32 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



But little human skeletal material was obtained from the cultural 

 deposits of the Samana caves, although the rock-cleft burials of 

 Lower Orange Key near the head of Samana Bay yielded unde- 

 formed skulls and skeletons in a fair state of preservation. With 

 these undeformed skulls were exhumed tubular stone beads, of a 

 greenstone resembling jadeite, and small zemis and pendants of shell 

 of the same type as shell zemis recovered in 1930 from a midden 

 near the Dominican village of Andres on the Caribbean coast about 

 25 kilometers east of the capital cit}^ of Santo Domingo. 



It might be stated here that several forms of aboriginal burial 

 prevailed throughout the several native provinces of Santo Do- 

 mingo. In general, urn burial combined with a specialized form of 

 secondary inhumation prevailed in Samana, although burial caves 

 have been discovered elsewhere in Santo Domingo, also in Cuba and 

 in Jamaica. At Anadel, in a midden 2 kilometers east of the 

 Dominican village of Santa Barbara de Samana, several large 

 overturned terra-cotta funerary vases containing the skull and long 

 bones of individuals were found at a depth of 3 feet. A similar 

 practice was observed in burials at San Juan, an aboriginal village 

 site on the north coast of Samana Peninsula due north about 10 

 kilometers distant from Santa Barbara de Samana. Urn burials 

 have been found in St. Vincent, in the Lesser Antilles. Columbus 

 thought he observed the aborigines of Paria, on the Venezuelan 

 coast, drying bodies of their caciques on a frame over a fire. Ferdi- 

 nand Columbus ^^ describes an aboriginal Haitian practice where 

 " the}'^ open the cacique and dry him by the fire in order that he may 

 be preserved whole. Of others they take only the head." 



After completing archeological investigations of the cave deposits, 

 work was begun at two Ciguayan village sites on the north shore 

 of Samana Bay, on the mainland of Samana Peninsula. These 

 former aboriginal village sites were systematically excavated in 

 part — one at Anadel, a point 2 kilometers east from the Dominican 

 town of Santa Barbara de Samana, facing the north shore of the 

 bay; the other at the mouth of the San Juan River on the north 

 coast of Samana Peninsula. The Ciguayan site at Anadel was 

 worked first. This former village occupies a tract of about 5 acres. 

 Only a small portion of the site was found suitable for working. 

 Much of the accumulated pottery, kitchen refuse, and mammal and 

 bird bones were found to be near the north side of the site facing 

 a small stream which flows into the bay a short distance away. 



A large quantity of cultural remains, consisting of decorated and 

 undecorated pottery, implements of shell, bone, and of stone, to- 



" Bourne, E. G., Columbus, Ramon Pane and the Beginnings of American Anttiropology. 

 Amer. Antiq. Soc, 1906. 



