This book by María Antonia Negrete Martínez is an excellent report on several years of excavation (1983–1987) by an Austrian team under the direction of Prof. Dr. Herwig Friesinger at the precolumbian site of Pointe de Caille (Saltibus Point) located on the southeastern coast of the island of Saint Lucia in the Lesser Antilles. The site is dated between the sixth and fourteenth centuries, and represents the late Saladoid, Troumassoid, and Suazoid series. It is one of the most extensively excavated sites on the island and, with a timespan of several centuries, very interesting for the study of long-term processes of human occupation at the same locality.
St. Lucia played a central role in the earliest systematic study of Caribbean archaeology, primarily through the efforts of the St. Lucia Archaeological and Historical Society. The classification schemes devised for St. Lucia in the 1960s have had a significant impact on the archaeology of the entire region. This book synthesizes the first major archaeological operation on the island since that time and presents the data from the excavations at Pointe de Caille in the context of regional and macro-regional interaction. The data presented reflect the cultural heterogeneity of the post-Saladoid archaeological record in the Lesser Antilles. This diversity can be explained from the perspective of the extensive networks of human mobility present in the Lesser Antilles, the exchange of goods and ideas, shifting sociopolitical organization, fission and fusion of communities, and changing contact lines over time.
The meticulous field methods and techniques adopted by the Austrian team are clearly reflected in this accessible and well-illustrated volume. The rigorous laboratory analyses of material culture and funerary remains, as well as the comparisons made with assemblages across the region, make this volume a very comprehensive contribution to the current field of Caribbean archaeology.
The book is divided into eight chapters written in Spanish, with summaries in English and German, making it more accessible for the international community. The references are not exhaustive, and could have included more recent publications. This is especially important for the integration of the Pointe de Caille data into the most recent regional and macro-regional frameworks.
Following the introductory chapter, the second and third chapters describe the stratigraphy and chronology of the site, as well as the structures encountered. The author suggests the presence of two dwellings (one oval and one orthogonal shaped) from two different periods (one Saladoid/Troumassoid and one Suazoid) dug into the bedrock, as is common practice in the islands.
Chapter 4 discusses 54 single primary, and one possibly double, burials belonging to the three phases of occupation. Particular attention is paid to funerary practices, the morphology of the grave pits, the grave goods, the position and orientation of the buried individuals, and their spatial distribution. The interpretation is corroborated with ethnohistorical information and burial data from other sites on nearby islands, underscoring the complex and varied treatment of the dead in the Lesser Antilles. The author ends with a discussion of the pathologies encountered, such as dental caries (due to high consumption of manioc) and lesions of the bacterial disease Treponematosis. Cranial modification, a common practice in the precolonial Caribbean used to express local and collective identities, was also observed.
Chapter 5 describes the morphological and stylistic aspects of pottery. The Pointe de Caille ceramic assemblage is diagnostic of the phases of occupation; it is very similar to ceramics of the surrounding islands although forms and amounts vary. Some characteristics point to affiliations with the mainland to the south, or to the Greater Antilles to the north.
Chapter 6 discusses a wide range of objects made out of a variety of raw materials: lithic, bone, and shell tools and instruments; ceramic disks; spindle whorls; body stamps; beads and pendants; and figurines. The presence of an assemblage of 51 ceramic loom weights or pestles endowed with largely anthropomorphic denotations draws attention to the special role of St. Lucia's ceremonialism within the wider panorama of the Late Ceramic Age Lesser Antilles. The presence of nonlocal materials confirms the existence of networks of exchange that connected the insular communities.
Chapter 7 describes the results of the analysis of the zooarchaeological materials recovered during the excavations in the 1980s. The data are highly fragmentary, without paleobotanical evidence or isotopic analysis of human remains like those that are available for other sites on St. Lucia. Therefore, detailed comparative analyses of the strategies of exploitation of biotic resources across time and space within the same island and beyond it, are unrealizable. The author cautiously concludes that the subsistence of Pointe de Caille occupants was based on a mixed economy that included cultivated maize and yuca and relatively abundant marine resources such as fish and mollusks.
Finally, chapter 8 summarizes the results. The strength of this volume lies in the meticulous description of the thorough analyses of the Point de Caille site and its rich materials and burial practices. This work should be further developed and made more widely available through follow-up articles. In this way, the results could be more thoroughly incorporated into a state-of-the-art, pan-Caribbean archaeological perspective that would contribute more amply to current debates in the region and beyond.
