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![favourable mention, on account of architectural merit, ingenious
construction or disposition, or for graceful arrangement of plan.
"And they cannot conclude without calling attention to the designs,
accompanied by models, of M. Hector Horeau, Architect of Paris, and
of Messrs. Turner, of Dublin, as evincing most daring and ingenious
disposition and construction.[1]
"W. Cubitt, Chairman."
Some of the strongest objections to this Report are very fairly urged
in a letter which appeared in the Builder of the 15th of June, a part
of which is subjoined:—
"Part II. of the Report contains what I suppose is to be taken as the
best exposition of the merits of contributors that the Committee can
give, which commences by stating, in a tone of commendation, that,
'not confining themselves to SUGGESTIONS ONLY, which were invited
by the PROGRAMME, a large proportion of them are remarkable for
elaboration of thought and elegance of execution.' This, I would
contend, is clearly a breach of the specified conditions, viz., that
SUGGESTIONS ONLY were to be given—that the plan or drawing sent in
was to be A MERE OUTLINE SKETCH, upon a SINGLE SHEET; and the
Committee even recommended that it would be most convenient
merely to trace it upon the common paper on which the 'plan of site'
was supplied to the public, a space being left upon the sheet for
SKETCHING any sections or elevations that might be necessary to
illustrate the design; and that a written description, limited also to 'a
single sheet,' was all the exposition of their ideas that authors would
be allowed to give. The Report goes on to state, that 'our illustrious
continental neighbours have especially distinguished themselves [in
designing a temporary building for an exhibition] by compositions of
the utmost taste and learning, worthy of enduring execution—
examples of what might be done in the ARCHITECTURAL illustration of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/771666-250519204135-b18fa0f5/75/Dialogues-In-Cuban-Archaeology-1st-Edition-Dr-L-Antonio-Curet-71-2048.jpg)
![the subject [the conditions strictly enjoined contributors not to enter
into architectural detail] when viewed in its highest aspect, and, at
all events, exhibiting features of grandeur, arrangement, and grace
which your Committee have not failed to appreciate.' It then places
in contradistinction to these no doubt admirable but out-of-place
productions of architectural genius, the 'practical character of the
designs of our own countrymen,' which it states, 'as might have
been expected, has been remarkably illustrated in some very striking
and simple methods, suited to the temporary purposes of the
building, due attention having been paid by them to the pecuniary
means allotted to this part of the undertaking.' Yet, notwithstanding
this comparison, clearly and indisputably in favour of our own
countrymen, as regards the object sought and the conditions
stipulated by the Committee, we find by the selected list of those
authors who are to receive 'the highest honorary distinction' the
Commissioners can award, that the Committee can only discover, out
of 195 English and 38 foreign contributors, THREE Englishmen
entitled to reward, the remaining FIFTEEN out of the eighteen
selected being foreigners; or, as regards the whole numbers, in
proportion of 1 to 65 of 'our own countrymen,' the authors of the
'striking and simple,' so admirably 'suited to the temporary purpose
of the building,' and 1 to about 2½ of foreigners, who, in designing
for a temporary building, to be simple, cheap, and readily
constructed, have so overshot the mark as to produce 'compositions'
commendable only for the 'utmost taste and learning, and worthy of
enduring execution.' Surely something must be wrong here, either
the Report or the selected list—possibly both.
"In conclusion, I cannot help avowing the opinion that a wrong,
though I believe unintentionally, has been done to many of the 233
who so readily and 'generously' responded to the call for their ideas;
more particularly as I know, from personal inspection, that at least
ONE of the plans altogether omitted from the Report contains FIVE of
the leading features of the approved design."](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/771666-250519204135-b18fa0f5/75/Dialogues-In-Cuban-Archaeology-1st-Edition-Dr-L-Antonio-Curet-72-2048.jpg)
Dialogues In Cuban Archaeology 1st Edition Dr L Antonio Curet
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- 6. DIALOGUES IN CUBANARCHAEOLOGY
- 8. DIALOGUES IN CUBAN ARCHAEOLOGY Editedby L. ANTONIO CURET, SHANNON LEE DAWDY, AND GABINO L A ROSA CORZO THE UNIVERSITY OF AL ABAMA PRESS Tuscaloosa
- 9. Copyright © 2005 TheUniversity of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: AGaramond ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dialogues in Cuban archaeology / edited by L. Antonio Curet, Shannon Lee Dawdy, and Gabino La Rosa Corzo. p. cm. Originally presented at a symposium held at the 2002 Society for American Archaeology 67th Annual Meeting held in Denver, Colorado. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8173-1464-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8173-5187-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Indians of the West Indies—Cuba—Antiquities—Congresses. 2. Excavations (Archaeology)—Cuba—Congresses. 3. Cuba—Antiquities—Congresses. I. Curet, L. Antonio, 1960– II. Dawdy, Shannon Lee, 1967– III. La Rosa Corzo, Gabino. IV. Society for American Archaeology. Meeting (67th : 2002 : Denver, Colo.) F1769.D53 2005 972.91′00497′0729—dc22 2005000438
- 10. To the memoryof three pillars of Cuban archaeology, Ramón Dacal Moure, José M. Guarch Delmonte, and Manuel Rivero de la Calle.
- 12. List of Figuresix List of Tables xiii Acknowledgments xv 1. Introduction Shannon Lee Dawdy, L. Antonio Curet, and Gabino La Rosa Corzo 1 PART I. HISTORY OF CUBAN ARCHAEOLOGY 2. Three Stages in the History of Cuban Archaeology Ramón Dacal Moure and David R. Watters 29 3. The Organization of Cuban Archaeology: Context and Brief History Mary Jane Berman, Jorge Febles, and Perry L. Gnivecki 41 4. Historical Archaeology in Cuba Lourdes S. Domínguez 62 5. Cave Encounters: Rock Art Research in Cuba Marlene S. Linville 72 PART II. SUBSTANTIVE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH 6. Approaches to Early Ceramics in the Caribbean: Between Diversity and Unilineality Jorge Ulloa Hung 103 7. El Chorro de Maíta: Social Inequality and Mortuary Space Roberto Valcárcel Rojas and César A. Rodríguez Arce 125 8. Mythical Expressions in the Ceramic Art of Agricultural Groups in the Prehistoric Antilles Pedro Godo 147 Contents
- 13. 9. Subsistence ofCimarrones: An Archaeological Study Gabino La Rosa Corzo 163 10. An Archaeological Study of Slavery at a Cuban Coffee Plantation Theresa A. Singleton 181 11. Afterword Samuel M. Wilson 200 References Cited 203 Contributors 229 Index 235 viii / Contents
- 14. 1.1. Map ofCuba 23 2.1. Work group translating and editing the book titled The Art and Archaeology of Pre-Columbian Cuba by Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 39 3.1. Welcome sign, a billboard in central Cuba 42 3.2. The Capitolio, Havana 49 3.3. Dra. Lourdes Domínguez with her husband and her mother 52 3.4. Entrance to the Montané Museum, Havana, Cuba 53 3.5. Entrance to Centro de Antropología, Havana, Cuba 55 4.1. Map of Old Havana showing the areas restored by the O¤cina del Historiador de la Ciudad de la Habana. 63 5.1. Drawing of the “Motivo Central” of Cueva No. 1, Punta del Este, Isla de Juventud, Museo Antropológico Montané de la Universidad de La Habana. 76 5.2. Rolando T. Escardó and Antonio Núñez Jiménez studying pictographs painted in red in the Cueva de Pichardo, Sierra de Cubitas 79 5.3. Manuel Rivero de la Calle delivering a speech to the Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba 80 5.4. Geopolitical map of Cuba indicating Rock Art zones 87 6.1. Map showing the location of many early ceramic sites in eastern Cuba 104 6.2. Flaked stone tools from Canímar I 110 Figures
- 15. 6.3. Examples ofceramic decorations from the Belleza site, Santiago de Cuba 113 6.4. Examples of ceramic decorations from the Abra del Cacoygüín site, Holguín, Cuba 114 7.1. Map of the Province of Holguín showing the location of the Area Arqueológica de Banes and the Yaguajay zone 130 7.2 Map of the Yaguajay Zone showing the location of archaeological sites 133 7.3. Sketch of Excavation Unit 3 with the distribution of burials and associated objects from El Chorro de Maíta cemetery 135 7.4. Objects associated with burials from El Chorro de Maíta cemetery 138 8.1. Examples of turtle-theme handles from El Morrillo 149 8.2. Syncretism of the coil handle and turtle theme from El Morrillo 149 8.3. The basic turtle representational unit and its variations 150 8.4. Batrachiform designs on burenes or clay griddles and other artifacts 153 8.5. Batrachiform designs 154 8.6. Reconstruction of the design on burenes associated with the schematization of batrachians 154 8.7. Batrachiform designs 155 8.8. Ceramic vessel with anthropomorphic handles (twins) and paneled motifs of frog legs from a cave in Baracoa, Cuba 156 8.9. Anthropomorphic images of crying/raining 156 8.10. Anthropomorphic images of crying/raining 158 8.11. Images of crying/raining with anthropozoomorphic features 158 8.12. Crying ¤gure designs 160 9.1. Map of Cuba showing the location of the sites discussed 164 9.2. Total number of remains (NISP) and minimum number of individuals (MNI) 169 9.3. MNI by species in all the studied sites 169 9.4. Distribution of MNI by species for each of the studied sites 170 9.5. Distribution of bone and fragment sizes by site 171 9.6. Degree of completeness of the bones identi¤ed by site 172 9.7. Distribution of burn marks in all sites 172 9.8. Distribution of burn marks by site 173 x / Figures
- 16. 9.9. Butcher marksby site 174 10.1. Map of the Cafetal del Padre 182 10.2. Picture of the wall surrounding the slave village at the Cafetal del Padre 183 10.3. Picture of the wall surrounding the slave village at the Cafetal del Padre 184 10.4. Picture of the wall surrounding the slave village at the Cafetal del Padre 185 10.5. Map of the Cafetal del Padre showing the location of the excavation units 188 Figures / xi
- 18. 3.1. Licentiate inhistory curriculum, University of Havana 51 3.2. Curriculum for students specializing in archaeology, University of Havana 51 5.1. Table of Cuban Rock Art 82 5.2. Table of early terminological equivalents in Indocuban research 89 9.1. Number of remains (NISP) and minimum number of individuals (MNI) in the studied sites 168 Tables
- 20. Both the spiritand the reality of this project correspond to a collaborative team project. Many individuals and organizations have lent their support and enthusiasm to its inception, realization, and transformation from a conference symposium to an edited volume. The symposium and related forum out of which this volume grew took place at the 2002 Society for American Archae- ology 67th Annual Meeting held in Denver, Colorado. The travel and partici- pation of the Cuban presenters was made possible by a generous grant from the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council’s Working Group on Cuba. The sources of the funds made avail- able were the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Christopher Reynolds Foundation. Staff member Rachel Price of the ACLS/ SSRC was encouraging and helpful at every point along the way. Cuban organizations such as the Centro de Antropología de Cuba and the Gabinete de Arqueología de la Habana also lent their logistical and ¤nancial support toward preparing travel arrangements for the Cuban participants. The leadership and staff of the Society for American Archaeology were extremely supportive of the endeavor, offering of¤cial sponsorship of the symposium, extending hospitality to the participants, and helping to accom- modate the needs of a bilingual session. SAA President Bob Kelly was par- ticularly gracious and enthusiastic, opening the session with introductory comments in Spanish. The dif¤cult task of real-time translation fell to Gustavo Gamez. Others participated in the round-table forum following the sympo- sium which established a consensus and sense of urgency in support of this Acknowledgments
- 21. publication. Daniel Sandweissof the University of Maine and Sean Britt of Earthwatch Institute made substantial contributions to the discussion. Shannon Lee Dawdy, who organized the conference events, received logis- tical support from the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities and travel funds from the Rackham School of Graduate Students during 2001 –2002. Her own trip to Cuba in 1 999 that led to her friendship with Gabino La Rosa and the idea for the symposium was supported by a Latin American and Caribbean Studies pre-dissertation award from the University of Michigan’s International Institute. She would not have gone to Cuba had it not been for the buoyant advising of Rebecca Scott. In Cuba, Marcos Rodríguez Matamoros and Lester Puntonet Toledo shared their knowledge of Cuban archaeology and helped set a path for this project in ways of which they are probably unaware and for which she is deeply grateful. Shannon would also like to thank her brother, Jess Dawdy, who provided childcare in Denver under some dif¤cult, if humorous, conditions. The editors are grateful that all of the original symposium presenters (Mary Jane Berman, Ramón Dacal Moure, Lourdes Domínguez, Jorge Febles, Perry L. Gnivecki, Pedro Godo, Gabino La Rosa Corzo, Theresa Singleton, and David Watters) agreed to submit their contributions for publication. It was clear in the early stages of the preparation of this volume that additional authors were needed in order to include a wider representation of Cuban ar- chaeology, and the decision was made then to invite several other colleagues to contribute to this publication. The editors would like to thank these addi- tional contributors—Marlene Linville, César Rodríguez Arce, Jorge Ulloa Hung, Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, and Samuel M. Wilson—for graciously ac- cepting our invitation to participate in this publication. More than anything we deeply appreciate the patience, understanding, and support of all these dis- tinguished authors during the whole process in the preparation of this volume. The editors also express their gratitude to Judith Knight, acquisition editor at The University of Alabama Press, for her support of this project from the beginning and for her patience. José Oliver, Kathleen Deagan, and an anony- mous reviewer provided valuable and important comments that strengthened the quality of the volume. We would also like to thank Tisha Smith and Louise Elinoff for their assistance in preparing the list of references cited and Daniel McNaughton for ¤nal proofreading. Jill Seagard, Scienti¤c Illustrator of the Department of Anthropology of the Field Museum of Natural History, deserves credit for the ¤nal versions of Figures 1 .1 and 4.1 . xvi / Acknowledgments
- 22. DIALOGUES IN CUBANARCHAEOLOGY
- 24. This volume evolvedout of a symposium titled “Prehistoric and Historic Archaeology of Cuba: A New Era of Research, Dialogue, and Collaboration” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in 2002. The goal of the symposium was to provide a setting for Cuban and American archaeologists to engage in a dialogue that could help thaw the state of communication between scholars from both countries, which in many ways has remained frozen in the political climate of the early 1960s. The sym- posium also provided an opportunity to present a retrospective on the history of Cuban archaeology, as well as results of recent research. This volume shares the aims of the symposium, but it also has the goal of raising awareness among American archaeologists about the current social, political, and aca- demic state of archaeology in Cuba. In particular, we want to present a more precise picture of Cuban archaeology since the beginning of the Revolution in order to redress some of the misunderstandings, mistrust, and myths cre- ated by the absurdities of the Cold War and its lingering ghosts. SOCIETY AND ARCHAEOLOGY: INTERACTION BETWEEN CUBAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNDER THE EMBARGO For some time now, archaeologists and social scientists have recognized that the social, political, and economic context of their work can and does affect many aspects of research, including the questions being asked and the results 1 / Introduction Shannon Lee Dawdy, L. Antonio Curet, and Gabino La Rosa Corzo
- 25. obtained from theirstudies. In many cases, paradigms, research topics of in- terest, methodology, results, and conclusions are in®uenced by our personal and social conditions (e.g., Trigger 1989). However, these conditions can also affect the shape and trajectory of research in another way, by determining, at least indirectly, with whom we interact professionally. Social biases inevitably in®uence communication and interaction with other scholars, according to how our social perspective and background agree with those of colleagues. Ultimately, the terms, composition, or even lack of interaction between schol- ars can greatly in®uence the historical and intellectual development of an aca- demic discipline. Within archaeology, few examples of how the lack of com- munication can affect the development of a ¤eld are more dramatic than the case of Cuban and North American archaeologists separated by the U.S. embargo. The ongoing U.S. embargo of Cuba is an anachronism from the Cold War that affects everyone living in the island and a large number of people living in other countries. Before the 1960s, Cuba depended heavily upon products manufactured in the United States. In fact, the small island nation was one of the largest trading partners of the United States, particularly in the exchange of agricultural products (Forster and Handelman 1985). This economic inter- dependency was entangled with a long history of American interest in Cuba that included military interventions and signi¤cant control over the political and economic life of the island dating back at least to the 1870s. American in®uence was so strong that pre-Revolutionary Cuba is considered by many scholars to have been a modern colony of the United States (Pérez 1999). In 1959, Fidel Castro’s Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Party of the Cuban People) came to power as a result of a revolutionary war against President Fulgencio Batista, now generally acknowledged to have been a brutal and inept dicta- tor propped by the Eisenhower administration. Under Batista, the poverty of the Cuban people reached an all-time postcolonial low, with hunger and mal- nutrition widespread in 1950s Cuba (Forster and Handelman 1985:176; Wilkie and Moreno-Ibáñez 1985:79). Within a few years of Batista’s ouster, Castro began to establish a close relationship with the Socialist Party and the Soviet Union as U.S. political, military, and economic pressure mounted, including the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. A seizure of U.S. corporate assets and Cuba’s growing alliance with the USSR soon led to the famous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was during this crisis that President Kennedy began the embargo of Cuba, banning the trade of all American products and businesses with Cuba, as well as travel to 2 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 26. the island bymost U.S. citizens, a move that has lasted in a modi¤ed version until the present day. For a relatively small nation whose whole industrial and agricultural infrastructure was based upon U.S. technology and designs, this sudden and severe break in economic and political relationships was dev- astating. For the average Cuban citizen in the 1960s, the embargo meant that basic products such as medicine, food, clothing, chemicals, fuel, and even clean water suddenly became unavailable. For the Cuban citizen of today, “El Bloqueo” means that many of these items are scarce, absurdly expensive, of poor quality, or available only sporadically. Although Cuba has survived by creating strong trade relations with other nations, the exclusion from the world’s largest economy located just 90 miles away still means that the Cuban people suffer shortages in essential goods. The embargo is now perpetuated for quite different reasons than it was at the beginning, through the lobbying of Cuban exiles in the United States who are critical of the Revolutionary government, many of whom also hope to regain family property (and perhaps power) lost in the 1960s. Despite frequent media coverage of the political tensions between the United States and Cuba and an outpouring of scholarly works on the history of Cuban-American relations, many Americans remain unaware of the eco- nomic, political, and personal impact of the embargo on everyday life in Cuba. Even less is said about how the “communication blockade” between scholars has affected the historical course of academic disciplines and scholar- ship in general. Communication between colleagues and the sharing of re- search results and ideas are critical to the advancement of all disciplines. The absence of regular avenues for scholarly exchange can slow the processes of discovery, theory-building, testing, and critique that are important to the ma- ture development of a ¤eld. Unfortunately, the lack of communication be- tween two generations of Cuban and U.S. scholars has led not only to a near silencing of scholarly exchange but also to a misunderstanding about the con- ditions underlying this silence. For example, in his review of archaeology in post-1959 Cuba, Davis (1996) argues, among other things, that this state of affairs is due to a voluntary isolation adopted by his Cuban counterparts. Ar- chaeologists who have traveled to Cuba in the past few years have found this assumption to be false. Cuban archaeologists are eager, even hungry, for intel- lectual exchange and information on the state of the ¤eld in North America. The perception that Cuba’s isolation is self-imposed rather than a condition structured by the U.S. embargo is a relic of Cold War rhetoric. New archaeological ¤ndings and methods have been developed in many Introduction / 3
- 27. areas of studyin both countries, but the gap in scholarly communication has limited the potential contribution that each side could make to the mutual bene¤t of theoretical and methodological discourses. For instance, greater scholarly interaction between Cuba and the United States during the 1960s and 1970s (dif¤cult years for American archaeology and the social sciences in general) could have molded different historical trajectories of the discipline. On the one hand, Cuban archaeology could have bene¤ted from many of the developments in American archaeology that resulted from the debate over New Archaeology and the development of Cultural Resource Management archaeology (Flannery 1973; Plog et al. 1978; Schiffer 1976). On the other hand, American archaeology could have pro¤ted from many of the early theo- retical works developed in Cuban archaeology and anthropology that focused on themes such as transculturation, increasing social complexity, and the cul- tural impact of the African Diaspora (Ortíz 1943; Tabío and Rey 1966). This is not to say that during this time period no advancements were made or even that Cuban and American archaeologists were oblivious to developments else- where. Our argument here is rather that the nature of the developments and debates in the discipline could have been considerably different, and probably richer, if the channels of communication had been open at key moments in the history of archaeology. CUBAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY It is important to point out some of the contributions Cuban archaeology has made to the study of past societies and to the discipline at large. As can be seen from the papers in this volume by Dacal Moure and Watters (Chapter 2), Berman et al. (Chapter 3), Domínguez (Chapter 4), and Linville (Chapter 5), Cuban archaeology has a long scholarly and institutional tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century. In addition to trajectories in research and education, Cuba has a long tradition in conservation and cultural resource management, as Dacal Moure and Watters point out (see also Linville, Chap- ter 5, on the conservation of rock art). In fact, Cuban laws for the protection and regulation of archaeological heritage appear to be stricter than those of the United States. In terms of the Caribbean, Cuban archaeology has led the ¤eld in some areas of important research. Innovative Cuban studies of lithic and shell as- semblages in a region where ceramics monopolize discussion appear as an oasis in the desert. Another example is the government-sponsored program of 4 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 28. the Censo deSitios Arqueológicos, which has resulted in a sizeable computer- ized database; it should serve as a model for recording and inventorying archaeological sites throughout the Caribbean (see Dacal and Watters, Chap- ter 2). In the realm of theory, Cuban archaeologists have applied the concept of transculturation, developed for the ¤rst time by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortíz (1943), to the interaction of ancient groups. Transculturation has been used successfully to explain many changes in late Archaic and Co- lonial times that resulted from the interaction between groups within Cuba and with those from neighboring islands (e.g., Rey 1970; Ulloa Hung and Valcárcel Rojas 2002). Cuban archaeologists have brought the issue of culture change to a higher level of discussion, especially in dealing with protoagricul- tural societies or with Archaic pottery-makers (see Ulloa Hung, Chapter 6; Ulloa Hung and Valcárcel Rojas 2002). Another major contribution is in the area of historical archaeology (Do- mínguez, Chapter 4). In general, historical archaeology has been poorly ap- preciated in the Caribbean and other parts of the Americas, but the works of Cuban archaeologists dealing with topics such as the hacienda system (see Singleton, Chapter 10), slavery and escaped slaves (La Rosa Corzo, Chap- ter 9), and urban processes (Domínguez, Chapter 4) have in many ways an- ticipated developments in the North American branch of this ¤eld by a decade or more. Of special interest are recent renovation projects in Old Ha- vana that have integrated in an exemplary manner the work of historians, architects, and archaeologists (Domínguez, Chapter 4). Although it is true that other pioneering works tied to historic renovations exist (e.g., Ricardo Alegría’s work in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico), most of these have focused on architectural restoration rather than on a scholarly, multidisciplinary study of colonial urban settlements. In terms of its multidisciplinary nature, the joint project between the Cuban government and UNESCO is serving as a model for restoration of other colonial zones in the Americas. ON INTERNATIONALISM, POLITICS, AND THE PRACTICE OF ARCHAEOLOGY To qualify our critique of American perceptions of Cuban scholarship, we should acknowledge that in recent years archaeologists have become increas- ingly sensitive to the political context of their work, both intellectually and in terms of practice. Critical assessments of “nationalist archaeology” in differ- Introduction / 5
- 29. ent parts ofthe globe, such as those made by contributors to the volume Na- tionalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology (Kohl and Fawcett 1995; see also Fowler 1987; Gathercole and Lowenthal 1990; Kohl 1998; Meskell 1998), have shown how archaeology plays a part in forming “imagined communi- ties” (Anderson 1983) of nations and ethnic communities. A growing sensi- tivity to nationalist politics has put archaeologists on their guard, ready to cast doubt on research that smacks of undue boosterism or patriotism. But two problems remain unresolved by this criticism. First, the closely related prob- lem of international politics remains relatively neglected—especially in the ¤eld of Americanist archaeology. Nations, nationalism, and nationalist ar- chaeology do not arise in a vacuum; rather they are creations de¤ned in part by their opposition to other nations and, we must allow, other “archaeologies.” A second problem arises out of the epistemological assumptions made in cri- tiquing “nationalist” scholarship. Critics have attacked participating scholars as “distorting the past” (Kohl and Fawcett 1995:13). They exhort that archaeo- logical interpretation should “adhere to scholarly standards of logic and evi- dence” (Silberman 1995:250). But this remonstrance then begs the question: whose scholarly standards of logic and evidence? Who ought to decide what the priorities and standards of archaeology should be? Is it possible to reach a consensus on archaeological practice without regard to national contexts? The dominance of North American and European funding, publication, and organizational power in archaeology would certainly favor the “stan- dards” of archaeologists living in the West. However, there is no guarantee that just because a disciplinary culture is dominant that it is any less political. A long history of claims-making in Western academia shows that many inter- pretations or policies asserted to be derived from “objective” standards, or ob- servations of the “natural” order of things, were later revealed to be anything but disinterested in their design. In working toward global standards of ar- chaeological practice, we must be wary of unilateralism, and we must base consensus on actual conversations with colleagues from around the world. An understanding of these two problems frames the intent of this volume, both in the spirit in which it is offered and in the model of “dialogue” that it follows. Few nations in the last 50 years have had such a constant oppositional relationship in the realm of politics than have Cuba and the United States, yet archaeologists have hesitated to acknowledge how much this tension has affected the ¤eld. With the recent focus on nationalist archaeology, one might overlook that an earlier phase of criticism focused on the more complex question of inter- 6 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 30. national relations, particularlyarchaeology’s relationship to colonialism. The rise of Marxist-in®uenced Social Archaeology in Cuba, Mexico, and other Latin American countries in the 1960s engaged in this critique and eventually contributed to the development of Post-Processual Archaeology in North America and Europe in the 1980s and 1990s (Oyuela-Caycedo et al. 1997; Patterson 1994). The gist of these critiques was that in the Americas much of archaeological practice (its structures of funding, labor relations, and curato- rial arrangements, for example) either directly supported, or were supported by, relationships of political-economic inequality broadly de¤ned as colonial- ism. Some critics went further to say that interpretations themselves were biased by colonialist perspectives. Archaeology was seen as replicating hege- monic relations in other realms, particularly between the United States and Central American countries. Although a parallel critique of anthropology’s role in colonialism, galvanized by Fabian (1983), has nearly run its course and become part of the worldview of cultural anthropology, few North American archaeologists would yet agree with, or have paid any attention to, statements such as Daniel Miller’s, that “Archaeology rises solely out of the colonial struc- ture” (1980:710). A small scatter of publications by historical archaeologists does voice this view, but their critique has by and large failed to penetrate the mainstream of archaeological practice in Latin America and the Caribbean. Archaeologists from other parts of the world have more readily acknowl- edged the historical reality of archaeology’s relationship to colonialism (e.g., Chakrabarti 1997; Shepherd 2002). The creation of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) in 1986 promised in part to address postcolonial con®icts arising in archaeology. One of its statutes advocates “the explicit recognition of the historical and social role, and the political context, of archaeological enquiry, of archaeological organizations, and of archaeological interpretation” (on the political history of WAC itself, see Kitchen 1998; Taylor 1988). At the 1999 WAC, the lead theme for the plenary session and symposia was “Identity, Nationalism, and Local Voices.” Strangely, not one of the nearly 100 papers organized for this theme addressed the relationship of North American ar- chaeologists to colleagues or communities in Latin America and the Carib- bean. The ¤fth congress, held in June 2003, sponsored several new themes and sessions that addressed the international politics of archaeology, but again, among the approximately 80 papers grouped under the headings “Colonial- ism, Identity, and Social Responsibility,” “Empowerment and Exploitation: North-South and South-South Archaeological Encounters,” “Global Perspec- tives,” and “Indigenous Archaeologies,” only one paper—presented by Javier Introduction / 7
- 31. Nastri of Argentina(2003)—explicitly addressed the political context of Americanist archaeology. Most North American archaeologists seem to remain blithely unaware of the historical context of their own specialties, or they simply deny that archae- ology is political. This view extends even to those reviewing the state of Cu- ban archaeology (Davis 1996). Their very distance from the ¤eld owing to the travel restrictions imposed by the U.S. embargo of Cuba should provide a clear clue that archaeology cannot be considered in isolation from global poli- tics. One of the purposes of this volume is to provide a historically and po- litically informed review of Cuban archaeology, giving equal time to the Cuban perspective. Although collaborative projects between North American and Latin Ameri- can scholars have long existed, the dissemination of the results of these proj- ects most often occurs through U.S.-based venues such as American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, or U.S. academic book publishers. Contributing archaeologists from other countries are expected to translate their own ar- chaeological traditions not only into English but into terms and standards acceptable to a North American audience. As a result, institutions such as the Society for American Archaeology have had a powerful in®uence over the archaeology of the Americas. It could even be argued that the shadow of North American practice has stymied the development of national (not to mention nationalist) archaeological traditions in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Not so in Cuba. Therefore, another purpose of the volume is to expose a North American audience to another archaeological world. Because of both the successes of the Revolution and the restrictions of the embargo, Cuban archaeology has evolved since the 1960s largely without the involvement of North American institutions. As in a few other cases in Latin America (e.g., Colombia), Cuban archaeology has also evolved in the context of a culture of resistance to U.S. hegemony. North American readers may ¤nd in the work of Cuban archae- ologists the re®ection of a distinct disciplinary culture, as expressed in termi- nology, expectations, research agendas, and even methodologies. As the re- views of Cuban archaeology in this volume illustrate (Dacal Moure and Watters, Chapter 2; Berman et al., Chapter 3), the discipline has had a very different historical trajectory and context of practice over the last 40 years. We have termed this collection of papers a “dialogue” because we have tried to refrain from overtranslating Cuban archaeology into North American terms in the hopes that archaeologists on both sides of the Florida Strait can 8 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 32. gain perspective ontheir own practices. The selection of papers by Cuban archaeologists was less motivated by a desire to answer pressing research ques- tions of interest to North American Caribbeanists than by a need to present a cross-section of work by Cuban archaeologists that depicts the local interests of Cuban archaeologists. If it is true that all politics is local, then perhaps all archaeology is local as well. On the other side of the conversation, the selec- tion of papers by North American archaeologists was determined almost en- tirely by international politics. So few U.S.-based scholars have worked in Cuba since the beginning of the embargo that “natural selection” narrowed this pool to the hardy few who survived the tangled system of visas, permits, and sanctioned money-laundering that comprises the barbed border between the United States and Cuba. This border, however, has itself been evolving. In the 1990s, the U.S. gov- ernment made it easier for academics to visit Cuba to conduct research. At the same time, the Cuban government seemed to be more receptive to col- laborative projects. The ¤nal goal of this volume is to present the results of some of these recent collaborations and to begin a conversation, or dialogue, that can provide a foundation for future coordinated efforts. If international collaborations are based upon an awareness and mutual respect for local ar- chaeological interests, then scholarship everywhere should be strengthened by the challenges of alternative interpretations. Following the model of a collegial conversation, the editors will now break apart the “we” authorial voice of this introduction to discuss the particular perspectives and experiences that each of us brings to the project. LIFTING THE EMBARGO IN ARCHAEOLOGY: THREE VIEWS An American in Cuba, by Shannon Lee Dawdy Since 1995, I had been eyeing Cuba across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from my post as an archaeologist in New Orleans, Louisiana. The more I learned about my new home and its history and prehistory, the more I realized how it was intricately connected to a Caribbean-Gulf world that spanned from Mexico to Panamá, from the Spanish Main to the Greater Antilles. In the eighteenth century, a triangle of illicit intercoastal trade connected New Orleans to two port cities in particular, Veracruz and Havana. As I learned more, I realized that strong parallels, as well as connections, existed between Cuba and Louisiana: a reliance on sugar planting, a strong retention of Afri- Introduction / 9
- 33. can culture, andcomplex creole identities. Both places were also former Span- ish colonies that had been taken over (at least temporarily) by the U.S. empire in the nineteenth century. This intellectual curiosity combined with an admittedly personal curiosity. The fact that travel to Cuba has been virtually forbidden to American citizens for most of the last 40 years (despite the fact that this prohibition is in ®agrant violation of the U.S. Constitution) makes it that much more alluring. I do not smoke cigars or drink my weight in rum, but, like many would-be tour- ists, I was attracted to the prohibited. I wanted to meet the people who have created some of the most moving music in the world. I wanted to see the landscape that inspired Cubans to become chronic revolutionaries. The irony was that I would have to surmount a host of arti¤cial barriers put in place since 1959 in order to make the same journey that was so natural in 1759. Even if successful, I could not engage in trade, although smuggling seems to be as active as ever, at least for certain commodities. When I applied to graduate school in 1998, I proposed exploring the con- nections between Louisiana and Cuba further. I was fortunate to ¤nd at the University of Michigan Rebecca Scott, a historian who had been doing just that over a multiyear project. Dr. Scott is renowned for her ability to build worldwide networks of colleagues and to forge new scholarly collaborations infused with her own enthusiasm. I was soon swept into this exciting atmo- sphere and was on a plane bound for Cuba during my ¤rst spring break at Michigan in 1999. During that week, we traveled to Cienfuegos, a sugar-planting region in south-central Cuba. My license to travel to Cuba had been approved by the U.S. Treasury Department because I was contributing a poster to a historical exhibit at the municipal museum. Another of my objectives on this trip was to seek out local archaeologists and to learn about possibilities for research there. I soon learned that Dr. Scott’s personal networking skills re®ected, or were compatible with, a very Cuban way of doing things. An informal dis- cussion with my hosts at the house where I was staying led me to the town architect, who in turn referred me to a young man associated with the mu- seum who was an archaeology enthusiast. The curator then introduced me to another gentleman who was a scholarly amateur archaeologist. This gentle- man spent many hours with me that week (despite the glares of his higher-ups in the government of¤ce where he worked), telling me about the history of archaeological research in the region. He also gave me the names and phone numbers of professional archaeologists elsewhere on the island, particularly at 10 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 34. institutions in Havana.Ever since our meeting, he has periodically sent me postcards, which often take several months to make it over the 90-mile stretch between Cuba and Florida. The list of names and phone numbers made for me by my Cienfuegos friend became very important when I returned that same summer for a two- month stay to explore research possibilities. If I were to write an entry in an archaeological travel guide to Cuba, I would emphasize the incredible hospi- tality and generosity of our Cuban colleagues. I, a North American student of unknown credentials, dropped in out of nowhere on archaeologists at the Centro de Antropología (similar to the anthropology branch of the Smith- sonian) and the Gabinete de Arqueología in Havana, the city archaeology of¤ce. At the Gabinete, Roger Arrazcaeta and his colleagues gave me a full day’s tour of the center’s facilities and its active excavation sites. I was im- pressed. Before traveling to Cuba, I had a lot of hubris—a typical American trait and, I am afraid, a typical trait of American archaeologists. I had imagined that because of the isolation of the embargo and the supposed “freezing” of Cuban society in the Revolutionary moment of 1959, urban archaeology would be unknown or underdeveloped on the island. Or I assumed that if it were practiced, it was done without the advantages of zooarchaeology, ethno- botany, or even updated ceramic typing. My intent was to propose a collabo- rative effort where I would offer these technical aids (and training) in ex- change for access to sites and assistance in excavation. Although I found Cubans themselves to be self-effacing about their ¤eld methods and equipment, I was utterly humbled by what I saw in Havana. The archaeology of New Orleans was primitive by comparison. We had nowhere near the same staf¤ng or support; we had done nowhere near the same amount of research or excavation on the city’s key historical sites. It didn’t really mat- ter that they used mechanical transits rather than fancy laser total stations. Further, our archaeological projects had nowhere near the same visibility on the public horizon. As Lourdes Domínguez describes in her paper for this volume, archaeological investigations of Havana have been ongoing for sev- eral decades in conjunction with historic preservation and renovation projects. Archaeology and historic preservation play prominent roles in the national identity of contemporary Cuba and in the civic reinvention of Havana as an exhibition space for the best the Revolution has to offer. As a result, archae- ologists have the power to halt construction projects wherever they perceive a threat to important deposits. Archaeologists are also seen as participants in Introduction / 11
- 35. the urban renewalof Havana, where previously privately owned residences in Old Havana (the original colonial town) are being adapted into multifamily units for poor families in a way that restores their historic beauty. In Revolu- tionary Cuba, archaeology is part of social progress. In the United States, it is viewed as a gnatty impediment to progress or at best an irrelevant amusement. I found that rather than the politics of the Revolution hindering archaeo- logical research, in my sub¤eld they had stimulated it. Cuban archaeologists have been given carte blanche to pursue their research in the historic district of Havana in a way unimaginable in our “free,” capitalist society, where schol- arly pursuits are actually quite restricted by private property rights and pro¤t orientation. Certainly, much of Havana’s urban archaeology is motivated by the pride of Cubans in their heritage. It also serves explicitly nationalist narrative-building by the Cuban government, but one should not be too quick to disparage the outcomes of nationalist or civic-minded archaeology. Were there more of it in the United States, I suspect we would be able to ¤ll in a lot of nagging research gaps, not to mention be able to block the destruc- tion of prehistoric mound sites, colonial forts, and historic cemeteries by the private developer’s backhoe. The incommensurability of the state of urban archaeology in New Orleans and Havana was one of the reasons I decided to abandon my ambition for a comparative project in the form of a dissertation. I needed ¤rst to get archae- ology up to snuff back home (which itself may take a revolution, at least in the way public money is allocated in Louisiana). The second reason was per- haps more predictable. The prickly bureaucracies of both countries, built on a history of mutual fear, resentment, and downright pettiness, made me worry that permitting hang-ups could prolong the completion of my degree inter- minably. I imagined being left forgotten in a jail cell somewhere, all because of some paperwork peccadillo. I had slipped into Cuba during a period when regulations were being loosened for research travel in the late Clinton era. The election of George W. Bush in 2000, I feared, would have a cooling effect on Cuba-U.S. relations. This has indeed happened on the diplomatic front with a war of words exploding between the U.S. and Cuban governments soon after September 11, 2001. In May 2004, the Bush administration imposed new travel and humani- tarian aid restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba. Recently, the U.S. Treasury has even attempted to restrict the exchange of ideas by prohibiting U.S. publishers from editing or marketing works by Cuban authors, a condi- tion which has delayed the publication of this very volume. There is no more 12 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 36. salient reminder ofhow international politics can affect scholarship, even in an area as seemingly benign as archaeology. Still, the openings created by scholarly exchanges in the 1990s and the proliferation of electronic communi- cations have created a stronger bond between Cuban and American schol- ars, both personally and professionally. On the personal and scholarly front, relations between Cuban and American scholars have become warmer and stronger due to improved communications. Travel can still be complicated for both sides, but conditions are certainly better than they were during the Cold War era. Although my personal exploration of Cuban archaeology did not lead to an immediate ¤eld project, it did lead to collaboration, one that has expanded far beyond my original ambitions. One of the archaeologists who gave me such a warm welcome in Havana was Gabino La Rosa Corzo. As we sat and talked for the ¤rst time at the Centro de Antropología over shots of black, sweet coffee, we discovered we shared a mutual curiosity about the state of archaeology in our respective countries and a mutual lack of information. Talking, we excitedly began to satisfy this curiosity but realized that a lot more talking, by a lot more people, was needed to bridge the communication gap imposed by political conditions. We thus formed the idea of a joint Cu- ban and American session on Cuban archaeology and the possibilities for collaborative work. From there, the session at the 2002 Society for Ameri- can Archaeology meeting came to be. As the session co-organizer, I myself adopted the Cuban style of informal networking that demands combining sociability with scholarship. The Cuban approach is infectious. Through it, I met Antonio Curet, who then decided to take this collaboration to a new level by transforming it into a publication. Ultimately, this book is a gift born out of Cuban hospitality, a welcoming gesture that I hope American scholars will return in kind. They may need to adopt the Cuban style of networking through friendship rather than of¤cial channels in order to form meaningful collaborations, but I can assure them that gestures of friendship will be genuinely reciprocated. Cuban Archaeology: The View from Inside, by Gabino La Rosa Corzo Just as it is dif¤cult for Cuban scientists, as a consequence of the embargo, to stay abreast of the latest research ¤ndings published in the United States, North American scholars are limited by their lack of access to the results of our work, and today they know little about archaeology in Cuba. However, Introduction / 13
- 37. archaeologists are astubborn breed, and they are mutually interested in im- proving relationships of collaboration. A success story resulting from these efforts was the participation of four Cuban archaeologists, including myself, who represented several generations of professionals at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in Denver. The focus and scale of representation in this event were a ¤rst for the Society for Ameri- can Archaeology. This collaboration allowed Cuban archaeologists an opportunity to meet many of the central ¤gures of contemporary archaeological theory. It also provided an opportunity to become familiar with the concepts, research methods, and viewpoints characterizing the ¤eld today. Our perspective on theoretical currents was enriched and expanded by this experience. Equally, the opportunity to present our own research allowed us to discuss issues with high-caliber specialists and educated us in how to apply emerging concepts to our work. To provide some background on Cuban archaeology, on February 20, 1962, one of the ¤rst laws passed by our new government created the National Commission of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba. It included an Archaeology Section (later renamed the Center of Archaeological Investigations), and to- day it oversees the discipline at the national level. It can be argued that scien- ti¤c archaeology in Cuba was established in 1962 with the institutionalization of archaeology through this act. At that time, the knowledge accumulated and the research methods used were similar to the ones used in other Latin American and Caribbean countries. However, during the last 40 years, Cuban archaeology has made signi¤cant achievements that can be used as a standard for many countries in the Western Hemisphere in which archaeology is still being conducted by the colonial superpowers. As archaeology was institutionalized in Cuba, investigations developed out of the interests of a number of archaeologists who had devoted their spare time to looking for indigenous sites and artifacts or studying colonial archi- tecture. The 1960s was an era of collection building. Any scienti¤c focus was superseded by a museological interest, although a few excavations and inter- pretive syntheses of indigenous occupations in the interior of the island were undertaken by some Cuban and North American archaeologists. In order to promote the discipline, one of the ¤rst duties of the Archae- ology Section was the creation of a group of professionals with the ¤nancial support necessary for the development of research projects. The training of 14 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 38. young scholars focusedon centralizing and cataloguing Cuba’s archaeological collections, both those created by earlier generations and those being created by new investigations. In terms of scienti¤c applications, two important methodologies were applied to Cuban excavations: the use of stratigraphy and absolute radiocarbon dating. These methods produced a reevaluation of the objectives, methods, and results known up to then. During the ¤rst decade of institutionalization of Cuban archaeology as a science, the country’s archaeological heritage was preserved and recovered by ¤eld projects, priorities for future research were established, and a core group of ¤eld professionals was trained. The following decade saw the continuation of the development of excavation and recording techniques, while our knowl- edge of the island’s indigenous cultures grew considerably. The 1980s marked the beginning of an expanding process of self-evaluation on the limitations of the scienti¤c approach and suggestions that the discipline needed a paradigm shift. During these years, archaeological investigations centered on two foci re- lated to the speci¤c needs of Cuba. One was the creation of technical manuals on the classi¤cation of archaeological evidence to make the ¤eld accessible to students, and the other was the development of historical syntheses of native peoples in the Cuban archipelago that helps inform contemporary Cuban identity. Advancements made in the area of artifact classi¤cation motivated some specialists to publish monographs intended to teach or validate classi¤- cation systems. Also during the 1980s, investigations developed by several Cu- ban archaeologists were made accessible to the scienti¤c community through the publication of excavation results, artifact analysis, and studies of collec- tions. Many of these specialists also offered historical syntheses and interpre- tations of the communities they studied. One of the most important social results of Cuban archaeology during recent decades has been its contribution to national identity and to the preservation of our archaeological heritage. Cuba can proudly point to accomplishments in these ¤elds, but they respond more to the needs of Cuba than to current archaeological problems in the wider ¤eld. The 1990s, certainly the most fruitful years for Cuban archaeology from a scienti¤c perspective, were also a period of questioning and hardship. These were the years during which global socialism collapsed and the U.S. embargo of the island was reinforced. Despite the many dif¤culties produced by this situation, most Cuban archaeologists continued to work with dedication. Al- Introduction / 15
- 39. though we arefar from feeling completely satis¤ed because we have so many goals yet to ful¤ll, we have been able to expand greatly the scope and pro¤le of Cuba’s national register of archaeological sites, creating a database and a preservation program far beyond what most Third World countries are able to attain. During this period of economic dif¤culty, resources for projects were ra- tionalized by establishing three-year plans, with an emphasis on projects with high viability. As a consequence, ceramic collections were restudied, extensive excavations were closely regulated, and more attention was paid to activity areas and surface archaeology. In terms of research questions, we also shifted emphasis from the study of egalitarian to nonegalitarian societies and focused more on settlement patterns. In addition, information was collected on his- torical societies not reported by the European colonizers. In the area of rock art, simple morphological analogies gave way to the search for other essential relationships and meanings. Excavations and studies of indigenous cemeteries from both the preceramic and the ceramic periods progressed from simple recording to theoretical discussions. Also, successful excavations on under- water and submerged sites have caused scientists from other parts of the world to pay new attention to the largest island of the Greater Antilles (Calvera et al. 1996; Jardines and Calvera 1999; Pendergast 1997, 1998; Pendergast et al. 2001, 2002). These projects, in particular, have demonstrated the importance of col- laborative ¤eldwork. In another sub¤eld, historical archaeology projects in Cuba have been conducted with a keen sense of social responsibility by en- suring that historic districts and restored architectural zones bene¤t the com- munity. This ¤eld of the archaeological sciences in our country is one of the best examples of what archaeology can contribute to heritage, culture, and the economy. The investigations developed in Cuba at sites of slave resistance out- side the plantation as yet have few equals; perhaps only the work of Orser and Funari in Palmares, Brazil, offers a comparison (Funari 1995; Orser 1994). Historians and archaeologists such as Louis Pérez, Jr., Rebecca J. Scott, Kathleen Deagan, Theresa Singleton, Betty Meggers, Susan Kepecs, David R. Watters, Dan Sandweiss, and Shannon Dawdy, who have either worked in Cuba or have collaborated with Cuban specialists, have proven the advantages of establishing a collaboration based on mutual respect, remote from the old attitudes of servility on the one side, and colonialism on the other. The articles gathered here make accessible to the English-speaking archaeo- logical community the papers presented at that historic meeting of Cuban and American archaeologists in 2002. Some papers have been added to cover 16 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 40. additional topics inCuban archaeology. It is hoped that this publication will stimulate broader exchange and mutual understanding. A Puerto Rican Mediator? by L. Antonio Curet When Shannon Dawdy contacted me in the summer of 2001 to ask me to be the discussant for the symposium she and Gabino La Rosa Corzo were orga- nizing on Cuban archaeology at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Denver, I did not hesitate to say yes. This was a great professional honor, as well as an opportunity to interact and learn more about the ancient history of this island that I knew only from readings of archaeological works such as those by Tabío, Guarch, La Rosa Corzo, Domín- guez, Dacal, Rivero de la Calle, and others. Needless to say, this was a naive and innocent approach to a large responsibility that I was taking on. It was not until months later that Shannon con¤ded to me that more than just a discussant, she chose me as a cultural mediator between the American and Cuban archaeologists. As a Puerto Rican who, owing to the colonial situation of our island, both is and is not an American, she thought I would be a good person to be this mediator, capable of navigating a new academic dialogue they hoped to develop. In other words, I was, and at the same time was not, an insider. At that time I did not know if I should have felt ®attered or fright- ened by the unwanted burden that I had agreed to take. This last sensation did not hit me in reality until I started receiving the papers before the meet- ings. It was then that I realized that I was not so much a mediator, as Shannon put it, but more stuck in the middle. Because I work in the Caribbean, I know more about Cuban archaeology than the average American archaeologist, yet because of my training and working conditions, I know more about American archaeology than the av- erage Latin American archaeologist. But after reading the papers, I decided not so much to concentrate my discussion on the content of the papers per se, since they were self-explanatory and signi¤cant contributions, but instead to contribute to the dialogue that Shannon and Gabino had started by organiz- ing the symposium. After reading many of the papers and reading the meager American literature available on Cuban archaeology (e.g., Davis 1996), I be- gan to sense that there were considerable misunderstandings and misconcep- tions about the realities of the discipline in the “other” country. It seemed to me that the majority of these misconceptions had resulted either from a lack of communication between archaeologists from the two countries or from political and social biases produced by more than 40 years of Cold War propa- Introduction / 17
- 41. ganda generated fromboth sides—or a combination of these factors. It was in addressing some of these misunderstandings that I saw an opportunity to act as a mediator. Ironically, while it took me weeks to come to this realiza- tion, Shannon probably had this idea from the beginning. Owing to the com- plexity of the issues, it is dif¤cult to discuss all of these misconceptions in detail, but I can present a few examples. I begin ¤rst with misunderstandings that I think may be more prevalent among American archaeologists. Because of the scale and geographic coverage of American archaeology, it is dif¤cult to have a sense of what opinion an average American archaeologist has about Cuban archaeology, or if one would have an opinion at all. Also, Americans working in the Caribbean have a different perspective than Ameri- can archaeologists working elsewhere. Thus, opinions and conceptions about Cuban archaeology in the United States can be highly diverse. However, judg- ing from a review published by Davis (1996), who is a Caribbeanist, and the experience of many Cuban colleagues who have interacted with American scholars, one of the most common myths held by some American archaeolo- gists is the belief that Cuban archaeology is frozen in time and that its prac- titioners have worked in relative isolation since the Revolution of 1959. While this view is in itself a fallacy, what makes this misconception more striking is that this presumed isolation is usually seen as resulting from a voluntary deci- sion by Cuban scholars arising from their allegiance to the Marxist orientation of the Cuban establishment. According to this view, Cuba’s self-imposed iso- lation has created some problems in the theoretical and methodological ap- proaches of Cuban archaeologists, re®ected in the quality of their work (Davis 1996). To support this argument, Davis has pointed to the lack of participa- tion of Cuban scholars in international meetings and their limited publication record in other countries. Although it is true to some extent that internal social factors and needs have affected the trajectory taken by Cuban archae- ology, those presenting the isolation argument often ignore the historical and sociopolitical situation not only of Cuba but also of the United States and the rest of the hemisphere. At the level of international politics, it was the United States that isolated Cuba from the rest of the Americas by placing pressure on many neighboring countries to shun Cuba diplomatically. The U.S. economic embargo has also contributed to this imposed isola- tion. The ban on exports and even regular international mail service has pre- vented books and scienti¤c journals from crossing the border in any reliable manner. The embargo at the same time has contributed to ongoing economic problems that make international travel by Cuban scholars prohibitively ex- 18 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 42. pensive, not aunique problem within the developing world but perhaps more absurd given the short 90-mile distance between the island and the U.S. coastline. The cost of professional memberships in organizations such as the Society for American Archaeology, even at discounted rates (currently $50), represents an astronomical sum to Cuban archaeologists with little access to U.S. currency. However, what is most important to point out is that the impression that Cuba remains in total isolation is in many ways a fallacy; it is a myth created by a lack of communication speci¤cally between U.S. and Cuban archaeolo- gists. For decades, Cuban archaeologists have been interacting with their counterparts from many other countries, such as the former Soviet Union, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and, more recently, England and Spain. They have also done their best to overcome the blockade of U.S. scholarship. As an anecdote, it was intriguing for me to see that some of our visiting Cuban colleagues wanted to be introduced to several well-known ar- chaeologists such as Lewis Binford and Colin Renfrew during the annual meeting in Denver. They had read and used many of their publications but had never had the chance to meet them in person. But perhaps the clearest counterargument to the myth of isolation is the role of the Smithsonian Institution and Betty Meggers in Cuban archaeology. This institution, represented by Meggers, has played a signi¤cant role in ¤- nancial and moral support for Cuban scholars today and in in®uencing their theoretical and methodological approaches (e.g., see Berman et al., Chapter 3; Ulloa Hung, Chapter 6). Meggers has also contributed articles to Cuban pub- lications and exchanged correspondence, publications, and information with Cuban colleagues. The Smithsonian has ¤nancially supported certain aspects of archaeological research in Cuba by funding radiocarbon dates or other types of analysis. In this sense, a dialogue between U.S. and Cuban archae- ologists has been present for decades in the person of Betty Meggers. Turning to the other side, misconceptions are also present in the views that many Cuban archaeologists have of American archaeology. Perhaps the main misconception, which in my experience is common throughout Latin America, is that American archaeology is still characterized by the New Ar- chaeology, with its emphasis on high-tech methodologies and simplistic eco- logical perspectives. Although I cannot deny that there are some American archaeologists who still follow this path, I do not think this is an accurate depiction of American archaeology today. It is now more theoretically and methodologically diverse than ever, thanks in part to communication with Introduction / 19
- 43. other disciplines andwith scholars from other countries. As can be seen from a quick survey of any recent meeting program of the Society for American Archaeology, North American members approach the ¤eld with diverse theo- retical backgrounds and are interested in a wide variety of issues. Methodo- logically, American archaeology still promotes the application of new tech- niques to our research, some of them “high tech.” However, the integration of technology into archaeology is approached from a different and more re- ¤ned perspective than during the heyday of the New Archaeology. Technology is seen as a tool to help archaeologists reach their goals, not as an aim in itself. Further, American archaeology has become more international. By this I mean that fewer American archaeologists are working in foreign countries on the old colonial model and more are engaging in true collaborations and dia- logues with international colleagues. Besides interacting with my Cuban colleagues in the symposium and the discussion forum, I had the opportunity to spend considerable time with them over the course of the 2002 meeting. During the four days that we were together, I started noticing changes in the attitudes that both American and Cuban archaeologists held about the practice of the discipline in the other’s country. It was then that I realized that my discussion in the symposium may not have even been necessary, because what was really helping to debunk some of the misconceptions and stereotypes was the direct exchange between scholars. During this time, I had long and interesting conversations about a variety of topics, including the impact of the embargo, the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, and Cuban, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, and American archaeology. On most occasions, it was an amazing, humbling experience to listen to my Cuban colleagues and to exchange views and information. Sometimes we also had our disagreements. These mixed results continued during our work as editors of the volume, especially when trying to reconcile different publishing tradi- tions. However, our most important aim was accomplished: to stimulate what we hope will be a sustained international dialogue and spirit of collaboration. NEW DIRECTIONS IN COLLABORATION Our stated aim of stimulating collaboration is not intended to suggest that we are pioneering a thoroughly vacant (or abandoned) territory. Since the mid- 1980s, there has been a gradual reopening of communication between Cu- ban archaeologists and those from other parts of the Caribbean and North 20 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 44. America. Many timesthese collaborations have been done in informal ways at the personal or lower institutional levels. For example, Cuban archaeolo- gists have gone to Puerto Rico to teach courses and work on projects, and Dominican archaeologists have established strong links with their Cuban counterparts with results such as the publication of the journal El Caribe Ar- queológico. There have also been some earlier efforts to improve contacts be- tween Cuban and North American colleagues, including exchange visits sponsored by the University of Florida, the translation of The Art and Archae- ology of Pre-Columbian Cuba by Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle into English by Watters and Sandweiss (1996; see also Sandweiss and Watters 1993; Watters 1997; Watters and Dacal Moure 2002), as well as a highly success- ful project conducted at the submerged site of Los Buchillones by a joint Canadian/British and Cuban team (Calvera et al. 1996; Jardines and Calvera 1999; Pendergast 1997, 1998; Pendergast et al. 2001, 2002). While these examples make it clear that some lines of friendship and com- munication have breached the embargo, in most cases efforts have been at lower levels of collaboration without having a lasting impact on knowledge and practices. For example, the awareness that the average North American archaeologist has of Cuban archaeology is still nil or ill founded. One way of correcting the misconceptions that archaeologists of one country might have about the other is to increase the rate of communication through publica- tions. It is true, as Lourdes Domínguez points out in her chapter, that Cuban archaeologists are neither read nor cited by American archaeologists, but it is also true that Cuban publications are not readily available in the United States. Some national and international journals that have started to deal with this problem are Latin American Antiquity in the United States (e.g., see La Rosa Corzo 2003a) and El Caribe Arqueológico published by Casa del Caribe in Cuba. Further, university presses recently have begun to publish work by Cuban archaeologists, including the University of Pittsburgh Press (Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996), the University of North Carolina Press, which is publishing a translation of La Rosa Corzo’s book on escaped slaves (La Rosa Corzo 1991b, 2003b), and the University of Alabama Press with this volume. THIS VOLUME The symposium and discussion forum that led to the publication of this vol- ume were originally organized by Shannon Dawdy and Gabino La Rosa Introduction / 21
- 45. Corzo. Shannon handledarrangements stateside, including a successful grant application to the Social Science Research Council’s Cuba Program, which made the event possible. Gabino handled the often-complicated permission and visa arrangements in Cuba and served as a liaison for the group. The original participants included four visiting Cuban colleagues (Dacal Moure, Domínguez, Godo, and La Rosa Corzo) and four American archaeologists who had worked in Cuba or collaborated with Cuban archaeologists (Berman, Gnivecki, Singleton, and Watters). One conclusion reached during the discussions in both the symposium and the forum was that our goals would be best served by publishing the resulting papers. Soon thereafter, Curet, La Rosa Corzo, and Dawdy agreed together to edit the volume and the University of Alabama Press expressed an interest in publishing it. In order to provide a broader sampling of Cuban archaeology for a North American audience, additional authors were invited to submit ar- ticles, leading to the contributions of Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, César Rod- ríguez Arce, Jorge Ulloa Hung, and Marlene Linville. Jorge Calvera, Juan Jardines, and David Pendergast were also invited to contribute the results of their research in the submerged site of Los Buchillones but had to decline because of previous commitments. Samuel Wilson was asked to write an afterword. Our intention in selecting the ¤nal set of papers was not to at- tempt to cover the whole range of archaeological research being conducted in Cuba (Figure 1.1) but to select a relatively representative sample that demon- strates the variety of research questions and regional foci of archaeologists working on the island. The volume is divided into two sections. Part I focuses on the history of Cuban archaeology as a discipline and practice. The papers by Dacal Moure and Watters (Chapter 2) and Berman et al. (Chapter 3) deal with the general history of Cuban archaeology, the former from an institutional and legislative perspective, the latter from a political and intellectual view. Domínguez’s ar- ticle (Chapter 4) reviews Cuba’s accomplishments in historical archaeology, emphasizing the research and restoration work undertaken by the O¤cina del Historiador de la Ciudad (Of¤ce of the City Historian) in Old Havana. Lin- ville (Chapter 5) recounts the long and important history of research and con- servation of Cuba’s rich collection of rock art manifestations. The second section presents substantive ¤ndings of recent archaeologi- cal research on the island. The ¤rst three articles focus on pre-Hispanic times, and the last two papers deal with the archaeology of slavery in the colonial period. Within the Caribbean, Cuba has one of the longest known prehis- 22 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 46.
- 47. toric sequences. Thereis strong evidence that the peopling of the island began by at least 4,000 b.c., and there is tantalizing evidence that cultivation and the invention of pottery arose there independently (see Ulloa Hung, Chap- ter 6). Cuba’s early ceramic groups are commonly called protoagrícolas or protocerámicos in Spanish. Sometime between a.d. 600 and 700, ceramics sty- listically related to assemblages from Hispaniola began to appear in eastern Cuba. Traditionally, this shift in material culture has been interpreted to be an indicator of migrations by horticultural Arawak groups from Hispaniola to Cuba. Although originally the societies that produced these wares were seen as carbon copies of their counterparts in Hispaniola, now it seems that these new populations emerged through social and cultural processes that resulted in diverse types of social formations, including social hierarchy and inequality. The article by Valcárcel Rojas and Rodríguez Arce (Chapter 7) presents a case study in the site of Chorro de Maíta. Besides domestic units and remains, this site contained a cemetery from which a large number of burials were exca- vated, many having a variety of funerary offerings made of ceramic, stone, shell, and metal including gold, gold alloys, and copper, some of them possibly exotic in nature. In their article, Valcárcel Rojas and Rodríguez Arce argue convincingly that Chorro de Maíta was considered a special religious, social, and political location and that the distribution of artifacts in the cemetery is clear evidence for the presence of social differentiation and inequality in east- ern Cuba. Godo’s article (Chapter 8) summarizes several of his studies on the symbolic meaning of decorative designs present in the ceramic assemblages in Cuba. Using archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence, he conducts a structural analysis of various repetitive themes by relating them to mythological stories recorded in the early chronicles. The last two articles in this section represent two important papers on historical archaeology in Cuba. Gabino La Rosa Corzo (Chapter 9) examines the diet of escaped slaves, or cimarrones, from remains found in cave sites suspected to have been used by Cuba’s well-documented maroon communi- ties who survived in the rough terrain of central Cuba. Interestingly, the re- sults show that escaped slaves’ diets combined wild and domestic resources, the latter probably obtained from raiding nearby ranches (haciendas). The diet and health of maroons appears to have been much better than that of slaves still held in bondage. The paper by Theresa Singleton (Chapter 10) reports and interprets some of her ¤ndings on a walled slave village on a coffee plantation in the interior of Cuba. Her research indicates that slaves in Cuba were en- gaged in many of the same activities as enslaved Africans in other parts of the 24 / Dawdy, Curet, and La Rosa Corzo
- 48. Americas. However, thewalled enclosure was a constraining device not as common in other slave communities that restricted their use of space and interaction with people from the outside, including cimarrones. Both of these articles report parts of larger research projects (La Rosa Corzo 1991b, 2003b; Singleton 2001b) that are helping to reshape our views of slave and maroon life previously obtained from biased historic documents written by slave own- ers and government of¤cials. In translating and editing the papers presented in this volume, we felt it was our moral and professional duty to maintain the accuracy of the mean- ings and connotations of the texts as much as possible. It was a dif¤cult task, not only because we ran the risk of losing much in translation but also be- cause we had to reconcile two very different discursive traditions in archaeo- logical writing. We strove to respect the style and publication tradition of the respective Cuban and American authors, but at the same time we tried to weave some common threads into the format of the articles. We hope that publishing this volume will encourage further exchange, de- bate, and communication between American and Cuban archaeologists. It is our sincere belief that this process has already been started by recent publica- tions in the United States (Kepecs 2002; Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996; La Rosa Corzo 2003a, 2003b) and by the collaborative work of Ameri- can and Cuban archaeologists exempli¤ed in this volume (e.g., Berman et al., Chapter 3; Singleton, Chapter 10). These research efforts, combined with hon- est and respectful professional relations, will bene¤t the discipline in both countries. It is through such interaction and direct cooperation that American and Cuban archaeologists can best make strides toward the main goal of ar- chaeology as a discipline—to describe, explain, and understand the variability and commonality of past human behavior. EDITORS’ NOTE After submitting our manuscript to the University of Alabama Press for its review, we received the unfortunate news that Ramón Dacal Moure had passed away in December 2003. Needless to say, this news ¤lled us with great sadness, and our prayers and thoughts are with his family. We feel proud and honored that we had the opportunity to include in this volume a contribution of such a distinguished Cuban archaeologist. Introduction / 25
- 50. Part I History ofCuban Archaeology
- 52. The periodization usedin this work, as in any other, is a somewhat arbitrary form of analysis, in this case employed to bring out elements important for contextualizing Cuban archaeology. As history consists of a continuous inter- relationship of factors, alternative periodizations could be de¤ned from other points of view (see Dacal Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996:27–31). FIRST STAGE: LOCAL ANTIQUARIANISM (1841–1898) In the ¤rst stage, Cuban archaeology could not yet be considered a formal discipline since it consisted almost exclusively of the study of historical docu- mentation and occasional discoveries. The chronicles of the Indies were the main source of information, and the accounts of aboriginal peoples they con- tain were used to extend Cuban history back prior to the Spanish conquest. Writers described material evidence of the island’s prehistory in forms as di- verse as novels, poems, and scienti¤c articles on new discoveries. The discov- eries of John L. Stephens (1841) in the Mayan area in October 1839 spurred dreams of greatness about the pre-Hispanic past on the part of Cubans. In prose and verse, the Cuban Indian served as the symbol of an emerging na- tionality, as seen in the works of José Fornaris y Luque and Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo. José Fornaris Luque (1827–1890), an attorney, poet, and professor, wrote several books including Cantos del Ciboney. Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo (1829–?), a self-educated scholar, was one of the ¤rst students of rural popular song and author of Rumores del Hórmigo. Both writers praised the virtues of the Cuban natives as part of the Movimiento Siboneyista. 2 / Three Stages in the History of Cuban Archaeology Ramón Dacal Moure and David R. Watters
- 53. The Sociedad Arqueológicade la Isla de Cuba was founded on July 26, 1877, and was active up through 1895. It provided a forum where topics of Antillean and world archaeology were debated. Actual archaeological ¤eld- work and artifactual studies took two directions: the research of Cubans such as Eusebio Jiménez, Luis Montané, and Carlos de la Torre, and the activities of the Spaniard Miguel Rodríguez Ferrer, who can be considered the ¤rst professional archaeologist to work in Cuba. Rodríguez Ferrer, who began working in Cuba before 1868, came to consider the island his homeland. He had a broad knowledge of European archaeology and had been a curator of a museum in Vitoria, Spain. For the most part, the early projects consisted of exploration and excava- tion of archaeological sites on the island from three different perspectives. Jiménez was an avid collector, Montané had an anthropological orientation supported by an excellent formal education, and de la Torre was one of the most renowned Cuban naturalists. They had in common an enthusi- asm to dig deeper into the indigenous past, and they shared a lack of training in excavation techniques. In the case of Rodríguez Ferrer, we see a practice closer to that of modern archaeology. Although he never conducted well- documented excavations, his detailed book Naturaleza y civilización de la grandiosa Isla de Cuba (1876–1877) was praised by the renowned anthropolo- gist and intellectual Fernando Ortiz: “The historic work of Rodríguez Ferrer, in its totality, may still be today the most valuable and original one ever pro- duced in Cuba. It has a philosophical sensibility and an objective base; it is, however, among the most forgotten. The reasons for this are perhaps the few numbers of publications and, certainly, the fact that its tenor did not agree with the separatist values of Cubans at that time, nor with peninsular abso- lutism” (Ortiz 1935:84). This book was the result of the ¤rst archaeological research conducted on the island, and it included information about Rod- ríguez Ferrer’s ¤eldwork in 1847 and his study of the chronicles. The sites discovered by Rodríguez Ferrer and the evidence collected, including human remains, marked the onset of a new scienti¤c discipline in the country. Thus, taking into consideration the nature of the studies and the information in- cluded, this publication can be considered the ¤rst true archaeological book published in Cuba. Antiquities Law during the First Stage During the ¤rst stage, the legal framework for archaeology was limited to the application of the Spanish Civil Code effective in Cuba from November 5, 30 / Dacal Moure and Watters
- 54. 1889, until July16, 1987. In two of its titles, the code stipulated that hidden treasures and portable objects abandoned on private property belonged to the owner of the land where they were found. But if the discovered objects were of interest to the sciences or the arts, the state had the authority to acquire them. None of the earlier Spanish or Republican codes addressed archaeologi- cal issues. SECOND STAGE: CUBAN AND NORTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGISTS (1898–1959) Cuban archaeology began in earnest during the second stage, characterized by two central trends that had their beginnings in the earlier period. These trends, consisting of a North American and a European in®uence, mixed and intertwined for several years. The ¤rst consisted of a serious North American interest in the island that began with E. G. Squier’s visit to Cuba (Squier 1860). Although most of his contributions belong chronologically to the previous stage, his thoughts and discoveries in®uenced Cuban archaeologists well into this second stage, in- cluding scholars such as Montané, Cosculluela, and Felipe Pichardo Moya. S. Culin (Culin 1902) and W. H. Holmes (Holmes 1894), who came in search of Moundbuilders, were interested in etiological issues (issues of origin) and had a perspective akin to Historical Particularism. Luis Montané Darde initiated the second signi¤cant trend, in the form of a European in®uence, by introducing the ideas of Paul P. Broca, founder of French anthropology. Interestingly, the anthropology program at the Univer- sity of Havana, which extensively in®uenced the development of archaeology in Cuba, was created by an act of the U.S. occupational government, but it had Luis Montané as its ¤rst program chair (Rangel Rivero 1994; Vasconcellos Portuondo 2001). Montané had returned from France in 1874. From that mo- ment, interest in Cuba’s past grew noticeably, especially following the fortui- tous discovery of archaic sites. The best example is the discovery of the site Guayabo Blanco in the Ciénaga de Zapata, which Montané excavated and which was written up by its discoverer, Juan A. Cosculluela. Guyayabo Blanco has played a prominent role in the study of Cuba’s indigenous populations. It represented the ¤rst discovery of nondeformed skulls on an archaeological site in Cuba. The physical anthropology aspect was the focus of Montané’s re- search (see Alvarez Conde 1956:93–98; Ortiz 1935:56–60). His work, which adhered to high methodological and theoretical standards of the time, was Three Stages in the History of Cuban Archaeology / 31
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- 56. thought that itmight be assumed, for the present, that about sixteen acres of covered space would be required. And finally, as regarded the mode of proceeding to determine the general interior arrangements or ground-plan of the building, a subject to which they had given much consideration, they resolved, "That, in their opinion, it was desirable to seek, by public competition, for suggestions as to the general arrangements of the ground-plan of the building." It was deemed by the Committee that the peculiar object for which the building was required, namely, the encouragement of the widest and most liberal competition in all the branches of arts and manufactures—the circumstance of the cost of the erection being defrayed by the public—the peculiar character of the building, for the designing of which were especially required judgment and contrivance in the detail of arrangement, and experience in the management of large crowds, and for the construction of which the mechanical skill and knowledge of the application and of the economical use of materials now so generally possessed by builders and practical men were necessary—all seemed, in the opinion of the Committee, to be reasons for recommending that the designs for the general arrangements should, as far as practicable, be the result of public competition, and that the actual construction should be so to the fullest extent. The Committee were, moreover, of opinion that the general design or arrangement of such a building was one of those subjects, perhaps few in number, on which many good ideas may be elicited by a general contribution of plans; and that a mode might be adopted of obtaining such plans, and collecting useful suggestions from them, which should not eventually lead to any loss of time, or be attended with those delays which too frequently render ordinary competition inconvenient.
- 57. Great objections weremade in some quarters to the proposed site in Hyde Park; but as they were not raised on really public grounds, they were gradually overcome by the interest which the public at large manifested in the success of the undertaking. In consequence of the latter recommendation in the Report which was adopted by the Royal Commissioners, the following document was published by them on March 13th, 1850, copies of which appear to have found their way into almost every corner of Europe:— "The Committee appointed by the Royal Commission to advise on 'all matters relating to the building,' having received the sanction of the Commission, are desirous of obtaining from all parties who are disposed to assist them suggestions for the general arrangement of the buildings and premises required for this Exhibition. Upon the general form of the building in plan, the distribution of its parts, the mode of access, and the internal arrangements and contrivances, will depend the convenience and general fitness of such a building; and it is upon these points that the Committee seek information and suggestions, and wish to encourage the most extended competition in the preparation of plans. The Committee do not propose to offer any pecuniary reward for such plans—they rely upon the desire which men of all countries will feel to forward the objects of the proposed Exhibition. The Committee think it probable that, when the plans are received, they may not be limited to the selection of any one plan, but may derive useful ideas from many; and that the best plan may be determined upon by the help of this general assistance. As the credit of any such plan will be due solely to the contributors, the Committee propose to make a report, in which they will acknowledge by name those whose plans had been wholly or partially adopted, or who had afforded the most useful suggestions; and the Committee hope to be able to offer such other honorary distinction to the successful contributors as the circumstances may appear to warrant. In order to guide the contributors in the preparation of such plans and designs, and to facilitate the
- 58. examination and thecomparison of them when received, the Committee have enumerated concisely the principal 'desiderata' for such a building, and have laid down certain rules and conditions to which they earnestly request the contributors to conform, as the Committee will be under the necessity of abiding strictly by the regulation of not acknowledging any plans which may be sent in a form inconsistent with these rules. Copies of the engraved plan of the ground referred to may be had on application to the secretaries of the Commission, at the New Palace at Westminster." An engraved plan of the site which had been fixed upon, together with the subjoined regulations, which all competitors would be expected to observe, were subsequently issued to all applicants:— "1. The communications from contributors must consist of a single sheet of paper, not larger than the accompanying engraving, with a simple ground-plan upon a scale of 1·1000 of the full size, with such elevations and sections only of the building, and on the same sheet, as may be necessary to elucidate the system proposed—such elevations and sections not being intended to convey more than a general idea of the building, and not entering into details of construction or of architectural decoration—to be accompanied by a short, clear-written explanation of the system recommended, on a separate sheet. Any contributor wishing to send two designs must send separate and distinct communications, each conforming to the above conditions. No communications made inconsistent with these conditions, or any plan prepared upon a different scale from that prescribed, can be received. The plans, &c., must be sent on or before the 8th of April next, addressed to the Secretaries of the Exhibition, New Palace at Westminster, London. It is suggested that the most convenient mode of preparing the plan, elevation, and section, would be to draw them upon one of the engraved copies of the plan of the ground which accompany these instructions.—2. The building is to be erected on the space marked A B C D, and must not extend beyond the boundaries of the shaded portion. The groups of
- 59. trees shown onthe plan must be preserved. The principal public approaches are by the roads E F and G H. The road K L will be available only for foot-passengers. There will be no objection to the formation of cross-roads between the two last, G H and K L, if the design of the building requires it.—3. The roofed portion of the building is to cover a space of 700,000 square feet, or about 65,000 square metres; and the whole building must not occupy, including open spaces, an area of more than 900,000 square feet, or about 84,000 square metres. The building generally will be of one storey only.—4. No space will be required for cattle, or for shrubs or flowers.—5. It may be assumed, so far as it affects the ground-plan, that the light will be obtained entirely from the roof, and the building will be constructed of fire-proof materials. "The general requirements are—simplicity of arrangement; economy of space; capability of extending or curtailing the building without destroying its symmetry as a whole, or interfering with the general arrangement, it being impossible to determine the exact extent of roof required until a late period of construction. Adaptation for the erection of separate portions of the building at different periods. Conveniences of ingress and egress, with facilities of access to all parts of the Exhibition, either from the exterior or interior. Means of classification of the various objects of different departments. Wall- space for the display of articles requiring it. Means of affording private access and accommodation for exhibitors, with counting- houses, if required. Committee-rooms, council-rooms, public refreshment-rooms, and all other public and private accommodation. (This portion of the building may be in two or more storeys if required.) Internal arrangements, by which, under proper regulations, large crowds of visitors may circulate freely, and have convenient access to all parts of the Exhibition, and uninterrupted means of examining the various objects exhibited."
- 60. HOUGH the timeallowed for the preparation of drawings was but short, being only about one month, no less than 233 designs were sent in, many of them of an elaborate architectural character. Of these, thirty-eight, or one-sixth of the whole, were received from the different foreign countries of Europe (France, twenty-seven; Belgium, two; Holland, three; Hanover, one; Naples, one; Switzerland, two; Rhine Prussia, one; Hamburgh, one); 138, or more than half the entire number, from London and its vicinity, where the interest excited was naturally more immediate; fifty-one from the provincial towns of England; six from Scotland, and three from Ireland. Seven were sent anonymously. The small number contributed by the sister kingdoms seems rather remarkable. The greater part of these designs were, of course, contributed by members of the architectural and engineering professions, but some were the productions of amateurs, and one among them purported to be the suggestion of a lady. Here, then, was matter enough not only to assist, but even, from its great variety, to perplex the Committee, since at once every possible variety of style in decoration, material in construction, and system in arrangement, were strenuously recommended by the authors of the respective designs as the great ultimatum sought for. To Mr. Digby Wyatt, whose services were to a great extent withdrawn from the Executive Committee, in order that his professional knowledge of the subject might be placed at the disposal of the Building Committee, was intrusted the arduous task of examining and classifying these incongruous materials, and of eliminating from them such general principles of arrangement as seemed most worthy of the attentive consideration of the Committee. The result of this gentleman's minute examination was
- 61. embodied in aReport, upon the basis of the recommendations contained in which the subsequent utilitarian portions of the design of the Building Committee would appear to have been founded. After holding about fifteen protracted sittings, the Committee presented the following Report to the Royal Commission on the 9th of May:— "My Lords and Gentlemen, "We have the honour to report that we have examined the numerous plans so liberally contributed by native and foreign architects in accordance with the public invitation. "Exhausting in their numerous projects and suggestions almost every conceivable variety of building, the authors of those designs have materially assisted us in arriving at the conclusions which we have now the honour to report. "We have been aided in our analysis of this subject by a great amount of thought and elaboration thus brought to bear upon it from various points of view. "We have, however, arrived at the unanimous conclusion, that able and admirable as many of these designs appeared to be, there was yet no single one so accordant with the peculiar objects in view, either in the principle or detail of its arrangements, as to warrant us in recommending it for adoption. "In some of the least successful of the designs submitted, we find indicated errors and difficulties to be avoided, whilst in the abler and
- 62. more practicable ofthem, there are valuable conceptions and suggestions which have greatly assisted us in framing the plan we have now the honour to lay before you. In preparing this design we have been governed mainly by three considerations:— "1. The provisional nature of the building. "2. The advisability of constructing it as far as possible in such a form as to be available, with the least sacrifice of labour and material, for other purposes, as soon as its original one shall have been fulfilled, thus insuring a minimum ultimate cost. "3. Extreme simplicity, demanded by the short time in which the work must be completed. "For the arrangements of the plan we rely for effect on honesty of construction, vastness of dimension, and fitness of each part to its end. "The principal points of excellence we have endeavoured to attain are— "1. Economy of construction. "2. Facilities for the reception, classification, and display of goods. "3. Facilities for the circulation of visitors. "4. Arrangement for grand points of view. "5. Centralisation of supervision.
- 63. "6. Some strikingfeature to exemplify the present state of the science of construction in this country. "The first of these, ECONOMY, is attained by doing away with any internal walls (all divisions being made by the necessary stalls), by reducing the whole construction, with the exception of the dome, to cast iron columns, supporting the lightest form of iron roof in long unbroken lines, and by the whole of the work being done in the simplest manner, and adapted in all respects to serve hereafter for other purposes. "The second, facilities for the RECEPTION, CLASSIFICATION, and DISPLAY of goods. The main central entrance for the reception of objects for exhibition will probably be that most approachable from the public road. All cases accompanying goods will be examined, registered, catalogued, &c., in the offices of the Executive; the packing-cases will then be put upon a truck running on a line of rails laid down temporarily, and conveyed to the centre turn-table, from which they may be carried by a line of rails at right angles to the first, to the end of the transverse gallery, in which they may be destined to be placed. "The most important condition to insure successful classification is, that those to whom the duty of arrangement may be confided should be hampered by no fixed limits of space, such as would have been the case had the building been divided into a number of halls, sections, or chambers. The plan submitted fulfils this condition perfectly; as objects can be arranged just as they are received, and moved, if necessary, from gallery to gallery with great facility. "The successful display of the goods would be best insured by leaving, under certain general restrictions, the fitting up of each stall to the Exhibitor or his Agent, floor-space only being allotted to each;
- 64. and stands, frames,brackets, shelves, &c., being put up by a contractor's carpenter, at a fixed tariff. "The best light is provided, and the most economical wall-space is proposed to be furnished by connecting pillar to pillar transversely, on the extreme north and south sides of the building, by rods, from which draperies, &c., can be suspended. "The third, FACILITIES FOR THE CIRCULATION OF VISITORS, is thus attained. The visitor, on arrival at the central hall, proceeds at choice to any one of the four sections. He will, most probably, desire either to follow the whole course of the section selected, or will wish to go at once to some particular class or object. He will be enabled to do either the one or the other, without interfering with the general current, by means of gates or other arrangements, which shall insure the current of visitors passing in one direction. If he desire to proceed rapidly from one end of the building to the other, and finds the great central gangway at all blocked up, he will, no doubt, be able to get on by either the north or south corridors, fifteen feet wide. Numerous doors of egress in these latter afford ready means of exit for a large number of persons. Seats are provided in the middle of the great central gangway for those who may desire to rest. "The fourth, ARRANGEMENT FOR GRAND POINTS OF VIEW. The view from or to the centre of the building will, from its extent, be necessarily imposing. The seats and main avenues are arranged so that, on the occasion of the distribution of the prizes, an immense number of persons may be accommodated. Most interesting views might be obtained from galleries constructed at either end of the building and around the dome, for the admission of the public to which some small charge might be made.
- 65. "The fifth, CENTRALISATIONOF SUPERVISION. All the business of the Exhibition will be carried on in one spot, and be readily under control. The Royal Commission, the principal Committees, Clerks, Accountants, Police, &c., would be together, and in so large an establishment it would be absolutely necessary, or much time would be wasted in walking from one point to another. Passages running behind the money-takers' boxes, with glazed doors into them, would enable each accountant to detect anything improper that might be going on, and to exchange and balance checks, money, &c., at any moment. Telegraphic communication with each of the four pay- places will permit orders to be given, cash accounts, &c., to be issued and returned, from and to the head-accountant's office, as often as may be necessary. "Four Committee-rooms, one for a Jury in each section, have been provided at the extreme east and west ends. The duties of such Committees being deliberative, and not executive, it is not necessary that they should be accommodated in the Central Establishment, where they would be more liable to be disturbed than at the extremity of the building. "A policeman stationed in each gallery would, from his elevated position, be enabled to observe much which might escape detection if he mingled only with the crowd. "The sixth, SOME STRIKING FEATURE TO EXEMPLIFY THE PRESENT STATE OF THE SCIENCE OF CONSTRUCTION IN THIS COUNTRY. In order that the building, in which England invites the whole world to display their richest productions, may afford, at least in one point, a grandeur not incommensurate with the occasion, we propose, by a dome of light sheet iron 200 feet in diameter, to produce an effect at once striking and admirable. From calculations which have been made of the cost of so grand a Hall, we have reason to expect that it may be
- 66. executed for asum not greatly exceeding the cost of the simplest form of roof likely to be adopted to cover the same area. "It is to be borne in mind that a considerable amount of any such difference may be recovered, should this portion of the building be converted hereafter to other purposes, which is more than probable. This vast dome it is proposed to light mainly from one circle of light in its centre, and thus the sculpture will be pleasingly and suitably lit. "Six out of the eight openings in the cylinder of the dome would be well adapted for the exhibition of stained glass windows of great extent, while the two remaining arches will open to the main central gallery. The lower part of some of the voids will admit the eye to turf and shrubs, and produce a great freshness of effect. "The immense continuity of the Central Avenue will be broken and relieved by a variation in the roof opposite the openings to the second and third sets of refreshment-rooms, and windows for the reception of Stained Glass may be placed at the ends of each transverse gallery, thus terminating the vista for each. "It now only remains to explain the course of action we would recommend for adoption as soon as the principles of the plan, &c., shall be positively decided. "We consider this to be an occasion upon which the greatest amount of intellectual and commercial ingenuity and ability should be called out; and that a generous rivalry among those best fitted to execute the principal portions of this vast structure may lead to results which no amount of detailed study that we could possibly give to this matter would supply.
- 67. "We would thereforerecommend that every advantage should be taken of the accumulated and experimental knowledge and resources of intelligent and enterprising contractors, and that every opportunity should be afforded to them of DISTINGUISHING THEMSELVES. We would therefore recommend as the best means of enlisting their services the following course of action: "Adopting the approved design as a basis, we would proceed immediately to prepare such working-drawings and specifications as may be necessary, and to issue invitations for tenders to execute Works in accordance with them, requesting from competitors, in addition, such suggestions and modifications, accompanied with estimates of cost, as might possibly become the means of effecting a considerable reduction upon the general expense. "W. Cubitt, Chairman." The following Report of the Committee on the competition plans submitted, and which was so unfavourably received by the public, and more particularly by the profession, was presented to the Royal Commission on the 16th of May:— "My Lords and Gentlemen, "Your Committee beg leave to report, that the invitation issued by the Commissioners, requesting information and suggestions for the general arrangement of the Building and premises required for the Exhibition of 1851, has been responded to in the most ample and satisfactory manner, both as respects the variety of useful ideas presented to their consideration, and the liberality with which many experienced and skilful men of foreign countries, no less than of our
- 68. own, have contributedtheir valuable time to this great undertaking, thereby evincing their entire sympathy both with the great cause of Arts and Industry in which her Majesty's Commissioners have embarked, and with the arduous labours of the Directors of the undertaking. "The Designs and Specifications transmitted to the Committee amount to the surprising number of 233, offering an aggregate of professional sacrifice of very considerable importance; for, not confining themselves to suggestions only, which were invited by the Programme, a large proportion of them are remarkable for elaboration of thought and elegance of execution. "Penetrated with admiration and respect for these gratuitous and valuable contributions, unexampled, they believe, in the history of competition, your Committee have devoted the most careful attention to the collection of these projects, and hasten to offer those acknowledgments which are due to their merits, and to the generous motives which have led to their execution; and they trust that the public may shortly be witnesses of the effect of this very noble emulation of the skill of all countries, by the public exhibition of these designs, offering the opportunity, in the true spirit of the whole undertaking, of mutual improvement, respect, and friendship amongst the cultivators of the liberal arts in the several countries of Europe. "It is remarkable that, while many of these contributions may be attributed to the laudable motive of professional reputation and advancement on the part of practitioners not yet sufficiently known to the public, a great number are from Gentlemen whose position in the confidence of their respective Governments or in the Republic of Arts and Letters is of the highest eminence, and who can have been actuated by no such personal motives. Already entitled to respect and admiration, they could have little to gain, while they have
- 69. something to lose,in the competition for glory. The kind and frank communication, therefore, of their thoughts and experience towards this great work is to be the more highly commended. Every possible mode of accomplishing the object in view has been displayed by the respective contributors as regards economy of structure and distribution, and these qualities are united with various degrees of architectural symmetry and features in many designs. Our illustrious continental neighbours have especially distinguished themselves by compositions of the utmost taste and learning, worthy of enduring execution—examples of what might be done in the architectural illustration of the subject, when viewed in its highest aspect, and, at all events, exhibiting features of grandeur, arrangement, and grace which your Committee have not failed to appreciate. "Amongst these several classes of design, the practical character of our own countrymen, as might have been expected, has been remarkably illustrated in some very striking and simple methods suited to the temporary purposes of the Building, due attention having been paid to the pecuniary means allotted to this part of the undertaking. The principle of suspension has been applied in a single tent of iron sheeting, covering an area averaging 2,200 feet by 400 feet by a lengthened ridge, or in separate tents on isolated supports. Others display the solution of this problem by the chapter-house principle, and a few by the umbrella or circular locomotive-engine- house system of railway-stations, either with a central column or groups of columns sustaining domes or roofs to the extent of four hundred feet diameter. "Grandeur and simplicity of distribution are carried out with great architectural effect in other compositions, and the general arrangement by columnar supports has been also variously and elegantly developed. The system of iron roofing, with all the architectural powers of which that material is susceptible, has been adopted by some with signal enterprise, ingenuity, and power.
- 70. "In another classof design the authors have viewed with enthusiasm the great occasion and object of the proposed Exhibition, and have waived all considerations of expense. They have indulged their imaginations, and employed the resources of their genius and learning, in the composition of arrangements which present the utmost grandeur and beauty of architecture, suited to a permanent Palace of Science and Art. These, as addressed to the architectural Student, are of the highest value, reminding him of all the conditions of his art—the Egyptian hypostyle, the Roman thermæ, or of the Arabian or Saracenic inventions. And though their expense has placed them beyond reach, they cannot fail to inspire and elevate the treatment of the reality. They at all events confer great obligations on the lovers of the Fine Arts, for the authors have evidently felt that, if one of the results to be expected from the proposed Exhibition may be to prove that the simplest object of ingenuity and skill should not be devoid of some of the attractions of taste, the Building itself ought to be an illustration of that important principle. "The Committee, however, have been unable to select any one design as combining all the requisites which various considerations render essential. But the judgment and taste evinced by a large number of the contributors have enabled the Committee to arrive more promptly at their conclusions, and they have freely availed themselves of most valuable suggestions in directing the preparation of a fresh design for the proposed building. "They have consequently been most earnest in the desire to fulfil the just expectations of the various competitors, and feel assured that your Royal Highness and the Commission will be of opinion that the most unreserved and handsome acknowledgments are due to those able men of science and art who have in so disinterested a manner submitted such admirable projects for the consideration and assistance of the Committee. They beg, therefore, to submit, as their opinion, that the following gentlemen are entitled to honourable and
- 71. favourable mention, onaccount of architectural merit, ingenious construction or disposition, or for graceful arrangement of plan. "And they cannot conclude without calling attention to the designs, accompanied by models, of M. Hector Horeau, Architect of Paris, and of Messrs. Turner, of Dublin, as evincing most daring and ingenious disposition and construction.[1] "W. Cubitt, Chairman." Some of the strongest objections to this Report are very fairly urged in a letter which appeared in the Builder of the 15th of June, a part of which is subjoined:— "Part II. of the Report contains what I suppose is to be taken as the best exposition of the merits of contributors that the Committee can give, which commences by stating, in a tone of commendation, that, 'not confining themselves to SUGGESTIONS ONLY, which were invited by the PROGRAMME, a large proportion of them are remarkable for elaboration of thought and elegance of execution.' This, I would contend, is clearly a breach of the specified conditions, viz., that SUGGESTIONS ONLY were to be given—that the plan or drawing sent in was to be A MERE OUTLINE SKETCH, upon a SINGLE SHEET; and the Committee even recommended that it would be most convenient merely to trace it upon the common paper on which the 'plan of site' was supplied to the public, a space being left upon the sheet for SKETCHING any sections or elevations that might be necessary to illustrate the design; and that a written description, limited also to 'a single sheet,' was all the exposition of their ideas that authors would be allowed to give. The Report goes on to state, that 'our illustrious continental neighbours have especially distinguished themselves [in designing a temporary building for an exhibition] by compositions of the utmost taste and learning, worthy of enduring execution— examples of what might be done in the ARCHITECTURAL illustration of
- 72. the subject [theconditions strictly enjoined contributors not to enter into architectural detail] when viewed in its highest aspect, and, at all events, exhibiting features of grandeur, arrangement, and grace which your Committee have not failed to appreciate.' It then places in contradistinction to these no doubt admirable but out-of-place productions of architectural genius, the 'practical character of the designs of our own countrymen,' which it states, 'as might have been expected, has been remarkably illustrated in some very striking and simple methods, suited to the temporary purposes of the building, due attention having been paid by them to the pecuniary means allotted to this part of the undertaking.' Yet, notwithstanding this comparison, clearly and indisputably in favour of our own countrymen, as regards the object sought and the conditions stipulated by the Committee, we find by the selected list of those authors who are to receive 'the highest honorary distinction' the Commissioners can award, that the Committee can only discover, out of 195 English and 38 foreign contributors, THREE Englishmen entitled to reward, the remaining FIFTEEN out of the eighteen selected being foreigners; or, as regards the whole numbers, in proportion of 1 to 65 of 'our own countrymen,' the authors of the 'striking and simple,' so admirably 'suited to the temporary purpose of the building,' and 1 to about 2½ of foreigners, who, in designing for a temporary building, to be simple, cheap, and readily constructed, have so overshot the mark as to produce 'compositions' commendable only for the 'utmost taste and learning, and worthy of enduring execution.' Surely something must be wrong here, either the Report or the selected list—possibly both. "In conclusion, I cannot help avowing the opinion that a wrong, though I believe unintentionally, has been done to many of the 233 who so readily and 'generously' responded to the call for their ideas; more particularly as I know, from personal inspection, that at least ONE of the plans altogether omitted from the Report contains FIVE of the leading features of the approved design."
- 73. But to judgeof this matter fairly, it must be mentioned that, although the number of foreign competitors was small, the majority of them were men already well known for their talents and professional skill; in all cases their designs evinced considerable study of the subject (both architecturally and in a practical point of view), and manifested a desire to exhibit to English professional men the proficiency of their continental brethren. On the other hand, many of the designs from the competitors at home were much slighter suggestions presented in a less elaborate form. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that those eminent men of the technical professions who, on this occasion, came forward with practical suggestions for the assistance of the Committee, and designs calculated rather to assist with thoughts than to charm by the graces of elegant drawing or symmetrical disposition, should seem to have been found wanting in this first trial with all the world. It should further be borne in mind, that the nature of competitions is not so well understood in some foreign countries, where they are of less frequent occurrence, than with us. It must at the same time be admitted that the practice of disregarding and exceeding the instructions in competitions is too much a matter of general complaint in England to be brought forward as a new grievance against our continental brethren. After the publication of the above Report, the competition designs were all exhibited in the rooms of the Institution of Civil Engineers, in Great George-street, which were liberally placed at the disposal of the Committee for this purpose; and of those who visited this interesting exhibition, many, no doubt, must have sympathised with those feelings which dictated the decision of the Committee. From an attentive examination of these designs, presenting the subject in such exceedingly varied forms, one of the peculiar difficulties of the case becomes apparent, namely, the total absence of any precedent to guide or afford suggestions to the designer; for the small number of buildings erected or adapted for a similar purpose have been on so limited a scale that their example could not afford much
- 74. assistance in designinga structure to meet all the requirements of the present case. This building differed from all previous ones in being intended to accommodate the products of all nations, instead of being confined to those of one only; in which case the arrangement would have been more certain and more readily provided for. S a comparison of some of these earlier buildings with the first erected in London for a similar purpose cannot fail to be interesting, a short notice of them may not be deemed out of place. The most important amongst them are those temporary structures which have been erected in Paris for the periodical Industrial Expositions, with reference to the last of which we cannot do better than quote, from Mr. Digby Wyatt's instructive and masterly Report, that part where the building is treated of:— "The vast edifice which has been erected to contain the specimens of manufacture selected for exhibition in the year 1849 is situated on the same site as that occupied by a similar building in the year 1844. The Carré de Marigny, on which it has been placed, is a large oblong piece of ground, abutting on the main avenue of the Champs Elysées, and as a site offers every possible advantage, being of a gravelly soil, already efficiently drained, and standing on the line of a continually moving series of public conveyances. The Champs Elysées, though at some considerable distance from the great centre of Parisian population, are still so universal a place of resort, that they may be fairly assumed to be "in the way" of even the poorest classes of the community. The elevation may be admirably seen from all the approaches to the building, and it has the advantage of being
- 75. in immediate proximityto the residence of the President of the Republic. PLAN OF THE BUILDING FOR THE FRENCH EXPOSITION IN 1849. 1. Cattle- shed. 2. Machinery. 3. Chemical Products. 4. Metal Works. 5. Productions of Parisian Industry. 6. Horticulture. 7. Woven Goods. 8. Principal Entrance. 9. Guard- house. 10. Fountain. 11. Reservoir of Rain Water. VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE.
- 76. "The whole plotof the present building (exclusive of the agricultural department) covers a vast parallelogram of 206 metres by 100 (about 675 by 328 feet English), round the outline of which runs a gallery about 90 feet wide, divided into two avenues by a double range of pilasters. In the centre of each avenue is a set of stalls, placed back to back, for the exhibition of merchandise; and both between the central pilasters, and round, and upon the walls, other objects are placed, so that on traversing either of the four gangways (each about ten feet wide) the public have upon their right and left hands objects for inspection. In the part of the building appropriated to large machinery, of course this system cannot be carried out with the same regularity. The vast parallelogram, inclosed by a somewhat similar gallery in the year 1844, was left as one magnificent hall, within which were placed the most important objects; in the present building we find it divided by two transverse galleries, similarly arranged to those we have described, forming three court-yards; the central one being about 140 feet square, and the two lateral ones 80 feet by 140. The central court-yard is open to the sky; in the middle rises an elegant fountain placed on a platform of turf, and around are disposed sheds for the exhibition of flowers and horticultural ornaments and implements. One of the lateral courts (inclosed) receives a large collection of objects in metal-work, cast-iron, &c., and the other contains an immense reservoir, in which all the drainage from the roofs is collected, so as to form a supply of water immediately serviceable in case of fire. In addition to this great building, which corresponds with that previously erected, there is this year constructed a vast shed for the exhibition of agricultural produce and stock. It extends to a length rather greater than the width of the great parallelogram, and is about 100 feet (English) wide. Its construction is ruder than that of the 'Palace,' but it is not on that account less effective. It appears to have been originally contemplated to fill the whole of this gigantic hall with cattle, &c., and to place the agricultural implements in a long narrow gallery intervening between it and the main building; but as the stock of animals forwarded for exhibition has not proved so large as was anticipated, it has been half-filled with semi-agricultural machines,
- 77. and the wholeof the long narrow gallery alluded to crammed with stoves, and miscellaneous domestic mechanism. "The whole of the building is constructed of wood, the roofs being covered with zinc: of the latter material 400,000 kilogrammes, equal to nearly 4,000 tons, are stated to have been used; and of the former, nearly 45,000 pieces of timber. "It is hoped that the accompanying plan and views will convey a tolerably good idea both of the exterior and interior arrangements of the Exhibition. They will serve to show, at least, that a somewhat unnecessary expenditure has been gone into, and to manifest the possibility of constructing a much more simple building, possessing all the advantages of this one, at a far less cost. "Both externally and internally there is a good deal of tasteless and unprofitable ornament; all the pilasters are papered and painted in a species of graining to imitate light oak, and even the ceiling is covered over with the same work. Large 'carton pierre' trusses apparently support the timbers, and a painted bronze bas-relief fills the tympanum of the pediment, at the principal entrance. The architecture of the whole is 'mesquin,' although the gigantic scale of the building necessarily elevates the general effect into something of impressiveness; not, however, to nearly the extent which the same outlay might have produced."
- 78. INTERIOR VIEW OFTHE "PALACE." INTERIOR OF THE CATTLE-SHED. Mr. Wyatt further states that the total cost of this building was about 450,000 francs, or about 18,000l., which, however, he considers was an unnecessarily large outlay. He mentions, also, that the building erected on the previous occasion, in 1844, was in some respects more suitable for the purpose, especially from its greater simplicity of arrangement, a remark it will be well to bear in mind in considering the various designs for the building in Hyde Park. The accompanying plates will enable the reader readily to follow all the details of the description. The permanent building erected by the King of Bavaria at Munich, likewise for periodical Exhibitions, is on a much smaller scale than those in Paris, and must be regarded rather as having afforded an
- 79. opportunity for thatmanifestation of architectural display in public buildings for which its Royal projector was so well known, than as being peculiarly fitted for its purpose. It is divided internally into various halls for the different classes of objects; but as the proportion of these must necessarily vary at every Exhibition, such an arrangement cannot be deemed the most suitable for the purpose. At Berlin, where several Industrial Exhibitions have taken place, no distinct building has been provided, but some already existing one has been temporarily adapted and fitted up for the purpose; thus, on the last occasion, Kroll's Wintergarten, a large establishment for public amusement, which has been recently destroyed by fire, was made use of. The large central saloon, with the smaller ones flanking it, forming, in fact, one space 310 feet long, and 82 feet broad at the widest point, afforded a very good opportunity for the arrangement of the objects to be exhibited, some of which were placed in the gallery of the large saloon. View of Kroll's Wintergarten at Berlin.
- 80. PLAN OF KROLL'SWINTERGARTEN, BERLIN. 1. Electric Telegraph. 2. Chemical Products. 3. Porcelain and Bronzes. 4. Machinery. 5. Hardware. 6. Zinc Works. 7· Plate and Jewellery. 8. Lithography. 9. Watches, &c. 10. Cutlery. 11. Scientific Instruments. 12. Bookbinding. 13. Embroidery. 14. Ornamental Blinds. 15. Silks and Velvets. 16. Furs. 17. Pianofortes. 18. Carriages. 19. Furniture. 20. Lamps, &c. 21. Turned Articles. 22. Woollen Fabrics. 23. Leather Articles. 24. Hats & Felt Articles. 25. Machinery. 26. Carriages. On a previous occasion a part of the Royal Arsenal building was appropriated, and the Exhibition embraced two storeys. In our own country, exhibitions of manufactures have taken place in several of the most important towns, generally in spaces only temporarily adapted; but in 1849 the first building in this country intended solely for the purpose of an exhibition of manufactures was erected at Birmingham, on the occasion of the meeting of the British Association in that town.
- 81. VIEW OF THEBIRMINGHAM EXPOSITION BUILDING. The building alluded to included a space extending to 10,000 square feet, and a corridor, giving additional accommodation of 800 square feet, connected the temporary exhibition-room with Bingley-house, within the grounds of which the building was erected; and including the rooms of the old mansion, the total area covered by the Exhibition was equal to 12,800 feet, or only about one-seventeenth of the area covered by the last building erected in the Champs Elysées. The cost of this building was about 1,300l. It was opened to the public on the 3rd of September, 1849. In most of the buildings alluded to above, the principal defect seemed to be that a definite and fixed subdivision of space was made for a classification of objects which was necessarily uncertain. This appears to have determined the Committee in the arrangement of the plan which they presented in a general form to the Royal Commission at the same time with the Report already quoted; and although the design was slightly modified during the progress of the working-drawings subsequently made, this is, perhaps, the best place for introducing a description of it. It has been already mentioned that at the time the Committee received the competition designs, they obtained the assistance of Mr. Digby Wyatt, the secretary to the Executive Committee, to aid them
- 82. in the preparationof drawings, although Mr. Scott Russell officially filled the post of secretary to the Building Committee. At a somewhat later stage of the Committee's proceedings, when the general design for the proposed building had been approved by the Royal Commission, and it became necessary to prepare working drawings for the same with extraordinary despatch, Mr. Charles Heard Wild, as engineer, and Mr. Owen Jones, as architect, were appointed to co-operate with Mr. Wyatt in carrying out this object. HE site to have been occupied by the building designed by the Committee was the same as that on which the building has been actually erected, namely between Rotten-row and the drive in Hyde Park, but the area proposed to be covered was somewhat larger, the length of the building being about 2,200 feet, and the greatest width nearly 450 feet. The central space was occupied by an immense rotunda 200 feet in diameter, the cupola rising to a height of more than 160 feet, and exceeding the span of that of St. Peter's at Rome by 61 feet, and of St. Paul's in London by 88 feet. The dome for covering this rotunda consisted of wrought-iron ribs, supporting a covering of corrugated iron, the whole resting on a wall or drum of brickwork, about 60 feet high; a large opening in the centre was to be glazed for the admission of light. This large open area was intended for the exhibition of groups of sculpture, fountains, and other objects requiring great space in order to be seen to advantage; at the same time the cupola would have presented a striking instance of the constructive skill of this country.
- 83. The remaining areaof the building was divided into avenues 48 feet wide, by iron columns 24 feet apart, this dimension having been determined on as that most likely to work in well for the division of the counters and passages. One of the 48-feet avenues on the main axis of the building was spanned by semicircular ribs of wrought iron supporting the roof, which rose here to a greater height than the rest of the building; the other avenues were covered with roofing very similar to that commonly seen in railway-sheds, the whole being rendered as light as possible, and constructed in iron covered with slating; the light being in all cases admitted by a range of sky-lights at the apex of the roof, which was also adapted for ventilation. The height of the main avenue was 52 feet, and of the others 36 feet, from the floor throughout. A corridor of communication 15 feet wide was carried round the whole of the building, interrupted only by the open courts; this, with the main avenue, afforded the visitor to the Exhibition the means of reaching any particular point without threading a maze of small passages. The inclosing walls were to be of brick, relieved externally by panels in two colours; but there were to be no internal division walls except those necessary to surround the various courts which were left on account of the trees. The executive offices were grouped on either side of the principal entrance, which was placed immediately opposite Prince's Gate; and at this, as well as at the entrances at either end and on the north front, large arched recesses were introduced which served as vestibules, and formed at the same time prominent and striking features to relieve the necessarily monotonous aspect of the building. Along the whole of the principal front and at the ends of the building a pent or overhanging roof projected about 15 feet, to enable visitors in bad weather to be set down under cover, and the exit-doors, of which there were altogether 24, were further protected by porches. The water was to be conveyed from the roof through the columns which supported it, and which were for this purpose connected with
- 84. the necessary drain-pipes,&c. Very ample accommodation was provided for refreshments in the open courts which were necessarily left for the preservation of the trees, particularly in that at the western end of the building, where there was proposed to be placed a large establishment, comprising two storeys, with somewhat the arrangement of the French cafés, including a fine saloon on the first floor, upwards of thirty feet wide and nearly one hundred feet long; separate spaces were also provided for the accommodation of exhibitors. This was the only part of the building, with the exception of the executive offices, which was to have an upper storey. GROUND PLAN OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE'S DESIGN. 1. Machinery in Motion. 2. Other Machinery. 3. Seats for Visitors. 4. Refreshment Courts. 5. Raw Materials. 6. Manufactures. 7. Sculpture and the Plastic Arts. 8. Small Court. 9. The Rotunda. 10. Principal Entrance and Executive Offices. 11. The Other Entrances. 12. The Drive in the Park. 13. The Kensington Road. 14. The Queen's Private Road.
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