Cambridge Archaeological Journal http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ Additional services for Cambridge Archaeological Journal: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Taíno Indian Myth and Practice: the Arrival of the Stranger King, by William F.  Keegan, 2007. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida; ISBN  978­0­8130­3038­8 hardback £36 & US$39.95; xxvi+230 pp., 25 figs., 11 tables José R. Oliver Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 19 / Issue 02 / June 2009, pp 274 ­ 275 DOI: 10.1017/S0959774309000407, Published online: 13 May 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0959774309000407 How to cite this article: José R. Oliver (2009). Cambridge Archaeological Journal,19, pp 274­275 doi:10.1017/S0959774309000407 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAJ, IP address: 144.82.107.38 on 22 Aug 2012 274 Reviews Gamboa Carrera. The chapters which follow focus on the theoretical impact of terminology and political borders (Francisco Mendiola Galván); a sweeping account of Toltec Chichimeca and Perépecha migrations into and out of the borderlands region (Patricia Carot and Marie-Areti Hers); a consideration of Mesoamerican motifs in cave rock art in northern Mexico (Arturo Guevara Sánchez); a summary of a long-term project on the role of turquoise in Meso- american-Southwestern history (Phil Weigand); a study of cliff houses in the Sierra Madre Occidental of western Chihuahua (Eduardo Gamboa Carrera and Federico Mancera-Valencia); a review of rock art in Nuevo León (Moisés Valadez Moreno); an evaluation of the 1930–40s work of Walter Taylor in Coahuila (Leticia González Arratia); an essay on the role of physical anthropology in the study of ancient warfare in Mesoamerica and the Southwest (Nicolás Caretta); and a useful ethno-historical summary of the colonial ‘pacification’ of the Chichimeca region of northern Mexico (Martha Monzón Flores). The volume is well edited, with relatively few typo- graphic errors. The design is solid and functional. Illustra- tions are clear, if not outstandingly well printed. Charts are happily free of computer-generated ‘chartjunk’ — no three-dimensional bar graphs, no eye-dazzling hachures! In recent years, INAH invested in site development, research, and a handful of excellent researchers in the north. Casas Grandes in Chihuahua and Las Trincheras in Sonora have been developed for tourism, along with several remote cliff-dwellings in the Sierra Madre Occidental. Contrast that to the almost embarrassing outlay for Southwestern ruins: dozens of national parks; major academic and museum regional programs; and a place in the USA national heritage far out-of-proportion to what actually happened, prehis- torically, in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. The Native history of the region is interesting, to be sure, but one can only wonder how New World archaeology might benefit by re-investment of the Southwest’s mammoth resources in the lower Mississippi Valley or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec or the north coast of Peru. With Teotihuacan and Tikal, it is little wonder that Mexican archaeological attention came late to northern Mexico. One of the truly encouraging aspects of Archaeology Without Borders is Part III, the collection of chapters by Mexican archaeologists. Less encouraging is the near absence of collaborative authorship in Parts I and II: only one chapter was co-authored by USA and INAH archaeologists. The differing professional structures, intel- lectual traditions, and languages between INAH and USA archaeologies suggest that the border continues to affect our understanding of this region. Efforts such as the joint Southwest Symposium-Conference on the Archaeology of the Northern Borderlands and Archaeology Without Borders bode well for the future. In summary, Archaeology Without Borders is a solid, use- ful volume and an excellent survey of current archaeology in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. The border- lands are, in my opinion, the most exciting archaeological district within the larger region, and the growing number of research programs is cause for real optimism. Stephen H. Lekson Department of Anthropology University of Colorado at Boulder UCB 233 Boulder, CO 80309-0233 USA Email: Lekson@colorado.edu Taíno Indian Myth and Practice: the Arrival of the Stranger King, by William F. Keegan, 2007. Gainesville (FL): University Press of Florida; ISBN 978-0-8130-3038-8 hardback £36 & US$39.95; xxvi+230 pp., 25 figs., 11 tables José R. Oliver The book, authored by Bill Keegan, takes as its central theme the arrival in Hispaniola (Haiti-Dominican Republic) of one of the most colourful yet enigmatic historical figures: Caonabó. He was a powerful cacique (chief) who was not a native of Hispaniola but instead came from the Bahamian Archipelago. He was a Lucayo and, hence, a ‘stranger king’. Ever since Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, Caonabó led armed rebellions against the Spaniards. In 1495, the Spaniards finally captured Caonabó, who was then taken to La Isabela and imprisoned in a ship. A devastating hurricane sank the ship where he and other prisoners drowned. The heroic deeds attributed to Caonabó, even in life, became the stuff of legend. Being a Lucayan, the story of Caonabó provides Keegan with a powerful argument for Caribbean scholars to reconsider the Bahamas not as marginal but cen- tral to the ancient political history of the Greater Antilles. In this book, Keegan frames the ‘facts’ of Caonabó ― The Stranger King ― within the general Taíno culture, religion (mythology) and archaeology. The principal aim is to explain how come a stranger came to be a paramount chief in Hispaniola. The author approaches these diverse sources of information through chaos theory (pp. 3–16), where ‘initial conditions’ are critical in the unravelling of the events that led to the rulership of Caonabó in a ‘foreign’ island and its aftermath as a heroic figure of mythological proportions. What is very distinct in this book, if not unique for Car- ibbean archaeological/academic texts, is that Keegan explicitly chose to write in the post-modernist literary genre. The main cast of characters is Caonabó and Shaun D. Sullivan, the heroic and legendary protagonists (p. 16), and the author himself. Casting Sullivan is a fitting tribute to a colourful archaeologist who contributed so much to Bahamian archaeology. In evalu- ating this book I am struck by ambivalence: should I read it as a post-modernist ‘historical novel’, as a robust display of anthropological-archaeological scholarship (p. 8) or both? There are elements of both but at least from my perspective this formula is not entirely successful. This is neither to say that the book is not well written nor that scholarship is absent. CAJ 19:2, 274–5 © 2009 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research doi:10.1017/S0959774309000407 275 Reviews Hints of intertextuality, typical of the post-modernist litera- ture, make this book a very entertaining read indeed. The plot has its elements of suspense to keep readers interested. From what island did Caonabó come from? How could a stranger become ‘king’ in Hispaniola? What were the roles of those, from the past and present day, who contributed to create both the historical person and legend that was Caonabó? Does the archaeological evidence support Caonabó’s Lucayan origin? As a post-modern literary piece, Keegan has succeeded, but in terms of academic rigour there are numerous weaknesses that undermine his efforts. Given his avocation for a theory of chaos, it is of paramount importance that his arguments for the ‘initial conditions’ leading to Caonabó’s rulership are water-tight. They are not. His contention that the Taíno elite were de facto matrilineal and practised viri-avunculocality is the crucial initial condition, as it would explain how this Lucayan stranger would come to be raised in his maternal uncle’s household (who would be a cacique) in Hispaniola and eventually succeed his purported ‘rival’ brothers to the position of cacique. In earlier writings Keegan had postulated matrilineality as a hypothesis, but in this book he presented it as an incontrovertible fact. There is no evidence that Caonabó had a maternal uncle in Hispaniola. The chronicler Las Casas explicitly noted that Caonabó accessed power through his personal achievements as a brave warrior and wise politician, not through birthright. Furthermore, vari- ous chroniclers presented several other customary routes to inherit the office of cacique that were not matrilineal. Keegan ignored previous critiques made by Antonio Curet in Ethno- history (49(2), 259–80) and the ensuing arguments between both authors (Ethnohistory 53(2), 393–8). In this book Keegan did not provide new ethnohistoric evidence that would sup- port his thesis. If the initial conditions of matrilineality and viri-avunculocality are purely hypothetical, then so is the subsequent unravelling of the ‘story’ of Caonabó. Keegan used a rather weak excuse for dispensing with detailed reference citations of the sixteenth-century chroniclers to support his arguments; moreover, there is an overreliance on secondary sources, such as Sauer, Rouse, Loven or Fewkes. His justifications are that interpretations of ethnohistoric texts have a life divorced from the authors that lead to multiple interpretations and that inserting reference citations at every turn would interfere with the flow of the narrative. I remain unimpressed. Keegan still has recourse to chapter endnotes to keep the narrative flow unimpeded. Nothing can substitute the process of analysis and verification of the primary historic texts against secondary sources. Just because there can be multiple interpretations does not mean that all are equally justifiable or valid. As a result, there are quite a number of inaccurate ‘facts’ as well as unfounded assumptions, some reached by an uncritical acceptance of the secondary sources. A few examples will suffice. Keegan states (p. 23) that Caonabó was the principal cacique for the region where the Spanish La Navidad fortress was located and that the local chief, Guacanagarí, was his subordinate. In fact, Caonabó’s polity was in the Maguana region, much further south of Gacanagarí’s Marién region. Keegan (p. 28) states that there was little gold in the chief- dom of Canoabó, when there is abundant evidence to the contrary. There are also inaccuracies in describing the myth of Deminán Caracacol and his three brothers (the Taíno culture heroes) and the Yayael myth (pp. 45–8). Deminán did not go to Yaya’s house to steal cassava bread and was not tardy in entering Yaya’s house. The Cacaracol brothers did not capture eels, but instead wooden, slippery beings. It was not Deminán who freed the first Taíno beings from the mythical cave of origin, but Guahayona, the mythical cacique. Keegan argues that these myths confirm the Taíno practice for a matrilineal conical clan where the ‘brothers of the same mother are the progenitors of new colonies’, but where Caonabó seems to ‘break the rules’ because he was a foreigner. However, various chroniclers, including Las Casas, noted that Caonabó’s brothers, in fact, lived in the chiefdom of Maguana. Contrary to Keegan’s statements (pp. 96–7), there are no ethnohistoric references indicating ‘female inheritance’ of cemí objects, nor stating that women controlled the production and distribution of high-status objects. On the positive side, Keegan’s discussion of the archaeological data of the Bahamian Archipelago in relation to Hispaniola (Chs. 5–6), provides an excellent, updated synthesis of important work that is not well known even among Caribbeanists, particularly Shaun Sullivan’s PhD dissertation work. Through a process of elimination, Keegan proposes that site MC-6 in Middle Caicos is the only one that would meet the requirements for Caonabó’s home, if not birthplace. It is based on various lines of evidence (pp. 183–4) but most particularly the site’s unique spatial layout. However, whether MC-6 is ‘more typical of chiefly villages in the Greater Antilles’ remains debatable, since a ‘typical’ layout has yet to be defined, much less what is or is not a ‘chiefly’ village in archaeological terms. This already assumes that Caonabó belonged to a chiefly lineage, which as noted above, is not proven. Finally, while Canoabó was a Lucayo, there are no reasons to assume, as Keegan does, that he had to come from a site that archaeologically belongs to the Chican subtradition, instead of one characterized by the Palmetto ‘culture’ or by Meillac tradition. If part of Keegan’s argument is that Caonabó was a stranger king, then belong- ing to another cultural tradition would make him even more strange; if, instead, he belonged to the same cultural tradi- tion and was a relative of the chief (his ‘maternal uncle’), and possibly lived there since puberty, as claimed in this book, then Caonabó was not a stranger at all. José R. Oliver Institute of Archaeology University College London 31–34 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PY UK Email: j.oliver@ucl.ac.uk