HISTORICAL NARRATIVES AND FIELD WORK 41 



skeleton itself had disintegrated the earthenware vessels and the 

 skull were practically intact except for those quite near the beach 

 where the sand remained moist at all times, due to the burial being 

 below the level of the water pan. Even here below the tide level 

 of the bay some of the material was recovered intact. 



The following observation of Fewkes is of interest in comparing 

 what are undoubtedly Arawak burials with similar practices in the 

 Lesser Antilles : 



The ancient Antilleans buried tlieir dead in a contracted (embryonic) 

 postui-e, often in the floors of the houses; and we have an early record of a 

 chief of Dominica who was buried in the middle of his dwelling, after whicti 

 the house was abandoned. The natives were accustomed to make the grave ia 

 the same house where the person died, or in a new house built for that 

 purpose. Tb.e dead were sometimes seated on their heels, the two elbows on 

 the two knees, the head resting in the palms of the two hands. The author 

 has found burials in the Carib cemetery at Banana Bay, in the island of 

 Balliceaux, in the same position as above described by Labat. It was cus- 

 tomary to deposit mortuary offerings in the graves, which accounts for the 

 pottery and other objects found by the author in the Balliceaux cemetery.'"' 



After making a representative collection of typical anteriorly 

 deformed Arawak crania through excavating on the sand spit 

 cemetery in front of the sugar warehouse and later within the 

 village of Andres, studies were made of the midden deposits. These 

 consisted for the most part of a dense layer of conch shells {Strom- 

 hus pugilis L.) intermingled with fish bones, leg bones and carapaces 

 of turtle, and of mandibles of several species of crab. The midden 

 deposits resting on the solid coral never exceeded 5 feet in depth. 

 A thin stratum of soil of the thickness of a few inches covered the 

 midden. No stratigraphic changes within the midden were apparent 

 at the places where test excavations were made. 



The next project to be undertaken during the 1930 season was in 

 (he nature of an archeological reconnaissance in the high mountain 

 valleys of the Provinces of La Vega and Azua. 



The mountainous backbone of the island, the Cordillera Central, 

 starts from low hills at the extreme east of the island in the Repub- 

 lic of Haiti, rises gradually toward the west, and attains its greatest 

 height in the west-central part of the island. The range is widest 

 in the middle, where it attains a width of 130 kilometers, extending 

 from a point near Santiago de los Caballeros to the Province of 

 Azua. 



The range appears as a jumble of ridges and pealcs, with the oc- 

 casional interpolation of beautiful little flat-bottomed valleys. There 

 are outcroppings of many different kinds of rocks — effusive and in- 

 trusive igneous rocks, schists and other metamorphics, and a great 



="> Fewkes, J. Walter, Relations of Aboriginal Culture and Environment in the Lesser 

 Antilles, Bull. Amer. Geogr. See, vol. 46, no. 9, p. 673, 1914. 



