RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

An an­cient Amerindi­an mid­dens, be­lieved to be cen­turies old, has been found by ge­ol­o­gists at Are­na Road, Freeport.

The dis­cov­ery was made in late June by ge­o­log­i­cal teams from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and is cur­rent­ly in the process of be­ing dat­ed.

Se­nior geo­sci­en­tist from Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration and a lec­tur­er at the UWI Xavier Moo­nan, who was part of the team which dis­cov­ered the mid­dens, said the in­ter­est­ing look­ing oys­ter/mus­sel shells could have been from a mid­den.

“I took them to the Zo­ol­o­gy unit at UWI and they high­ly sus­pect we found an Amerindi­an mid­den or ba­si­cal­ly an an­cient dump­ing ground for shells. This sug­gests that a set­tle­ment may have been near­by,” he re­vealed.

He said they were try­ing to as­cer­tain the dat­ing for the mid­dens, adding that fur­ther Amerindi­an trea­sures could be present in the area.

Fol­low­ing the dis­cov­er­ing, se­nior his­to­ry lec­tur­er at the UWI Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh said there was a need to pre­serve Amerindi­an sites.

“The mid­dens lo­cat­ed in Freeport is a ma­jor dis­cov­ery and is the strongest in­di­ca­tor of the pres­ence of First Peo­ples in Cen­tral Trinidad,” Teelucks­ingh said.

Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er in­vest­ing in equip­ment such as X-ray flu­o­res­cence spec­troscopy mea­sur­ers, Teelucks­ingh said there was a need to train ar­chae­ol­o­gists to dis­cov­er and pre­serve his­toric sites. He said preser­va­tion of sites should in­clude com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing.

“Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tions should have a unit or de­part­ment with trained per­son­nel who can be con­tact­ed. The cor­po­rate sec­tor must in­vest in this area of his­tor­i­cal preser­va­tion as too many busi­ness own­ers lack this his­tor­i­cal ap­pre­ci­a­tion,” Teelucks­ingh added.

Say­ing many mid­dens and our ar­chae­o­log­i­cal trea­sures are be­ing de­stroyed by ur­ban­i­sa­tion, agri­cul­ture or in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion.

“Cit­i­zens of T&T need to ap­pre­ci­ate our ear­ly his­to­ry. Too many of us view these dis­cov­er­ies as ir­rel­e­vant. This his­to­ry is part of our iden­ti­ty and cul­ture. It is as im­por­tant as win­ning any sport­ing event or any artis­tic cre­ation,” Teelucks­ingh added.

One of the lead­ing ar­chae­ol­o­gists of the Caribbean Dr Basil Reid, who spear­head­ed ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ex­pe­di­tions at South Oropouche, Blan­chisseuse and in To­ba­go has al­so made calls for preser­va­tion of Amerindi­an sites in the Caribbean.

In an in­ter­view pub­lished by the UWI in 2009 Reid, who was the lead ar­chae­ol­o­gist in the Red House Restora­tion project, said while use­ful leg­isla­tive and in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­works ex­ist­ed in T&T and else­where in the Caribbean, valu­able Amerindi­an sites were still be­ing de­stroyed.

“This prob­lem is cer­tain­ly com­mon­place through­out the Caribbean and per­haps one of the ways of to cur­tail the prob­lem is to en­sure that the laws are more ef­fec­tive­ly po­liced. This may be achieved by sen­si­tiz­ing lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties to their her­itage through the for­ma­tion of coun­ty or parish her­itage groups through­out the re­gion,” Reid said.

“Pro­vid­ing de­vel­op­ers with tax cred­its can be a use­ful in­cen­tive to en­cour­age them to pro­tect ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites on their pri­vate prop­er­ties. We al­so need to train more ar­chae­ol­o­gists to sat­is­fy lo­cal needs rather than be­com­ing so de­pen­dent on over­seas ex­per­tise. By so do­ing, we would cre­ate a lo­cal cadre of ar­chae­ol­o­gists avail­able for res­cue ar­chae­ol­o­gy, when­ev­er sites are threat­ened by de­vel­op­ment,” he added.

“Geoin­for­mat­ics can al­so be used to map sites that are be­ing threat­ened as well as iden­ti­fy those that are nei­ther vis­i­ble nor ac­ces­si­ble be­cause of thick veg­e­ta­tion or rugged topog­ra­phy. These are just some of the ways in which we could more ef­fec­tive­ly pro­tect and pre­serve our ar­chae­o­log­i­cal her­itage.”