MUSEUM EXPEDITION TO SAMANA, 1928 9 



Burials. — Two burial places were discovered. These consisted of 

 rock clefts protected by overhanging masses of limestone and were 

 located on the south shore of Samana Bay, one on Upper Orange 

 Kej^, the other on Lower Orange Key, both locations being near the 

 head of the bay and the mouth of the Barracote River. These 

 burial chambers yielded human skeletal material in abundance, but 

 fragmentary and incomplete for purposes of study. Pottery shards 

 from burial urns, decorated stone beads, and carved figurines of 

 shell and ivory were with the skeletal material. Much of the pot- 

 tery was similar and in some cases identical with shards recovered 

 from the Ciguayan village sites on Samana Peninsula at Anadel and 

 at San Juan. It would appear from this that the burials belonged 

 to the Ciguayan rather than to the pre-Ciguayan cave dwellers.* 



The sick were sometimes abandoned in a hammock out in the open 

 forest or in their hut, being first provided with a small quantity of 

 food and water. The hut was burned after their death. Bodies of 

 caciques were eviscerated and dried over a fire, then wrapped in 

 cotton cloth, and buried in a cave or in a burial mound. Schomburgk 

 observed many mound burials in the valley of Constanza. Sometimes 

 the head of a deceased relative or friend was removed from the body, 

 dried, and preserved in a basket as a zemi, A peculiar practice has 

 been observed in Jamaica, where a number of skulls were found in 

 a burial cave arranged in a row under an overturned dugout canoe. 

 An Anadel, in Samana, at the edge of the midden, several large over- 

 turned oval reddish funerary vases containing the slmll and long 

 bones of individuals were found. A similar practice was observed 

 at San Juan. Urn burials have also been found in St. Vincent. 

 Columbus observed the aborigines of Paria, on the Venezuelan coast, 

 drying bodies of their caciques on a frame over a fire. A similar 

 practice was observed by Smith in Virginia. 



No human skeletal material, except two molar teeth, were recovered 

 from the cultural deposits of the caves, although the rock-cleft burials 

 of Lower Orange Key were on the same level and not more than 100 

 feet distant from the remains of an aboriginal camp or village site. 

 Here were exhumed tubular stone beads and small zemis of shell, 

 also one of sea-cow ivory. 



Traces remain of small aboriginal plantings of yams, sweet pota- 

 toes, and of calabash trees in the small coves between the eroded abut- 



* It became evident from a study of the deposits in tliese aboriginal burial chambers 

 that a specialized form of secondary burial had been customary with the Ciguayan 

 Indians. It was possible to determine that two forms of pottery vases had been deposited 

 with the burials — food containers, small in size ; and large funerary urns of undecorated 

 reddish ware. Practically no anthropomorphic clay figurine heads were found at the 

 sites. In the disposal of the dead various practices prevailed throughout the several 

 native Provinces of Haiti. Burial caves have been discovered in Cuba and in the 

 Bahamas ; also in Jamaica. In general, urn burial is indicated as having been the cus- 

 tomary practice of the island Arawak. although local variations prevailed as to burial sites 

 and as to preliminary stages in the preparation for secondary urn burial. 



