Monserrate Restudied: The 1978 Centro Field Season At Luquillo Beach:Excavation Overview, Lithics and Physical Anthropological Remains

Peter G. Roe,Agamemnon Gus Pantel andMargaret B. Hamilton[Originally published in Proceedings of the XI International Association of Caribbean Archaeology, San Juan, PR, pp.338-369. 1990]

Introduction

This paper is a preliminary report of certain aspects of the 1978 excavations at the Luquillo Beach site,Monserrate, on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico. The fieldwork was undertaken by the Centro deEstudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe as part of its Masters program field methods course. This wasthe first of a series of sites on the northeast, north central and southern coasts of Puerto Rico which wereinvestigated, under the senior author's supervision, as part of the Centro's on-going research program intothe early ceramic-bearing cultures of the island. Other sites investigated in this program, in chronologicalorder, were Hacienda Grande in Loiza Aldea (Roe 1985; Walker 1985), Caracoles in Ponce, Ojo del Buey inDorado (currently being written up as a Masters thesis by one of the senior author's students, Heman Ortiz),and Maisabel, the site of current fieldwork, in Vega Baja. The rationale behind the selection of each of thesesites was that previous work had indicated the presence of Saladoid and Pre-Taino occupations while raisingcertain questions about the cultural continuity, or lack of it, between these components. Thus each siteprovided an ample opportunity for the restudy of a classic locus with a didactic function in mind.

However, these sites will not merely be used as teaching devices, no matter how disturbed they may be, butalso as opportunities to discover and disseminate new data about a crucial period in the island's prehistory. Luquillo Beach, a heavily altered site on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico (Fig. 1), is a case in point. Itwas the locus of both early work by Rainey, who defined the central "Crab Culture/Shell Culture"dichotomy/continuum which is still a problem focus in Puerto Rico prehistory. It was also the site of oneof the island's earliest and most extensive excavations, that of Ricardo Alegría. Since Alegría's findings stillremain unpublished, one of the goals of this paper will be to publish some of the data unearthed for ashistorical background to the present study. Most of the other major figures in Caribbean prehistory withinthe Virgin Islands-eastern Greater Antillean sphere, such as Irving Rouse, Gary Vescelius and Luis Chanlatte-Baik, have either studied collections from the site or made small test excavations at it. The present studywill focus on the 1978 Centro excavation's mapping, lithics and osteological collections with an eye tomaking comparisons with their work, access to much of which was gained by personal interviews or studyingfieldnotes and collections, and a similar study of the Centro's Hacienda Grande operations.

History of work at Luquillo Beach

For many years the site of Luquillo Beach was frequent visiting spot for collectors of the islands such as Dr.de Castro. The eminent antiquarians Adolfo de Hostos and Dr. J. L. Montalvo Guenard both excavated atLuquillo (Gonzalez Alberty 1947). The area belonged to the Matienzo family who retained a collection ofhuman bones found at there. The site was named after the finca of which it was a part, "La Monserrate". It is located in barrio Mameyes of the municipality of Luquillo. In Vescelius' site designation system, adapted

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from that of John Rowe, and the one the Centro has used to designate its sites, Monserrate is 12-PHm 9-1(12=West Indies; P=Puerto Rico; Hm=Humacao, the Senatorial District; 9=Luquillo, the municipality countedalphabetically; 1 =the site number counted chronologically in order of discovery).

The site was first visited by Froelich G. Rainey in 1934 and he returned again in 1935 for short time. Hefound a superficial scatter of ceramic and shell debris over an area roughly 300 m. long by 200m. wide nearthe beach (Rainey 1940:75). Rising gently to a meter or a meter and a half from the sand back from thebeach were five small mounds which he designated with the letters: A, B, C, D, and E. At the time he visitedthe site the surf had already begun to eat away at Mound E, the northernmost one and coconut palms hadrecently been planted in neat rows in the sandy soil. The mounds formed a rough circle with mound E beingclosest to the sea and mound C being located furthest inland. The mounds clustered in the middle of thenorthern coast of a peninsula which juts northward into the Caribbean, but is protected by a fringing barrierreef (Fig.2). The site is halfway between either point at the head of the peninsula. The western terminusof the peninsula is Punta Embarcadero. Below it and to the west is a huge lunate embayment with shallowsandy beaches which forms the neck of the peninsula and the heart of the present Balneario de Luquillo,one of the nicest public bathing beaches on the island. The eastern point of the peninsula is the Punta laBandera. Below it and to the east is another lunate embayment of lesser extent which forms the other sideof the neck of the peninsula and is today a favored location for high rise condominiums. The site is situatedimmediately to the west of the mouth of a small river (Plate A) which brings freshwater to the site and inits lower brackish mouth supports an extensive mangrove swamp with all the molluscan and other life formsthat niche provides.

In short, the site was attractive in both pre-Columbian and modern times, as Rainey, the first archaeologistto visit the site long ago surmised (1940: 83), although modem impact has been considerably greater thanwhat the aboriginal era witnessed. During the 1950s bulldozers were brought in to level the mounds for apublic camping area within the park. But the machines were just as canalized by the straight lines of palmtrees as had Alegría's earlier excavations. Passing between the rows of palms in two directions, grid-style,the dozers succeeded in "platforming" the trees on little mounds which were al1 that remained of theoriginal undulating ground surface.

Not as fatal as this barbaric process sounds, some innovative "salvage" techniques proved capable ofreconstructing the original, now vanished, mounds and even accurately topographically mapping them! Thesenior author set up a transit near Mound C and took the elevations of each palm platform as they rose toform an outline of the original mound. Thus the form of a vanished mound could be topo-mapped in detail(Fig. 7).

Extensive public bath and barbacue hut constructions has continued to occur even since the Centro's 1978excavations and today the site is nearly completely destroyed in a textbook example of the localconstruction, even well-minded as this was, can cause to sites which are not protected by federal funds-entailed impact statement and mitigation rulings.

But at the time of Rainey's work the site was tranquil and off the beaten track indeed. The only"disturbance'' that came to the area was the original planting of the coconut groves in regular lines over thesite area. Many of these are still producing (see the regularly-aligned tree symbols in Fig. 2). During thesummers of 1934 and 1935 Rainey dug at four of the mounds: A, B, D, and E (Rainey 1940, I: 75). He usedquite "macro" techniques of big trenches (the one in mound A was 32 meters long!) divided into large 4x4

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meter squares with metrical stratigraphy of thick 25 cm. levels being used (1940: 76). His expedition wassponsored by the Yale Peabody Museum and the American Museum of Natural History as part of the overallscientific program of investigation of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands undertaken by the New YorkAcademy of Science.

This site formed the basis for Rainey's precocious definition of the distinction between cultural phases basedon non-artifactual "ecofacts'' rather than pottery styles, thus presaging the modem concern in archaeologyfor environmental and subsistence strategy reconstruction. In one of the mounds he discovered the clearstratification of shell refuse on top of debris rich in crab claws from the blue land crab (1940, I:80). Hecorrelated this disjunction with differences in material culture to produce a distinction between an earlier"Crab Culture," characterized by fine quality ceramics with white-on-red painted decoration, D-shapedhandles, and plano-convex "axes" (actually adzes), and a later overlying "Shell Culture", which utilized shellfor artifacts as well as food resources, had lower quality ceramics chiefly characterized by modeled adornos,and petalloid celts (actually axes) (1940, I:92). The cultural reconstruction which he favored to account forthis was a site-unit intrusion, through migration, of a different group of people who supplanted the earlierCrab Culture occupants, rather like the Urnfield people and Beaker Folk successionary migratory modelsthen current in European prehistory.

The next large excavations to be carried out at the site were largely motivated by Rainey's evidence forstratigraphic superposition, those of Ricardo E. Alegría in 1947. By the time of his visit the site had justbecome a public park, but one still mercifully untouched by "beautification". The site was a wild and isolatedsandy plain covered with sparse vegetation and, to judge from his photographs, coconut palms which hadonly reached an average height of some 4-5 m.

So wooly was the visual aspect of the site that its macabre wealth of burials, erroneously described in theperiodical literature of the time as an Indian "cementery" surrounded the site with a ghostly aura and talesof it's supernatural aspects still flourished in the local oral tradition. Two of these stories are reprintedbelow:

Dicen los vecinos residentes en aquellos alrededores, que en las noches apacibles deplenilunio, cuando Ia luz lunar riela sobre las tranquilas aguas, irrumpe de entnre Ia malezaadyacente a donde estuvo enclavada Ia aldea igneri, una masa informe de fuego que,seguida de un indio, se precipita aceleradamente al mar, siempre seguida del indio, quientambién se arroja al oceano (Ramos Llompart 1947).

Muchos de los campesinos que hoy integran Ia brigada de excavacion, sostenian que elIugar habia un entierro indio y que en las noches obscuras, partiendo de un limonerocercano, se veia a un cacique que daba vueltas por la playa, manteniendo tambien, y enforma contumaz, que a los muertos se les debe dejar tranquilos (Marquez 1947: 8).

Undoubtedly, these beliefs acted to protect the site, at least while they were part of a living belief system,from vandalization. It is hard to imagine such a time now as one witnesses the "Coney Island" festivities ofa built-up Luquillo Beach on the weekends.

It is important to know something about the socio-historical context of Puerto Rican archaeology during thistime in order to understand how the site was excavated and what became of its findings. During this period

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of the infancy of archaeology on the island several theoretical disputes about cultural affiliation over spaceand continuity or discontinuity over time were to inform the excavations. One was the question ofdiffusionism, either generally from Mexico, or specifically the Venezuelan archaeologist's GilbertoAntolinez's hypothesis about Mayan influence in Taino cranial deformation. Even in its day, this is a positiondisputed by Joyce and others, yet it is the explanation for the attention paid to cranial deformation in thereporting of the abundant physical anthropological remains retrieved from tbe site.

In terms of diachronic ordering, there existed a two-dimensional time perspective, a kind "Taino Tyranny",in Puerto Rican culture history. This short chronology was only beginning to be lifted then and still endureson a popular level today. It is the tendency to see the Puerto Rican past as an undifferentiated Tainooccupation. Adolfo de Hostos had, of course, already hinted at a settlement before the Taino based on hisexcavations at Cabo Rojo (1919) in what would be called today Ostionoid contexts. While he did notrecognize Saladoid pottery as being even older than this "red ware", the collector Montalvo Guenard latershowed the white-on -red pottery he had found at Canas to Rainey before the latter visited Monserrate. Rainey was to find that pottery at Monserrate as well, and it later became the basis of Rouse's "Cuevas"style. It was precisely in hopes of following up on Rainey's discovery of a "Pre-Taino" stratigraphicsuperposition at Luquillo that Alegra selected the site for excavation (Alegría 1947: 5).

Alegría himself was fresh from his Masters degree at the University of Chicago where he had studied underTucker and Redfield. His thesis was on the Antillean cacicazgo and his exhaustive reading of the chroniclersled him to pepper his communications about his archaeological findings with ethnographic citations. Thosecommunications about Alegría's new archaeology program went primarily to the popular press, as was thestyle in those days (much as one has to read the "site reports" of the prominent contemporary Peruvianarchaeologist Julio C. Tello in the newspapers of the day).

Alegría set up the Centro de Investigaciones Arqueologicas at the University Museum in Rio Piedras. Hisambitious program had several goals: to amass data on Puerto Rican sites with the intention of establishingan island-wide register, to compile a bibliography of works pertinent to the ethnography, ethnohistory,physical anthropology and archaeology of the islands, as well as to conduct an inventory of North Americanmuseum holdings on Puerto Rican prehistory, such as the Lattimore collection donated to the Smithsonianin 1874, prepatory to drawing upon them for long-term lending and artifact repatriation. The Centro stillexists under the vigorous leadership of Luis Chanlatte-Baik, whom Alegria hired when he left the Centro tocreate and become the first head of the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. The bibliography has beenfollowed by a revised and updated one published by Jalil Sued-Badillo at the University. However, much ofthe rest of his program was to fall into disarray, and many of the records and specimens from his excavationcampaigns became lost in the hiatus after his departure for the Instituto and before Chanlatte-Baik assumedfull control. Today many of these functions have devolved upon the SHPO due to the Museo's more limitedrole and the Instituto's volatile institutional history.

With the limited budget of $3,000 for both the museum and the field investigation program, Alegría madethe Monserrate excavations his first project in 1947. The following year Hacienda Grande became the targetfor similarly large-scale operations (Roe 1985: 162). In both cases the goals were to enrich the collectionsand displays of the University Museum and to address some of the above-mentioned theoretical questions. In these excavations he was aided by the organizational support of his friend and role model, the SpanishRepublican-refugee archaeologist, Sebastián González-García, then Decano of the Faculty of Humanities atthe University, his friend, Luis Muñoz-Lee, the son of Muñoz Marín, who acted as field assistant, and his

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fiancee (later wife), the artist Mela Pons de Alegría, in the laboratory. These associations help to explainthe humanistic aims of his research, the emphasis on the dissemination of its results through the popularpress, and the function of the derived collections for museum display and educational purposes, rather thanfor immediate scholarly publication of the results. Indeed, a part of this report, with Alegria's support, seeksto partially rectify this oversight. It thereby constitutes one of the longest-deferred site reports (1947-1985)in the Caribbean literature!

Alegría began his excavations in April of 1947. Because it had been twelve years since Rainey'sinvestigations, pot-hunters had hit the site and sea erosion had consumed the northernmost mound, leavingonly Mounds B and C intact. Since Mound B appeared to be the largest and richest, Alegría decided toexcavate there. The surface of the mound had been off-limits to Rainey because of the presence on it of thetin-roofed shack of a campesino who had lived there for more than 30 years and had refused to let Raineyexcavate beneath or around it (Rainey 1940: 97). Rainey had only been able to put two trenches into theextreme northern end of the mound. Alegria managed to buy the hut from the owner for some $300 andhad it moved to another location, thus opening up all of Mound B's surface for excavation.

Twelve men, many of whom had experience from working with Rainey, were used, with pick and shovel, toopen 2 meter-wide trenches from north to south which were internally divided into 2 meter squares. Thetrenches were set by transit and one of the first, if not the first, complete topographic map in the historyof Puerto Rican archaeology was made of the vicinity of Mound B. The map was not extended to MoundC. As the coconut palms planted on the site were a valuable resource, Alegría had to canalize his trencheswhere there was danger that palms and interrupted his trenches where there was danger that palm rootsystems would be cut. This is one explanation for why some of the mound was left intact for the Centro's1978 test pit. Each trench was assigned a letter descending alphabetically from west to east and a numberincreasing sequentially from south to north. The excavations were massive with 143 2x2 m. units beingopened up on the summit of Mound B alone (Alegría 1947: 6). A variable area 58 meters long and 28meters wide was opened to between 4 and 8 feet in depth (the mixture of measures dates from the originalexcavations). In short, during some 12 weeks of excavations 1 ,330 cubic meters of earth were removedfrom Mound B! The scale and manner of these excavations were only to be eclipsed by Alegría's works atHacienda Grande during the next year, 1948 (Roe 1985), and by Chanlatte-Baik's 1970s excavations at Sorceand La Hueca in Vieques.

Additional excavations within an expanded grid took place around Mound B to test its limits while only threeshort trenches were put into Mound C. The latter excavations were terminated by the arrival of the rainyseason in this wettest corner of Puerto Rico, after the deposit there proved to have only an average depthof less than 5 feet. (1947:9). Due to the nature of the mounds Alegría soon discovered that comparableartifacts fluctuated widely in their relative vertical position depending upon whether the summit or theedges of the mound were being investigated. For example, he cites comparable artifacts from 12" to 48"in depth from varying locations (1947: 8).

Normally, two men worked in a single 2 x 2 m. unit, and at least some of the soil was sifted. As was the caseduring those times, only a "representative"sample of the food remains and body sherds were saved; thediagnostic materials were carried to the laboratory in their square and level bags while the rest was interrednearby. The excavations proceeded by arbitrary 6" (15 cm.) levels and, on average, reached depths of below54". To classify the remains Alegría used Rouse's system as it had first appeared in the Prehistory of Haiti(1939).

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Alegría noted the same stratification that Rainey had picked up at the site. From the surface to some 36"he encountered a shell deposit composed of Strombus, Chama and Tellina. Many of the gastropodea hada circular hole near the top of the columella where, on analogy with current practice, Alegría hypothesizedthat the Indians had poured boiling water into the shell to facilitate the removal of the animal (1947: 7). Inaddition to numerous food remains and carbon, Alegría found a crude ceramic ware which was fragile andadorned by only plastic decoration. This was the pottery of Rainey's "Shell Culture". Below it were theremains of his "Crab Culture", characterized by a great number of Cardisoma guanhumi latreille pincers, andfine ceramics painted in either a red slip or a white-on-red slip paint. The midden appeared to representliving refuse and no traces of a house floor or posts were recovered (1947: 8).

The Skeletons

Sixty-three internments were discovered, of which 44 came from Mound B and 19 from Mound C. Of these49 were adults and 14 were children. Seven of the child burials were placed in burial urns. All of the burialsseem to have been primary ones but in some cases the preservational circumstances were such as to haveobscured or altered the original position of the bones. Two of the burials were lacking crania and on severaloccasions human bones seemed to be mixed in with the living debris. Opposed to these casual instancesare several multiple burials, one composed of six adults, and another of an adult female primary internmentassociated with an infant urn burial, perhaps as a result of deaths during childbearing (1947: 16).

Twenty four of the burials were associated with diverse artifacts. In the majority of instances these wereceramic cook pots which contained the remains of funerary food offerings consisting of gastropods, almejas,and fish and jutia bones. In the case of one of the adult skeletons from square E-25, no.20, a large food bowlwas placed over the deceased's head like a cap. On five occasions the dead were associated with land snails,cobos, of large size. Next to one skeleton six cylindrical ceramic necklace beads were found while adheringto another an adornment of mother-of-pearl was encountered. The most interesting of the funerary itemswas what appeared to be a whistle or flute made from carved human bone which was found next to oneskeleton (1947:17).

Contrary to the reports from the popular press, there did not appear to be any consistent orientation to theplacement of the bodies, which usually were placed in the seated fetal position, resting on their backs, orreclining on their sides. Nevertheless, there was a slight tendency for the faces to be looking to the east(1947: 18), an auspicious direction to judge from South American lowland cosmology, which assigns thisregion to the rebirth of the new, vigorous sun, a life symbol par excellence (Roe 1982:188).

Like elsewhere, such as with the three skeletons of Mound C reported on in this paper, or at nearbyHacienda Grande (Walker 1985: 194), several of these skeletons (nos. 5, 7, 39) were punched through themidden into the sterile sand below. To judge from the photographs in Alegría's preliminary report, theseskeletons were platformed and then an original transport device was used to remove two of the betterpreserved ones in a block for exhibition at the UPR museum. This consisted of sliding a piece of plywoodunder the platformed burial while making a concrete casing around the skeleton with iron cast-in handles. A similar technique was later copied by pot-hunters in this site and at nearby Hacienda Grande. For futureosteological or anthropometric studies, Alegría saved 19 crania and their respective femurs, tibia, fibula,humeri, radii, ulni and pelvi (Alegria 1947: 18). The present whereabouts of many of these skeletons is indoubt.

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From the original listings in his preliminary report, it is possible to construct the following chart for just 43of the original 49 skeletons from Mound B-Mound C is missing-which associates the above contexts withprovenience (unfortunately no sex is specified for any of the skeletons in his listings) and age of the remains:

No. Position State Age Square. Depth Orientation Associations

Table 1: Skeletal Remains from Mound BL. site=Luis' site (test pits, vicinity Mound B) M. site=Mela' site (test pits, vicinity Mound B) A= AdultSA=Sub-AdultC = Child or infant

A vast panoply of diverse artifacts were recovered in these excavations, including shell discs- beads (Alegría1947, Plate 27; atlatl spurs (then unrecognized) (1947, Plate 25g-h); small Strombus three-pointers (1947,Plate 25i-k); Cassis tuberosa cups (1947, Plate 26i); perforated and cut Olivia danglers (1947, Plate 30d,e-g);vomiting spatulas (1947, Plate 3lj,l); carved human bone flutes (1947, Plate 32k,o); a dog mandible-minusteeth (1947, Plate 321); the famous manatee-bone carved figurines of a bird (1947, Plate 33a), and a profileseated woman 1947, Plate 33b); stone balls some 8 cm. in diameter (1947, Plate 34b); large tubular marblebeads (1947, Plate 36a); spokeshaves (1947, Plate 38h,i); plano-convex adzes (1947, Plate 38f,g); petalloidaxes (1947, Plate 41a-c), and other artifacts. The distribution of these artifacts within the mound and theircultural affiliations are properly the topic of another article; we will only consider here some of therecovered ceramics.

At the time Alegría conceived of two occupations: an early "Igneri" one and a later "Taino" one whichdisplaced it Alegría (1948: 1-2), modeled along the lines of Rainey's thinking. Later, he relabeled the Ignericeramics "Saladoid" and the intermediary wares "Ostionoid" (these particular materials Rouse at varioustimes would consider Monserratean and Elenoid). Indeed, the bulk of the ceramics in the "Crab Culture"levels seem to be Cuevas. Chanlatte-Baik, in some small test excavations he carried out at the site in 1970,discovered some cross-hatchured engraved labial flanges which attest to a limited early Hacienda Grande(his "Huecoid") occupation (Chanlatte-Baik, Personal Communication, 1981). Vescelius, in his reseriationof Rainey's materials stored in the Yale Peabody Museum, early recognized this by postulating a HaciendaGrande phase predating the predominantly Cuevas occupation. He was kind enough to share his notes onthese collections with the senior author, who has incorporated his periodization into a modification ofRouse's chronological chart for the "Vieques Sound" culture area presented here as Fig. 3.

His qualitative seriation dealt with only Mounds A, B, and E. The earliest levels of B and E extend from apostulated Hacienda Grande occupation (which thanks to Chanlatte-Baik's findings should be extendeddown even further in the chronological column to the earliest Hacienda Grande phase since at Maisabel,Hacienda Grande and other sites such materials invariably come from the lowest Hacienda Grande levels)through Cuevas in Rouses' Period II to the entire span of the Pre-Taino period, III, with first what Rousecalled originally (and the senior author still believes was the best designation for this "epi-Saladoid"transition) the "Monserratean," then "Collores" and now "Tibes'' style or complex, with Mound A postdatingthe beginnings of Mounds B and E, through to a common "Esperanzan" style of the Taino occupation in allthree mounds.

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This is a nearly continuous time spread from the earliest ceramic age to the latest, a duration only bestedin Puerto Rico by the huge Hacienda Grande site to the west. The Centro excavations in what was left ofMound C (really only the last 50 cm. of what was once an over 1m. mound) demonstrated unequivocally thatthat mound could be placed from level 4 on to recent times in Vescelius' seriation, with the bulk of theceramics being clearly Elenoid in style. Thus it was the most recent of the mounds, an explanation for itsshallower depth.

The ceramics of Monserrate provide a perfect illustration of the continua of modes throughout thesequence. In a sense, this makes cutting that sequence at any particular point in time a little arbitrary. Thusfor the senior author, whose scale section drawings of a series of early vessels from Alegría's excavationsnow in the university of Puerto Rico museum appear here as Figs. 1-7, there is little to distinguish earlyMonserratean from Late Cuevas, or Early Cuevas from Late Hacienda Grande, save for a continuous "clinal"decline in ceramic technology. To adapt a Boasian technical viewpoint, for the moment, the systematicshifts from late Hacienda Grande or Early Cuevas, as represented here by Fig. 4a, b, can be attributed to aslow but progressive loss of the potter's art. The white slip is applied more thickly in the Cuevas piece thanto equivalent Hacienda Grande campaniform vessels, to the degree that its relief is perceptible to a fingerrun over the vessel's exterior. The designs have shifted from gracious curvilinear motifs, very difficult toexecute, to wobbly rectilinear motifs which are easier to execute. The vessel wall thickness goes up as a firstresponse to maintain strength in a lower-fired, weaker paste.

The rectangular vessels of Early Monserratean ware retain the elegant shapes of their Cuevas antecedents,but as in Fig. 4c-e, they have long since lost even the decorative rim flange buttons and sub-carinationapplique perforated lugs of such fine Cuevas pieces like 5a, gradually give way even in that style to nearlyvertical ones, as in 5e, f, whose upper rim band presages the later Monserratean norm for open bowls, andthe equally taxing annular bases (Roe 1978) begin to widen in a search for greater strength in the face ofdescending firing temperatures and hence weakening paste, as in the crude little bowl in Fig. 5b.

Concomitant with these problems is the lessening of the fine ware/utilitarian ware distinction as functionbegins to supersede presentation in the ceramic arts. The cookpots, as in Fig. 6, are the principal formswhich remain. They intergrade from fairly sharply carinated, but sloppily executed, Late Cuevas forms, likeFig. 6b, the vertical handles of which edge ever higher above the lip, other Late Cuevas or EarlyMonserratean pieces (the burial food bowls) whose high handles, weak vertical carinations and roundingslightly convex "flat" bases (Figs. 6a, c) begin to search for the "primitive sphericity" of later round-bottomedforms (round profiles having inherently greater strength than complex forms in a material like ceramicswhich lacks, save for the late silicious ash-tempered ware of the mainland, tensile strength but possessescompression strength). Just as Hacienda Grande and Early Cuevas concave flat vases are superseded by trulyflat bases in Late Cuevas, and convex "flat" bases in Late Cuevas and Early Monserratean, are they replacedby rounded bases in the Elenoid and Esperanzan ceramics of Luquillo.

Systemically related to these progressive alterations is the increasing tendency for rims to thicken near thelip and vessels to assume an ovoid or "boat-shaped" horizontal cross section. Both are reinforcingmechanisms for weak paste and first show up in the slightly ovoid, but still circular shapes of late Cuevas orEarly Monserratean pieces like Fig. 6a, b. Ceramic ''survivors" of the memories of adaptation to thestoneless alluvium of the mainland tropical forest, like ceramic "topia", or pot-rests (Raymond, DeBoer andRoe 1975), as in Fig. 6d, e, appear for the last time in Late Cuevas and hence will be superseded by the locallymore abundant and rational river cobbles for which they were originally a substitute.

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The same structural limitations decree a shift from the thin-walled hollow ceramic anthropomorphic ceramicfigurines of the Hacienda Grande style, to the solid and crudely scraped Late Cuevas figurines of Fig. 7a, f. Interestingly enough, sexual themes, which are rare in South Amerindian sculptural art outside of the earlyEcuadorian and Peruvian coast, still occur in this late Insular Saladoid manifestation, as in the testicles offigure 6f or the phallic effigy of 6g. Appendages become stubbier, as in 6h-j, and the Monserratean adornoheads cease to represent faithfully the mainland South American naturalistic fauna of the saladoid tradition,and now begin to present heavily modeled fantastic, or "monstrous'' generalized theriomorphic (rather thanseparable anthropomorphic/zoomorphic) depictions, as in Fig. 7k, m. The bulk of the ceramic remains fromLuquillo have not received the study they deserve since they document so well this crucial shift in technologyand style in the prehistory of Puerto Rico.

Aftermath of the 1947 Excavation

After these excavations the skeletons and material cultural items were brought to the University Museumin Rio Piedras where they were placed on exhibit (Alegria 1948). These materials have formed the core ofthe museum's exhibition on the island's prehistory to this date.

The next visit to the site took place on August 21st, 1936 when Rainey's then graduate student, Irving Rouse,surveyed the site. He later restudied a part of Rainey's collection, chiefly sections A3 of Mound A, A4 ofMound Band B4 of Mound E. Through a stylistic study of the ceramics and other artifacts recovered byRainey, Rouse ceramics and other artifacts recovered by Rainey, Rouse determined that the mounds hadbeen occupied at different times and by different complexes, or styles. Mound A had a primarily "Ostionoid"and Santa Elena, or "Elenoid" occupation, with some Cuevas "survivals" while Mound B saw the occupations,equally divided. Rouse was able to assign the Cuevas style with Rainey's crab stratum and the Pre-Tainostyles with the shell layer. Lastly, Mound E was characterized by a nearly pure Pre-Taino (Period 11- laterto become Period III in his relative chronology) occupation (Rouse 1952: 419-424). The anomaly of theseidentifications in the light of Rouse's later (1982) culture area reconstruction is that the Elenoid sherds, inthis supposedly eastern Elenoid-dominated area, are consistently outnumbered by Ostionoid sherds ofwestern Puerto Rican culture area affiliation. A good part of this anomaly can now be rectified by the factthat many of the "Ostionoid" sherds actually pertained to the earlier "Monserratean" style.

A long interval intervened between this work at Monserrate and the next archaeological visit, this time byboth Rouse and Alegría, during June and July, 1963. They had received an NSF grant earlier that same yearto obtain carbon dates from the West Indies to test their qualitative seriation of the local cultures (Rouseand Alegría 1978: 496). They secured two dates for the Pre-Taino occupation at Mound A: 690 A.D. and 710A.D. (1978: 499). These, along with the earlier dates from Hacienda Grande, and the later dates fromOstiones and Santa Elena, clearly temporally placed the "Monserratean" phase of the site's occupation.

The last period of archaeological investigation at the site began with a brief test excavation in 1970 by LuisChanlatte-Baik at one of the Mounds in Luquillo (Chanlatte-Baik, Personal Communication, 1982). Therehe encountered more of a minority ware which Alegría had discovered in both Luquillo and HaciendaGrande, a ware with cross-hachured designs on wide labial flanges (Alegría 1965). Alegría had defined thispottery as being a part of the pre-Cuevas Hacienda Grande phase of the Saladoid style while later Chanlatte-Baik was to redefine it first as a separate "Huecoid" series, and then as the "La Hueca Cultural Complex"(Chanlatte-Baik 1985: 225).

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The former investigator affirms that the two styles are always found mixed together in Saladoid middens(Alegría, Personal Communication, 1984), while the latter, based on his Vieques experience, tends to seethem both as being chronologically and spatially segregated (Chanlatte- Baik 1983). Since the exact locationof Chanlatte-Baik's excavations at Luquillo cannot be located, the spatial segregation of the cross-hachuredware at Monserrate is a moot point.

Nevertheless, the senior author of this paper concurs with Rouse's comments during the discussion segmentof the 10th congress in Martinique, that the La Hueca material is clearly of Saladoid cultural affiliation, eventhough it may pertain to an earlier "sub-style" or ethnic group intrusion. This pottery may identify the slighttemporal forerunners, the "advance party" of a main Hacienda Grande phase Saladoid expansion. WhileLa Hueca substyle ceramics might be found spatially segregated in Vieques it is not yet documented arealyapart from Hacienda Grande phase occupations in Puerto Rico.

Nevertheless, based on the Centro's 1980, 1982 and 1984 excavations at Hacienda Grande (Roe 1985;Walker 1985) and its 1985 excavations at Maisabel, this ware always appears in the lowest levels of mostHacienda Grande phase occupations. Thus, its presence at Monserrate indicates an early Saladoidoccupation there. However, to judge from the sparsity of this ware, that occupation was a fleeting one.

Sometime during the 1970's, Gary Vescelius, restudied and seriated Rainey's collections from Monserrate,and one product of that effort occurs is the revised chronological chart presented here as Fig. 3.

The 1978 Centro Excavations at Monserrate

During June and July of 1978 the Centro de Estudios Avanzados conducted its first field school inarchaeological methodology, under the direction of the senior author, using the remains of the Monserratesite as its study location. The site was recommended by Alegría, the Executive Director of the Centro, basedon his earlier work there. Our work there was motivated by the problem orientation that some testing couldstill be done in Mound "C". Mound C was the only one of the remaining mounds which had not beensystematically sampled to any great extent. Unfortunately, this brief 6 week field season soon took on thefunction of a "salvage" operation in view of the carnage the massive earth-moving operations of the 1950'shad inflicted on the site.

While all of the mounds had been planed down to the level of the surrounding earth, the bulldozers had hadto pass between the valuable coconut palm trees which had been planted on the site in the 1930's, thuseffectively "platforming" those palms which happened to have been planted on the mounds (Plate B). Thus,by topographically mapping the heights of the various plan platforms one could reconstruct the outline ofthe vanished Mound C (Fig. 8). Since that mound had never been accurately topo-mapped, this was onepositive contribution of the fieldschool.

The senior author laid out a trench two meters wide, composed of alternating 1 x 1m. pits, each labeledalphabetically from west to east and numerically from north to south (with capital letters designating theunits to the east of the datum line and lower-case letters to the west), bisecting the reconstructed mound. It totaled some eleven 1 x 1m. units, the deepest excavated down to a meter using 10cm. metricalstratigraphy. In addition, he put one 1 x1 m. test pit into the remains of another low mound (test pit 1), andplaced another 1 x 1m. test pit within the remnants of Mound B as controls.

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The fieldschool excavated all levels by trowel (Plate C), and passed the recovered artifacts and ecofactsthrough a ¼“ mesh screen. The team kept a total sample of all lithic, ceramic, malacological, andosteological materials. Roe carried out a study of the ceramics and malacological specimens in 1978 and1979. In 1980 Pantel analyzed the lithic remains and Hamilton studied the osteological materials. Thisreport is a joint product of that analysis.

Since in all cases the excavations occurred within the truncated base of former mounds, the Centro fieldteam only picked up the last 50-60cm. of the original midden. Nevertheless, the clear distinction betweenthe "Crab Culture" affinities of the lower levels of Mound B and the "Shell Culture" placement of Mound Cwas confirmed. The bulk of the ceramics of Mound C were Monserratean and Elenoid, while Mound Byielded Cuevas and Monserratean remains. Periodically, the midden sloped to reveal aboriginal pitting inthe profiles (Fig. 9a, square B1; 9c, square A1) which invariably occurred above burials. The margins of thereconstructed mound C, dipped dramatically (Fig. 9a, squares el and El), stratigraphy thus reconfirmingtopographic reconstruction. A thick dark midden, a sandy loam filled with shellfish remains and ceramics,gave way at 30 cm. to a lighter zone of leaching with fewer artifacts. The burials punched through themidden into the sterile sand below to a depth of 1m.

The Osteological Remains

The burials themselves (Fig. 10) were heavily disturbed, with that of one skeleton, No.1, scattered over five 1 x 1's! The second skeleton, No.2, was headless, but was associated with a partial mandible and placedin a position similar with Alegria's findings, a primary internment laying on its left side in a fetal position,with a probable eastern orientation. The third burial consisted of just a cranium, the body undoubtedlyextending into the eastern balk of the trench (not removed). None of the burials had any grave goods. Allin all, this small sample maintained the long and conservative burial patterns in Puerto Rico of later ceramic-bearing cultures. This pattern consisted of the ancient inhabitants interning their dead in the fetal positionin contradistinction to the preceramic peoples of Cueva Maria La Cruz, who were buried in an extendedposition. These burials also show significant cultural continuity with Saladoid and Pre-Taino burials fromnearby Hacienda Grande, both as to position, circumstances of internment and orientation (Walker 1985).

The skeletal material excavated at Luquillo Beach is highly fragmentary with the condition of the bonevarying from well preserved and slightly mineralized to soft and flakey. PlateD shows the platform of burial1, in soft, sandy subsoil. The remains are as follows beginning with that specimen:

Skeleton 1

The sex is male. The innominate fragments are complete enough to show a narrow sciatic notch and nopreauricular sulcus. Skull features include a large mastoid process, supramastoid crest, moderate nuchalcrest development and a very thick (measured superio-inferiorly) malar bone. Using the techniques of Todd(1921) and McKern and Stewart (1957) a single right fragment of the pubic symphysis yields an age estimateof 50 years of age at death, plus or minus 5 years. Other signs evident of older age present in this skeletoninclude degenerative changes in the cervical vertebrae and marked wear in the dentition. The pathologicalcondition known as "sabre tibia" may be present. Both fragmentary tibial shafts show evidence of diffuseosteitis. This condition is associated with the treponemal diseases (venereal syphilis, endemic syphilis, yaws,and pinta). Degenerative changes in the mouth include marked wear with secondary dentine formation on

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the crowns of all teeth. There are no caries, but there are heavy tartar deposits with marked alveolarreabsorption. The right upper second premolar (PM4) was chipped in life exposing the pulp cavity. This ledto the development of an abscess which was beginning to involve the adjacent first molar at the time ofdeath. Additional evidence of chipping and a very uneven wear pattern strongly suggest that the dentitionwas employed for cultural activities in addition to eating.

Skeleton 2

This individual was pre-pubertal and the sex can only be guessed at. Sex can be estimated by comparingdental age with skeletal age. The dentition is represented by a right mandibular fragment which includesall adult teeth from right central incisor to first molar. A small wear facet on the distal surface of the lowerright first molar indicates that the second adult molar was in place. Some small wear facets on bothpremolars indicate that the individual was over 13 years of age. Skeletal maturation confirms the immaturestatus of this skeleton. All epiphyses in the humerus are unfused. The acetabulum of the innominate isunfused. The epiphysis of the calcaneus is open. In each of these fusion episodes females beginapproximately two years before males, at age 13, while eruption of the second molar occurs in both sexesat approximately 12 years of age with a lesser sex difference. If this individual was a female the dental agewould suggest that these epiphyses should show the beginnings of fusion. Since there is no hint of thebeginnings of fusion, it is reasonable to conclude that this individual was a male. Other indications of ageinclude an unfused radius head, open epiphyses in the vertebral bodies, and open epiphyses in the femurand tibia. To summarize this argument, Skeleton 2 probably represents a young male between the ages of13 and 15.

Skeleton 3

This extremely fragmentary and incomplete skeleton is smaller than skeleton 1 but there are a few featuresof the sku11 (Plate E) which tip the balance in favor of a male sex identification. The brow ridge ismoderately developed. The orbits are squared and have rounded margins. The malar bone is as thick asin Skeleton 1. The mastoid process is large and there is a supramastoid crest. This individual was over 35years of age and probably closer to 50. Degenerative changes in the cervical vertebrae and lipping of theclavicular facet on a fragment of the acromion of the right scapula indicate an age over 35 to 40. This is thetime when these changes begin. Dental wear is severe in some parts of the mouth and all of the uppermolars and lower second and third molars have been lost long before death (Plate F). The uneven dentalwear pattern seen in skeleton 1 is repeated in this specimen. Wear in the upper teeth is especiallypronounced. Tartar deposits are heavy and alveolar reabsorption is marked. There is a well developedabscess around the root of the upper right canine.

In summary, the pathology in these skeletons is somewhat typical of skeletal series analyzed throughout theNew World dating from before and after European contact. It is also closely parallel to similar pathologicalfindings from the Dominican Republic (Luna Calderón 1976). The condition "sabre tibia" is well known andapparently reflects the widespread occurrence of an endemic infectious organism related to theTreponemataceae family of bacteria (Bullen 1972). Whether or not individuals were affected by the diseasemay have been determined by their overall state of health and nutrition.

The dentition gives clues about certain elements in the diet. The tartar deposits and extreme alveolarreabsorption observed in the adults indicates the consumption of a soft carbohydrate staple such as manioc.

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Severe wear patterns, which these skeletons share with similar specimens from Hacienda Grande (Walker1985: 199), Collores (Rodríguez 1983: 259), and Sorce (Chanlatte-Baik 1983: 83), indicate that certaincomponents of the diet were abrasive or incorporated grit, or shell, through or during preparation. Mostlikely, this derived from the sandy grit accidentally incorporated in shellfish, which was an importantelement in the diet. In addition, the uneven wear and chipping suggest that the dentition was used toprocess certain foods such as crabs. These people may have also used their teeth for other cultural activitiessuch as the manufacture of artifacts (Walker 1985: 200).

Additional Material

The skeletal material also includes a fragmentary artifact made out of human cranial bone – probably thefrontal region. The fragment contains a small perforation on upper right corner, and to judge from similarexamples in the Centro de Investigaciones Indigenas (ex-Castillo) collections from Hacienda Grande, therewould have been a similar perforation in the upper left- hand corner, probably for suspension of the artifactas a pectoral. The side closest to the perforation has been smoothed while the remaining three sides havebeen broken. It is not possible to determine whether this artifacts was made while the bone was still fresh.

The Malacological Collection

The malacological collection from the midden in Mound C presents a typical picture of the shellfishassemblage from a north coast site. In order of occurrence, the gastropods present are: Strombus gigas,Strombus pugilis, Cittarium pica, Murex ponium, Oliva sp., Fossalaria tulipa, Cassis tuberosa, Charoniavariegata, Murex brevifons, Phalium circatricosum, Neritina elenchi, Neritina punctulata, Neritina meleagris,and Conus daucus. Of the limpets Diodora cayenensis is the most common.

Among the bivalvia found in Mound C contexts (ordered in terms of percentage popularity through thestrata) are: Anadara notabilis, Antigona listeri, Phacoides pectinatus, Pitar circinata, Chione cancellata,lphigenia brasiliensis, Chione intapurpurea, Heterodonax birnaculata and Trachycardium muricatum. Puzzling in its scarcity is the common mangrove oyster, Crassostrea rhizophorae. This is anomalous sincetoday there is an extensive mangrove swamp to the immediate east of the site (indicated by the scallopedshaded area surrounding the river in Fig. 2). The paucity of mangrove oyster food remains poses twopossibilities: either the mangrove swamp was not present when the sites was inhabited, or there was a foodpreference or taboo system in operation among the inhabitants of the site which rejected the oyster as aproper food source (rather like what obtains today in Puerto Rico where Crassostrae, though edible, is notconsumed edible).

Two lines of argument support the latter hypothesis: one from ecology and one from site +distributionalpatterns. In contrast to the mangrove-rich low energy south coast of the island, "(o)n the north shore,where the coastal shelf does not exceed two miles in width and there are few offshore reefs, mangrovezones are limited to lagoons and semi-closed bays" (Vega 1981: 20). There is sufficient geomorphologicalevidence to indicate that the lunate embayments at Luquillo were the product of wave patterns beingdiffracted by offshore reefs (1981: 20). Since the reefs produce both the calm embayments, a high densityof aquatic life, and the conditions for the formation of mangrove swamps, those mangrove formations musthave been in existence when humans selected this area for settlement. The same conditions hold, but nowproduced by offshore lithified dunes, or eolianitic ridges, in other areas of early Saladoid and Pre-Taino

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settlements, such as Maisabel in Vega Baja. Thus we might have the co-occurrence of mangrove swampswith these early settlements without the necessity of the populations utilizing the oyster for food.

We have constructed a north-south transect of microniche ecology ala Flannery, to describe local ecologyat the site and niche utilization as reflected in the shellfish data (Fig. 11). Exploitation of the surroundingsubtropical moist forest, and the more remote very moist subtropical moist forest, and the more remotevery moist subtropical forest, very moist low montane forest, low montane rain forest and rain forest proper(Ewell and Whitmore 1973: 20; Roe 1985: 207, Fig. 3), Zone VIII in Fig. 11, was very limited. Only some tree-perching humid forest gastropods, such as Pleurodonte sagemon, point in that direction. Instead, the wholefocus seems to have been toward the swamp, river mouth and lagoon.

There are many other life-forms which abounded in of near the mangroves and which served to make themattractive as resource patches. Carnivores like the Murex frequent the swamps as do other perchingshellfish species which are found among the mangrove's elevated root systems (Fig. 11, Zone VI). Nerites,though small, are found in vast concentrations throughout these brackish zones and, in some species,continue up the feeding river system (Fig. 11, zone VII). The blue crab abounds in the tidal lagoon mudflats(Fig. 11, Zone V). Parenthetically, they are a major factor of site disturbance and even today one finds littlepiles of sherds in front of their burrows.

Most of the recovered shellfish remains belong to shallow intertidal species associated with the sandy-bottomed lagoon and its bed of turtle grass, Thallasia. This is also the zone (Fig. 11, Zone IV) of the largecarnivorous gastropods, like the Strombus gigas, one of the commonest features of the midden. The nextmost common species come from the tide pools in the offshore reefs (Fig. 11, Zone III). Lastly, the wave-break and spray regions of the reef faces, where Cittarium pica abounds, represent the outer boundariesof this procurement system. (Fig. 11, Zone II). The open ocean, or pelagic zone (Fig. 11, Zone I), was asunder-utilized in site settlement times as the other periphery, that of the forest.

The Lithic Remains

One of Pantel's first impressions upon examining the lithic component from Luquillo, and one which alsocharacterized the Hacienda Grande site (Walker 1985: 182-183), was the overall paucity of lithic remainsin respect to the food and ceramic assemblages. Although the sample was a total one, i.e., no selection wasdone at the site and everything that did not pass through the screen was saved, it may have been biased bythe large size (1/4" ) of the screen. Although this screen size is standard practice locally, experience nowsuggests that 1/8th inch or less screen (of the sort the Centro is currently using in its Maisabel excavations)would be more effective in retaining the micro-flake debitage that could have upped lithic representationat the site. However, no artifacts of any size escaped the screen, and most of what was recovered wasdebitage, indicating that our picture of local production and on-site napping, attested to by the presenceof non-utilized flakes (Fig. 16a,b) off of prepared platforms (Fig. 16c,d), would not have been substantiallyaltered by using a smaller screen size. In short, the paltry lithic assemblage at Luquillo Beach is consonantwith other similar-aged sites to indicate a localized, conservative and rudimentary flaked stone workingtradition.

That tradition is localized in that all raw materials, principally fine-grained basalt and other igneous rivercobbles, can be picked up in the immediate vicinity, representing as they do the outwash from the nearby

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Cerros de Luquillo in the El Yunque rain forest. This use of inferior but local raw materials, stands in sharpcontrast to the cherts, jaspers, and isotropic flints utilized in the majority of the preceramic sites. While thismay be attributable to available source materials, it does indicate a local bias which is consonant with themalacological data.

The Monserrate tradition is conservative since its core I utilized flake and ground-stone technology is a directcarry-over from local preceramic styles of stone working, such as that represented at Cueva Maria Ia Cruznear Hacienda Grande (Alegría et.al l955). However, one illuminating difference is that the pebble grinders(Walker 1985: 210, Figs. 9-10), which are a characteristic of Cueva Maria la Cruz's assemblage, and are alsoshared with the early Hacienda Grande phase of the Hacienda Grande occupation (Walker 1985: 186), areabsent in all of the Centro's cuts. This absence persists in the pit in Mound B, which has a strong Cuevascomponent. Neither do they figure in any of Alegria's lithic samples from his much more extensiveexcavations at Monserrate (Alegría 1947). Thus the hypothesis which Roe and Walker advanced with regardto this artifact class, which overlaps the cultural span between the preceramic and the ceramic ages inPuerto Rico, that the pebble grinders are limited to early ceramic times (Walker 1985: 183, 186), and dropout of the sequence in later times, can now be considerably sharpened. Since the Luquillo Beach Saladoidoccupation is principally Cuevas, the pebble grinder can be regarded as a Pre-ceramic and early HaciendaGrande tool type.

The tradition is technologically simple since it employed non-precision technologically simple since itemployed non-precision techniques, such direct percussion flake removal to produce unifacial flake tools,for the most part plano-convex in profile (Fig. 12-13; Fig. 14d; Fig. 15a- d). The lack of cores and preparedblades was also notable in the sample.

The Monserrate materials are conservative also in terms of its external affiliations, being equivalent to partsof the lithic assemblages of preceramic sites like those of Levisa in Cuba, Cabaret in Haiti, Barrera-Mordanin the Dominican Republic, and the site of Las Arenas and others in the southwestern series of Puerto Rico.

The functional analysis of these flaked stones artifacts demonstrates a predominance of scraping (Fig. 13,14, l5a-d) and/or chopping edges (Figs. 17-18); again a trait also attributable to preceramic lithicassemblages.

Perhaps the one keynote of the lithics from Monserrate is the prevalence of reuse and rejuvenation ofalready prepared, but exhausted surfaces. The presence of small flakes with heavy bashing along a leadingedge (Fig. 15e-g), in association with a predominance of bashing damage to most of the sample (Figs. 19-21),demonstrates the ubiquitousness of ground stone tool retouch. This progressive "using up'' of artifactsthrough continual reuse and concomitant rejuvenation of working surfaces might indeed be one explanationfor the statistical "under- representation" of lithics in the artifactual universe of the site's remains. The mostimpressive case of this curational pattern is present in the oft-considered "ceremonial" or "aesthetic" artifactclass of the petaloid celt (axe).

Polished petaloid celts are found exhibiting heavy use damage (Fig. 22a, d; h-m) as well as multiple functions(23a, b) through the trajectory of its use life. Such an artifact appears to have started life as an axe, but uponlosing its bit to heavy use damage, and its butt to shaft breakage, both ends of the artifact would end theiruseful lives acting as a hand chopper/masher. Due to the general Caribbean archaeological ignorance of thelowland South Amerindian tradition of making many so-called utilitarian artifacts beautiful (Kensiger et. al.,

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1975; Yde, 1965), this might lead us into a misguided discussion of the functional versus ceremonial aspectsof this class of artifact. We shall avoid such a discussion here, being content to simply mention that localscarcities or cultural attitudes led to a rough utilitarian reuse of once carefully prepared lithic artifacts inMonserrate Pre-Taino times.

This attrition of work surfaces as a consequence of intentional flake removal is not an unusual practice onchipped cryptocrystalline tools, but it has not been observed as a practice on slow-flow pyroclastic-basedground stone tools. This measure of "economy" (or perhaps "indolence") might help to explain low stoneartifact to overall assemblage ratios (usually less than 10%) for Caribbean ceramic sites. The overall picturewhich emerges from both the Hacienda Grande and the Monserrate sites is consonant with that recoveredfrom other parts of the world where chipped stone preceramic techniques "degenerate" in later ceramictimes as ground-stone is emphasized. While essential continuities remain, the absence of a "blade"technology in these sites may be one consequence of that technical devolution.

With regard to the chronological implications derivable from form, technique and putative function, theMonserrate material suggests the following:

1. The notable absence of a blade industry in ceramic sites may provide a diagnostic variant for chronologicalpurposes. An interesting note is that the absence of blades needs to be examined for its implications of thefunctional differences of tool kits for different subsistence activities.

2. The techniques used in the production of the flaked stone artifacts of Monserrate do not differ from thatof the preceramic sites, in that, the direct percussion technique is present in nearly all the preceramic sitesof the Caribbean. With further research perhaps the occurrence of certain techniques will prove to beexclusive to certain periods and therein provide chronological markers for preceramic versus ceramic periodlithic workshop sites or activity loci.

3. And finally, the occurrence of some tool types which are similar for ceramic and preceramic sites,illustrates the need to re-examine the "chronological-block" approach, at least as regards lithic technology,in Caribbean archaeology. Despite its typological transference of Old World labels to Caribbean realities,the alternate schema of Kozlowski, in which he shows traditions of evolution, might be more appropriatehere.

The use of flaked stone tools carries through from the earliest of preceramic times until European contactand the introduction of metal tools. Researchers in the Caribbean often fail to analyze or report the lithiccomponents in their ceramic assemblages, therein perpetuating the misconception that flaked stoneartifacts are preceramic tools. Sites like Cayo Cofresi (Veloz Maggiolo et. al., 1975) are instructive in theopposite direction as well, not all ground stone artifacts are ceramic age. The last possibility, thatpreceramic peoples may have persisted into ceramic times in some sort of cultural exchange with ceramicpeoples, a situation hinted at by the pebble grinders of Cueva Maria la Cruz and Hacienda Grande, is anintriguing possibility but one not yet sufficiently documented to further blur the lines of stageIphasereconstructions.

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Conclusions

The pattern which emerges from this restudy of two of the original five mounds of the Luquillo Beach siteis one of a continuous occupation, but of an oscillating pattern between several raised, and hence non-floodable, eminences within a restricted area. This "peripatetic" pattern builds up distinct living-sitemidden-mounds, each containing only a partial representation of the whole stratigraphic column. Thus sitecontinuity is masked by intra-site locus (i.e., individual mound) discontinuity. It is our opinion that theindividual study of a single mound within this developmental history has yielded the mistaken impressionof a hiatus between Saladoid and Pre- Taino occupations, and hence has favored cultural reconstructionswhich focus on the typological differences between their respective material cultural assemblages ratherthan the considerable modal analytic continuities between them. In turn, this has led to hypotheses aboutsite unit intrusion rather than in situ development. Along with Rouse, we agree that the balance of theevidence leans to the latter interpretation of continuity.

Thus, while there are differences between the occupations of Mounds B and C: Mound B being Cuevas andElenoid, Mound C being primarily Elenoid, there is considerable overlap in lithic and ceramic modes betweenthe two mounds. Moreover, the skeletal evidence from Mound C points to a population well adapted tothe extraction of protein from molluscan fauna, but not differing materially from the earlier "crab culture"populations of proximate sites like Hacienda Grande.

Luquillo Beach conforms to the emerging general pattern of early ceramic-bearing medium-to-large sites,placed widely along the coastal plane some meters back from the present coastline, which is shared amongsimilar sites in Puerto Rico and Vieques. Like other big sites on the windward northern coast, such asHacienda Grande and Maisabel, Luquillo owed its permanence to the fringing barrier reef which producedcalm lagoons suitable for dugout use and the rich molluscan and fish fauna such reefs and lagoons makepossible a fact first recognized by Rouse (1952: 419). This pattern contrasts sharply with later Pre-Taino andTaino site settlement patterns. These latter sites are generally smaller in size, located both on the currentshoreline and into the interior, and are simultaneously more numerous and have smaller intervals betweenthem than the earlier sites. These differences, along with the ecological orientation of these pastpopulations inferable from their food debris, argues for a simple model of pioneering settlement replacedby subsequent local adaption, demographic growth, consequent settlement fission and internal colonization.

In broad terms the model begins with an initial rapid colonization by different, and perhaps mutually hostile,Saladoid groups from South America. Still connected to the mainland by both trade and memory, and ofapparent tribal-level organization, these groups had a material culture which emphasized small, exquisitely-worked personal-presentation (mostly jewelry and fineware ceramics) items of artistic character made inexotic or dispersed raw materials to high technological standards of workmanship. Their material itemswere intentionally elaborated into diverse, complex, but internally stereotyped, categories, both inartifact/vessel form and surface decoration. They are clearly the products of an egalitarian society, but onewhich supported highly-skilled (and therefore both expensive and rare to judge from the curational patternsof artifact reuse and repair) and possibly peripatetic specialists.

The early communities were intrusive pioneers into an alien landscape characterized by an impoverishedisland terrestrial fauna and a dispersed and possibly hostile preceramic archaic populations. The widelyspaced distribution and large size of their communities could have derived as a response to these pressures. The orientations to land resources, such as the land molluscan fauna like Cittarium pica and the nerites,

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represents, in effect, a lack of local subsistence expertise and a vulnerability to food species demographiccollapse as a consequence of over harvesting, as has been argued for some of the islands of the LesserAntilles.

As time and local, in-situ, development took place the populations grew, perhaps not without somecatastrophic reorientation in Sub-Taino times which is mirrored in its apparent material cultural"devolution", and the large sites fissioned to produce myriad smaller sites which begin the internalcolonization of the mountainous interior of the island's piedmont and intermontane zones. Coupled withthis was a reorientation, visible at such sites as Maisabel, to the current geomorphological coastline and ahigher dependency on a wide variety of molluscan and pelagic fish resources demonstrative of anincreasingly sophisticated and insular adapted subsistence base.

As a partial byproduct of the productivity of this system was the incipient shift from small-sized, exoticmaterials, "personal-presentation" artistic goods to locally procured, base material-made, mass-produced"technical" artifacts. To take just the two domains of the ceramic and lapidary arts: the disappearance ofa fine ware/utilitarian ware distinction and a concentration on technologically-limited spherical rather thankeeled shapes, and plastic rather than painted decoration of both simple and stereotyped expression isrelated to the shift in stone work from small items of semi-precious stone to large items of local stone. Bothare manifestations of a shift from a private "culture" of refinement to public displays of power within ahierarchically differentiating population. The ball-game court and it's associated paraphernalia were thedurable symbols of this stage. All of these trends are congruent with the picture of a densely-populatedstratified society on a chiefdom level of socio-cultural integration which the chronicles reveal to us at contacttimes.

Acknowledgements

The senior author expresses his appreciation to the students of the Centro who served as willing andenthusiastic fieldworkers during the six week field session at Luquillo Beach. They were: Francisco Alegría,Joanne Biaggi, Jesús Figueroa Lugo, Osvaldo Gracia Goyco, Carmen Rodríguez, Ariel Viera, and RosaTorruellas. He also thanks Dr. Ricardo E. Alegría, Director Ejecutivo of the Centro for his kind support in thisand other projects, and for making available to me all his data on his 1947 excavations at Monserrate, andto Dr. Irving Rouse for recommending me to run the Centro fieldschool and sharing unstintingly with me hisexperience in lowland South American and Caribbean prehistory. A special thanks goes to the memory ofthe late Gary Vescelius who generously shared with me his insights on Monserrate and the "Elenoidproblem" and allowed me complete access to his field notes on his restudy of Rainey's collections. LuisChanlatte-Baik, as always, has been extremely helpful in making his collections available to me to study, inthis instance materials from his Monserrate test excavations. Lastly, I must thank El Centro deInvestigaciones Indigenas for donating writeup time for this report as well as aiding in the photographicpreparation of some of the figures.

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Reference

Alegria, Ricardo E.1947 Informe preliminar sobre Ia primera excavación del Centro de Investigaciones Arqueológicas

del UPR en Ia finca “La Monserrate”. Typescripts with plates, collection of the author, SanJuan.

1948 Arqueología Puertorriqueña. Exhibition catalog. Museo de Ia Universidad, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico. Anónimo

1947a Encuentran numerosos objetos en las excavaciones de Luquillo que hace Alegría para elmuseo UPR. La Torre. Miércoles, 28 de Marzo. Río Piedras.

1947b Nuevas hallazgos en las excavaciones de Luquillo. El Mundo. Sábado, 14 de Junio. San Juan.1947c Nuevas hallazgos. La Prensa. Sábado, 21 de Junio. New York.

Ewel, J. J., and J. L. Whitmore1973 Ecological Life Zones of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. Rio Piedras,

Puerto Rico: United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Institute of Tropical Forestry.

Fiol, Rose1947 Center of Archaeological Research. UPR Campus Reporter. Saturday, November 29th. Rio

Piedras.González Alberty, Fernando

1947 Las excavaciones en Ia Monserrate. El Imparcial. Domingo, 1 de junio. San Juan. Hernández Aquino, Luis

1947 UPR realiza excavaciones en Luquillo: Se propone enriquecer el museo; comprobar teoríassobre indios. El Mundo. Domingo, 11 de Mayo. San Juan.

Hostos, Adolfo J. de1919 Prehistoric Porto Rican Ceramics. American Anthropologist, 21: 376-399.

Marquez, Juan Luis1947 Arqueólogo Puertorriqueño realiza con éxito excavaciones en Luquillo. Puerto Rico

Ilustrado. p.p. 5-15. San Juan. Paniagua Picazo, Antonio

1947 ¿Pertenecían a una raza india anterior a Ia Taina los esqueletos desenterrados en Luquillo?El Imparcial. Domingo, 10 de Agosto. San Juan.

Rainey, Froelich G1940 Porto Rican Archaeology. Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, vol. 18,

Part I. New York: Academy of Science.Ramos Llompart, Antonio

1947 Las excavaciones de Luquillo: Los descubrimientos arqueológicos de Ia Monserrate. El lmparcial 29 de junio. San Juan.

Raymond, J. Scott, Warren R. DeBoer and Peter G. Roe1975 Cumancaya: A Peruvian Ceramic Tradition. Occasional Papers 2. Calgary, AB: Department

of Archaeology, University of Calgary. Roe, Peter G.

1976 Form and Decoration: Nawpa Pacha.1982 The Cosmic Zygote: Cosmology in the Amazonian Basin. New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press.1985 A preliminary Report on the 1980 and 1982 Field Seasons at Hacienda Grande (12 PSj 7-5):

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Overview of Site History, Mapping and Excavations. Comptes Rendus des Communicationsdu Dixieme Congres International D'Etudes des Civilisations Precolombiennes des Petites Antilles. Fort-de-France, Martinique, 1983. P.p. 151-180, 206-224.

Rouse, Irving1939 Prehistory of Haiti: A Study in Method. Publications in Anthropology 21. New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press.1952 Porto Rican Prehistory: Introduction; Excavations in the West and North. Scientific Survey

of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, vol. 18, Part 3, New York; Academy of Science. Walker, Jeffery B.

1985 A Preliminary Report on the Lithic and Osteological Remains from the 1980, 1981 and 1982Field Seasons at Hacienda Grande (12PSj7-5). Comptes Rendus des Communications duDixieme Congres lnternational D'Etudes des Civilisations Precelombiennes des PetitesAntilles. Fort-de-F:rance, Martiaique, 19,83. p. 181-224.

List of Figures

1. Puerto Rico and the location of the Luquillo Beach site, Monserrate (courtesy of Mela Pons deAlegría).

2. A composite location map of the Monserrate site and the fringing barrier reef developed from roadmaps and aerial photographs. The map is drawn in the "archaeographic present", showing themound locations as of 1934 and the park road construction up to 1978.

3. A composite and site-specific chronological/archaeological culture-geographic area table of thenortheastern Puerto Rican region, Rouse’s "Vieques Sound", highlighting the temporal context of the Monserrate site (based on Rouse 1973 and Vescelius's collection-study notes, courtesy ofGary Vescelius).

4. Cuevas ceramics from Mound B, Monserrate, from Alegria's 1947 excavations, and now in theUPR museum, Rio Piedras.a. A vertical cross-section view of a bell-shaped carinated pedestal-based early Cuevas bowl

with vertical "D"- shaped handles adorned with applique button. The white-on-red slippainting is more thickly applied than would be the case on a similar Hacienda Grandephase pot to the degree that it is perceptible to the touch as standing in relief. The interiorhas the same cream-tan color as Fig. 5a, while the red slip is duskier. There is a broken coiljuncture along the annular base suggesting it was made at an earlier time and thenattached to the lower vessel body wall at differing humidity levels, thus making for a poorbond. The paste is characterized by the same ashy grey color with sand tempering as theother Cuevas pieces. 18.3 cm. rim diameter (Alegria 1947, Plate 10a, Mound B,C-27/50-60).

b. The design layout roll-out from 4a showing the irregular rectilinear design which contrastswith similar earlier finely-executed Hacienda Grande curvilinear scroll-based design layouts.

c. A vertical cross-section of a boat-shaped late Cuevas or early Monserratean tray. Thisvessel has a discontinuous internally and externally thickened flange rim and concave ovalbase. The exterior is finely finished and well smoothed with a yellowish-tan color. No redslip is visible on the upper rim. Luquillo? Not pictured in Alegría 1947 but labeled F4, aMound 8 coordinate. No museum catalog number. 17.6 cm. wide, 16.2 long and 7 cm. high.

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d. A front view vertical cross-section drawing of Fig. 4c, e. A top view of Fig. 4c and d.5. Late Cuevas and early Monserratean ceramics from Mound B, Alegría 1947 Excavations, now in the

UPR museum, Rio Piedras.a. A vertical cross-section of a small carinated Cuevas constricted bowl with direct rim. No

catalog number but is labeled Mound B, G-14/50". It has a fine, yellowish-tan paste. 5.3 cm.tall, 15 cm. wide at the carination, a 7 cm. wide concave flat base.

b. A vertical cross-section of a small late Cuevas or early Monserratean pedestal-based bowlwith unrestricted direct rim and a deeply and irregularly pebble-polished exterior. The"polishing" approximates grooving since it was done when the paste was still wet. The corereveals a grey ashy interior with sand temper and the same dark brown exterior as Figs. 6a,and c. The interior of the vessel is finished much more carefully than the exterior. 18 cm.rim diameter, 7 cm. tall, 10 cm. basal diameter (Alegría 1947, Plate 18b, I-22/60-66).

c. A top view of a small Cuevas carinated unrestricted flat-based bowl with beveled rim andfour equi-distant appliqued rim nubbins and the characteristic single sub-carinationappliqued perforated lug. The center of the circular base and the upper segment of the rimare adorned with a red pre-fire slip-paint. This vessel has the same yellowish-tan paste asthe other Cuevas vessels from Mound B, but a redder, more oxidized, core. It also appearsto have some sherd tempering in addition to the ubiquitous sand tempering. 15 cm. rimdiameter, 6.2 cm. tall, and a 5.6 cm. basal diameter. Labeled Luquillo? but does not appearin Alegria 1947.

d. A vertical cross-section drawing of Fig. 5c.e. A vertical cross-section drawing of a late Cuevas carinated pedestal-based bowl with an

internally-thickened everted unrestricted rim. As in the other Cuevas pieces this vessel hasless than 1mm. thick sand temper and an ashy grey core. The smooth floated surface hasa dull reddish-purple, pre-fire slip-painted exterior rim. Museum catalog no. 87A, buterroneously labeled "collection Montalvo Guenard" when it is pictured in Alegria 1947,Plate 18a as coming from Mound B, Luquillo. 7.5 cm. basal diameter, 8.5 cm. tall, 20 cm.rim diameter.

f. A top, or global, view of Fig. 5e showing the slip-painted longitudinally andtransverse-reflected spiral design layout.

6. Monserratean utilitarian ware ceramics from Mound B, Luquillo, the Alegria 1947 excavations, nowin the UPR Museum, Rio Piedras.a. A vertical cross-section drawing of a slightly carinated and slightly oval food bowl from a

burial with restricted orifice and direct rim. The vessel has a moderately rounded "flat"base and coarse raised "D"- shaped handles which rise above the rim. It has the samereddish-brow pebble-polished surface as 6c and sand tempering. Museum catalog no. 1505(Alegría 1947, Plate 1a). 9 cm. base diameter, 26 cm. rim diameter and 12 cm. tall.

b. A vertical cross-section drawing of an extremely crude little round food bowl with anuneven flat bottom and a restricted orifice direct and markedly undulating and slanting rim. The raised "D"-shaped handles are attached unusually close to the lip. This vessel has thesame exterior color and paste characteristics as 6a and c (Alegría 1947, Plate lc), I-21/72".

c. A vertical cross-section drawing of a large slightly carinated round food bowl from a burialwith raised "D"-shaped handles, which project beyond the restricted direct rim, and aslightly convex "flat" base. The exterior and interior finish is characterized by carefulhorizontal scrapping which was done with a flat-sided implement like an oval carved gourdscraper. The base plug was coiled first to judge from the juncture marks where it has split.

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The paste has large sherd temper – up to 2mm. wide – in addition to its sand temper(Alegría 1947, Plate 2). E-21/36-42. Museum catalog erroneously lists depth provenienceas E-21/42-44. 32.5 cm. wide at carination, 13 cm. tall and 12 cm. wide basal diameter.

d. A profile view of a small ceramic topia. The surface is cracked and irregularly scraped in avertical fashion (Alegría 1947, Plate 23e), C-4/0-30. Height 12 cm. and basal diameter 6 cm.wide.

e. A top view of 6d showing its irregular oval horizontal cross-section. Museum catalog no.1521.

7. Monserratean modeled ceramic figurines and adomos from Mound B. Alegría 1947 excavations,now in the UPR museum, Rio Piedras.a. A ventral view of a male? anthropomorphic solid modeled figurine with punctate belly

button. This piece has a coarsely scraped brown/tan exterior with fire-clouding andsquared-off contours. Museum catalog no. 1511 (Alegría 1947, Plate 24a), "Mela's site" testpit.

b. A dorsal view of Fig. 7a.c. A profile view of Fig. 7a.d. A profile view of a Monserratean anthropomorphic male solid figurine with a

coarsely-scraped brown exterior and squared-off contours. Except for the shared sandtempering, these figurines differ from the smooth, hollow Hacienda Grande phase figurineswhich are their antecedents. Museum catalog no. 1503 (Alegría 1947, Plate 24b),1-19/24-32.

e. A dorsal view of Fig. 7d's fire-clouded surface.f. A frontal view of Fig. 7d showing the testicles and also the absence of clear fracture marks

for the penis. g. A dorsal view of an anthropomorphic phallic effigy with no evidence ofattachment to a figurine. Museum catalog no. 1515 (Alegría 1947, Plate 24c) E-18/48-54.

h. Dorsal view of a semi-hollow anthropomorphic figurine right hand. The exterior has a highlyburnished rust-red bath over a tan/brown surface. Museum catalog no. 1505 (Alegría1947, Plate 24d).

i. A Ventral view of Fig. 7h.j. A profile view of Fig. 7h and i.k. A theriomorphic adomo head covered in a plum-colored bath. It would have been attached

to the rim of an open bowl. Museum catalog no. 1506 (Alegría 1947, Plate 24f).8. The topographic reconstruction of Mound C and the layout of the 1978 Centro trench within it.

Test pit no. 1 in yet another low mound which had hitherto escaped detection, "Mound F," is alsolocated.

9. A reconstructed Mound C based on the palm platform elevations.a. The north face of Mound C showing the intrusive burial pits.b. The location of the pits in the east-west transect of Mound C.c. The west face profiles of squares A2, A1 and A0 in Mound C. The stratigraphy is

represented in a key from "shell and ceramic filled midden", "sterile sand", "garbage pit",and "dark sand with refuse" layers.

Plate CaptionsA. A view of the mangrove swamp, tidal flats and river mouth to the east of the site.B. An eastward-looking view of the palm platforms which were used to reconstruct Mound C with the

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stakes for the trench set in.C. A westward-looking view of the initial stages of excavation of the trench through the remains of

Mound C.D. A view of the excavation and platforming of burial 1 beneath Mound C, A1/40-50 cm.E. A profile view of the cranium of Skeleton 3 (the #2 refers to lab drawer no.) showing its moderate

frontal-occipital skull deformation.F. A macro-photographic shot of the highly abraded teeth of Skeleton 3's mandible.

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