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Friday, August 29, 2025

UWI Ar­chae­ol­o­gy Unit awaits per­mis­sion from land own­er...

No excavation yet at artefact site

by

20170120

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Ar­chae­ol­o­gy Unit can­not ex­ca­vate and sur­vey the site where 2,000- year-old Amerindi­an arte­facts were found in Val­sayn un­less the own­er grants them per­mis­sion.

This was re­vealed by se­nior lec­tur­er of Ar­chae­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Basil Reid.

In an in­ter­view, Dr Reid said he has not yet had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the site as per­mis­sion must be grant­ed by land own­er Melis­sa Ja­groop-Topha.

"Peo­ple have rights and the land own­er will have to give per­mis­sion for us to do a site vis­it," Reid said.

He ex­plained that pieces of pot­tery or adorno ap­pears to be Sal­adoid (Pa­lo Seco), which is a Trinida­di­an "lo­cal" group of the Sal­adoid cul­ture that ex­tend­ed from T&T to Puer­to Ri­co dur­ing the pe­ri­od 500 BC to AD 600.

"Dec­o­ra­tive­ly, Sal­adoid (Pa­lo Seco) pot­tery show paint­ed, in­cised, punc­tu­at­ed, and mod­elled mo­tifs. Adornos were orig­i­nal­ly af­fixed to ce­ram­ic bowls, which were usu­al­ly trot­ted out dur­ing cer­e­mo­ni­al feast­ing and used as serv­ing con­tain­ers," he said.

Say­ing the find is re­flec­tive of rit­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty by this pre-colo­nial na­tive group, Reid ex­plained that the Pa­lo Seco pot­tery has sev­er­al traits (es­pe­cial­ly af­ter AD 350) that were the re­sult of trade/in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the Sal­adoid of Trinidad and the Bar­ran­coid of South Amer­i­ca.

"The Sal­adoid peo­ple were the first ful­ly hor­ti­cul­tur­al na­tive peo­ple to have colonised T&T, ar­riv­ing around 500 BC, al­though the Sal­adoid site of Lover's Re­treat (To­ba­go) yield­ed an even ear­li­er ra­dio­car­bon date of 770 years BC," Reid said.

Say­ing he was pleased but not sur­prised by the dis­cov­ery, Reid not­ed that "sev­er­al pre-colo­nial na­tive sites have al­ready been found through­out T&T and there was every rea­son to be­lieve that sev­er­al more will be dis­cov­ered, es­pe­cial­ly in ur­ban ar­eas like the east-west cor­ri­dor of Trinidad where there would be a rel­a­tive­ly high lev­el of site dis­tur­bance."

He ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the Na­tion­al Trust would part­ner with the UWI's Ar­chae­ol­o­gy Unit to ex­ca­vate the site.

"How­ev­er, the own­er has to first give us per­mis­sion to both sur­vey and ex­ca­vate, as the finds were found on pri­vate prop­er­ty," Reid not­ed.

Mean­while, Trinidad born Art his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Lawrence Wal­dron, who is based in New York, spoke with CNC3 and plead­ed with the fam­i­ly to stop any planned con­struc­tion un­til the site can be pro­fes­sion­al­ly checked.

Wal­dron said the dis­cov­ery of the arte­facts was proof that the Sal­adoid peo­ple did not set­tle on­ly near rivers, streams and coast­lines but pos­si­bly in­land as well.

"I think to find it so far in­land sug­gests to me that we should be look­ing for oth­er Sal­adoid sites through­out the is­land," Wal­dron said.

"If they keep on find­ing arte­facts on the prop­er­ty, they must stop any work that is be­ing planned for the site so that the UWI team could step in and do a prop­er field study."

The landown­er Melis­sa Ja­groop Topha has not re­spond­ed to re­quests for in­ter­views even though she post­ed pho­tographs of the arte­facts on Face­book. She tagged lo­cal his­to­ri­an An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh, who said it ap­pears that the arte­facts were of Sal­adoid ori­gin and were part of the Pari­co tribe which set­tled on the swampy marsh­lands of St Au­gus­tine and Pi­ar­co.

Sim­i­lar arte­facts have been found in sev­er­al parts of T&T. Reid and his ar­chae­o­log­i­cal team have dis­cov­ered spat­u­las, grind stones, called metate and pes­tles, which were used to pul­ver­ize ed­i­ble foods as well as an ar­ray of bro­ken pot­tery at Mar­i­anne Es­tate in Blan­chisseuse, and at St Johns Vil­lage, South Oropouche near the marsh­lands of the Oropouche swamp.


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