2. Guanín in the Caribbean

My second case study brings together rnetallurg archaeology, ethnohistory and mythology and it focusses on the Caribbean islands with the adjacent parts of mainland South Arnerica. Only a handful of prehispanic metal artifacts have been recorded from the islands but, in compensation, we have an excellent series of written documents from the early Colonial period.

The first Spanish chroniclers to write about the Antilles describe two quite composite forms in the different categories of golden items.

The first group consists exclusively of hammered ornaments, including in lays and overlays for composite objects. Items of this kind have been found archaeologically (Chanlatte 1977; Vega 1979). The raw material was locally available goid, which the Indians called caona, and the cronistas are emphatic that the Taínos had no knowledge of casting:

Estas plastas de oro no eran fundidas ni hechas de muchos granos, porque los indios desta isla no tenían industria de fundir, sino los granos de oro que hallaban, majábanlos entre dos piedras, y así los ensanchaban por manera que siendo grandes las plastas, eran extendidas y ensanchadas de grandes granos o piezas que en los ríos hallaban (Bartolomé de Las Casas, describing the goldwork he saw in Santo Domingo, cited in Chanlatte 1977: 29).

The second category of met alwork consisted of cast, three-dimensional, figurative items, and some hammered artifacts, made of a gold-copper alloy locally called guanín (the term tumbaga for this alloy is a hispanic importation from southeast Asia, see Blust 1992). Columbus himself collected one of these ornaments in Hispaniola and had it analysed in Spain. It proved to be made of a guanín alloy containing 18 parts of goid, 8 of copper, and 6 of silver as a natural impurity (Rivet andArsandaux 1946: 60).

From this point onwards, my discussion is re stricted to this second category, to objects made from guanín.

Although there is some native copper in eastern Cuba (Lovén 1935: 473), and it is reported that Columbus personally discovered a vein of copper in Hispaniola (Vega 1979: 27), the fact that the Taínos had no casting technology,   and presumably no knowledge of alloying either, suggests that ah guanín objects in the islands were imported. The immediate source was probably Guyana, where the earliest European travellers reported lost-wax casting in gold and in gold-copper alloys, and also collected eagle pendants, 'images of men and diverse birds', and sheet gold plates from the tribes of the interior (Bray 1972: 25; Rivet and Arsandaux 1946: 59-65; Whitehead 1996).

There is circumstantial evidence, based on ethnohistorical sources, for a 'guanín trail' leading back from the islands to Guyana and the Orinoco, and then upriver to the interior of Venezuela, and perhaps even to Colombia (Whitehead 1990, 1996). But, so far, the only archaeological corroboration for this is a single eagle pendant, cast in 12 carat guanín, and pure Colombian in style, which was dredged from the Mazaruni river in Guyana (Fig. 6a; compare Reichel-Dolmatoff 1988: 88). It is a casual find, with no context, and the date of its arrival in Guyana is therefore unknown. I shall return later to questions of chronology but first we must examine aboriginal attitudes towards guanín in the Antilles.

In Columbus's treasure lists from Hispaniola the word guanín refers simply to 'oro de baja ley', an inferior metal with a low gold content (Szaszdi 1982: 15), but in the Taíno system of values guanín occupied a very different, and much more prestigious, position (Chanlatte 1977). Although guanín offers certain technical advantages as a jewellery metal (hardness, relatively low melting point, ease of casting, and the ability to reproduce fine detail) these do not account for its attraction. In the Taíno world it was the symbolic 'essence' of the alloy that gaye guanín its special role.

Daban también por precio ciertas hojas de guanín, que era cierta especie de oro bajo que ellos olían y tenían por joyas preciosas, para ponerse colgadas de las orejas... y en tanto grado era estimado este guanín, la última luenga, destas gentes, por el olor que en él sentían, o por alguna virtud que haber en él creían, que acaeció valer aquellas hojas, que no pesaban sino lo que digo, entre los mismos españoles, para dallas a la hija de algún cacique y señor de aquéllos, porque el señor les diese a ellos lo que pretendían, ciento y más castellanos. Llamaban en su lengua a estas hojas y joyas de las orejas "taguaguas' (Las Casas 1967, Lib. III, Cap. CXCIX, p. 318).

Elsewhere the same author describes 'cierta especie de oro bajo que llamaban guanín, que es algo morado, el cual cognocen por el olor, y estímanlo en mucho' (Las Casas 1965, II: 240). All the early Spanish sources agree on four points: that guanín was a gold-copper alloy, had a distinctive smell, was reddish or dark in colour, and was highly prized.

The vocabulary of these documents carnes the discussion to new levels. In the islands today, Tagua-tagua is a plant (Passiflora foetida) with an unpleas ant smell. In Cuba, Guanina (Cassia occidentalis) is a plant that produces golden flowers; in Puerto Rico its local name is Hedionda (stinking) (Szaszdi 1982: 17). Pietro Martire d'Anghiera (1964: 193) provides another linguistic connection when he refers to 'ciertas conchas de amarillentos reflejos como el latón, denominados guaninos. Con ellos hicieron collares que los reyes tienen por sagrados hasta el día de hoy.' In another version of the same statement, he refers to 'ciertas laminitas amarillas de latón, que llaman guaninos' (Chanlatte 1977: 28). Spanish latón (brass) shares with guanín the characteristics of acidic small and foreign origin, and both alloys were valued more highly than gold. The Taínos called the new, hispanic, metal 'turey, cuassi venido del cielo, porque al cielo llamabanlo tureyro; hallan en él [latón] no sé que color que a ellos mucho agrada' (Las Casas 1965, II: 240). A similar connection between alloys, brilliance, and heavenly origin appears in the honorific name given to Bohechío, the paramount cacique of Xaragua in Hispaniola, whose title Turei-ga Hobin (or Tureywa Hobin) translates as 'Shining as Sky-Brass' (Vega 1979: 25; Oliver 1996).

These linguistic cross-connections indicate that guanín had a number of attributes (brilliance, distinctive smell, reddish colour, remote and celestial origin) with connotations of both cacique status and supernatural power.

My colleague at the Institute of Archaeology Dr José Oliver, has recently completed a study of the symbolism of gold and guanín among the Taínos, and has generously allowed me to cite his unpublished manuscript (Oliver 1996). Using much the same sources as I have employed, he argues that guanín 'heid numinous power for the Taíno... and was symbolically contrasted with the pale yellowish-white, odorless, and pure caona gold. It is a contrast between the sacred guanín and the profane and natural caona.' Guanín, unlíke the local gold, was exotic, coming from a remote and celestial or cosmic place.

As Oliver points out, given these connotations it is not surprising that guanín items, in particular the guaiza masks (the word means 'soul of the living') were im portant components of chiefly regalia, and were appropriated by the elite, along with other 'bright' materials such as feathers, polished stones and shell, whose linguistic correlates allude to the quality of iridescence linked with divine and celestial origins (Oliver op. cit.). The power of the cacique was legitimized on earth by his role as mediator with the supernatural.

Many of these themes and attuitudes are brought together in a much-discussed cycle of myths, recorded by Father Ramón Pané in Hispaniola in 1493-4 and referring to the journeys of Guayahona, the primordíal cacique. Szaszdi (1982) and Whitehead (1990, 1996) have analysed these myths from an economic point of view, suggesting that the whole cycle represents 'the ideological underpinning of an elite trade' involving the exchange of hallucinatory drugs, sea shelis, gold, greenstones, women and children (Whitehead 1996: 130). The analysis by Oliver also emphasizes ideological legitimization, but with a more supernatural basis. In spite of their different emphases, which complement rather than contradict each other, ah three authors agree in seeing a relationship between the ideology of power and the aquisition of exotic goods. The early date of Pané's observations, and the fact that guanín is so deeply embedded in Taíno mythology, suggest that the alloy was reaching the Antilles well before the Spanish conquest, even though none has yet been found in a secure pre-Spanish context.

Reduced to its essentials, the Guayahona story telis how the culture-hero leaves the cave of Jagua, in Hispaniola, and eventually journeys westwards to the mythical island of Guanín. In one episode along the way, Guayahona rescues his magical sister from the bottom of the ocean and takes her back to Caonao ('the place of gold'), also located somewhere in Hispaniola. The two have an incestuous sexual affair, after which the hero is ritually cleansed and receives from the woman the insignia of chieftainship - guanín earspools and stone beads. His tasks accomplished, Guayahona is transformed one last time, 'caught by the sun', and changed into a celestial body of guanín.

Oliver has been able to fill some of the gaps in the story by referring to other versions of the same myth recorded in the lesser Antilles. These sources say that when the culture-hero ascended he was given a new name, Hiaguanaili, which translates as 'The One Who Had Turned Brilliant, Guanín Star', almost certainly the Sun. And he was taken up to the sky (Turey) by that most metallic of creatures, the Hummingbird, itself still called guani in Cuba.

This selective dip unto the Guayahona myth in no way does justice to Oliver's fine-grained analysis, but is enough to support his conclusion that multicoloured iridescence, brilliance, reddish-purple colour, remote and celestial origins, maleness, the westerly direction, chiefly status and supernatural power 'are ah parts of a semantic cluster implicit in the broader concept of guanín.'