancestor with owl goggle eyes, thus synthesizing most of the images we have seen so far. d.) PIC2N12, an enclosed "simple face" pictograph that recalls identical figures in the petroglyphs of the lower chambers, a probable "descendant".


PIC2N14

r i J L D D

PIC2N15

PIC2N16

Figure 29. Cave and élite imagery of "genealogical circularity". Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC2N14, a Guabá spider. These huge arachnids are plentiful beyond the light boundary in the cave and are widely feared, although harmless, b.) PIC2N15 the head of a probable "wrapped ancestor" with élite imagery (semi-circular crown large ear spools, that recalls the later Carguana images, but lacks the "winged nose" and "hairline" motifs of the classic Taino depictions, c.) PIC2N16 a neotonous image of a descendant, linking the young with the dead ancestors as ufe recycles through the descent group, even today a lowland South Amerindian concept of "genealogical circularity".

Figure 30. A photograph of the plumed face, a very elaborate and well preserved image.

PIC2N17

Figure 31. Fragmentary associated designs an plumed face. Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC2N17, a geometric motif that was once part of a much complex design, now lost through vandalizat cm. b.) PIC2N18, the plumed face. The hair nose motifs mark this as late Elenan Ostiono Bronce. Note the use of massed positive whit create "negative" form-lines, an ancient Salad technique that survives in these late images, executional "mistake" (the lack of a right " c

Figure 32. A photograph of the vandalized group of Figure 31a, the chin of Figure 31b and the "plumed skull". The vandalized group has another head, but now unreconstructable.

PIC2N19

Figure 33. The large and impressive plumed skul cm. The intricate mouth motif recalls later classic woodcarving designs. Originally there was more within and outside the skull, but that detail is unr in this "life-in-death" image of an élite ancestor.

Figure 34. Small wrapped ancestors of the northern wall of chamber 2. Scales 10 cm. a.) PIC2N21, a wrapped ancestor with a curious horizontally bi-lobed headdress and "U" shaped body bundle markings. Note the ear plugs, b.) PIC2N23, the "horns" are all that remains of the plumes on the head of this weathered red monochrome image. The eye "tears" may assimilate this image with Boinyael, the deity of auspicious rains in later Taino mythology.

Figure 35. PIC2N22, a large eared wrapped ancesto northern wall of chamber 2 with a vertically elonga body bundle markings in red and white. The image black under-painting. It is located below Figure 34 left of Figure 37. Scale 10 cm.

Figure 36. A photograph of the upper portion of the last wrapped ancestor in the cave, just in front of the light boundary on the northern wall of chamber 2, and now weathered to red monochrome.

Figure 37. PIC2N24, the drawing of Figure 3 showing its curious down-turned semi-circul headdress and triangular chest region and ves legs. Scale 10 cm.


Figure 38. The lowland dynamic dualism model (Dual Triadic Duialism-DTD) applied to the spatial logic of the Cueva de La Mora, Comerío, and its differential placement of the two genres of rock art: peripheral and lower petroglyhs versus high and central pictographs within it. a.) The northern ledge pictographs representing "Upper Earth", the Mountain World outside, b.) The southern ceiling solution pocket pictographs in an equivalent "Upper Earth" site, c.) The lower entrance solution tube with its associated "portal-guarding" petroglyphs, representing "Lower Earth", the village world of the cave's visitors, d.) The upper solution tube entrance with its similar "Lower Earth" portal-guarding petroglyphs. e.) The first overlapping dyad, the "Cloud World", or Lower Atmospheric Heaven, f.) The second overlapping dyad, the "Mountain World", g.) The linear "chromatic" model of the four generated categories showing the ability of dynamic dualism to go from either pole of a binary category.

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THE CUEVA DE MORA (COMERIO, PR) PETROGLYPHS & …ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/AA/00/06/19/61/00651/17-2.pdfThe Mora Cavern is located 2.11 km to the northwest of the unlabeled light duty-paved