Istwa Nou

The El Convento site on the northern coast of Puerto Rico has produced the earliest radiocarbon assay for the Huecoid, one of the two ceramic traditions present at the opening of the Ceramic Age in the region. The date is a problem for the accepted model, which has these groups moving slowly from east to west along the island's north coast. At Maisabel the sequence points the same way. Huecoid ceramics were found in a sealed layer directly beneath deposits of the Hacienda Grande style, which is Saladoid. Sealed stratification is the strongest evidence archaeology offers, because a layer under an undisturbed layer is older and no argument changes that. Together the two sites suggest the Huecoid were established in parts of Puerto Rico earlier than at eastern sites such as La Hueca, where the tradition was first defined. Migration maps for the first pottery-making societies of the Caribbean are being redrawn around dates like these.

During the Early Ceramic Age a skilled lapidary industry developed in the islands, working amethyst, carnelian, jadeite and other semi-precious stones into beads and small amulets. The best known pieces come from La Hueca and carry animal forms, among them a bird identified as a condor or king vulture. That identification is informative in itself, since the bird is not an island species. Neither are the stones. None of these minerals occurs naturally in the Antilles, so every bead and amulet arrived through exchange with the South American mainland or with other distant sources. The industry therefore records two things at once: craft specialists able to cut and polish hard stone to a fine standard, and trade routes long enough to keep them supplied. Ornament of this kind is never only decoration. It marks rank, membership and belief, and the people wearing it belonged to a network reaching far beyond the island they lived on.