Kim Honey, Science Reporter
The Gobe and Mail. Monday,
August 16, 1999
Sacred purging tool of Cuban Indians recovered from Mayan site in Mexico
The idea of a vomit spatula is enough to make anyone sick.
But it may also have given Royal Ontario Museum archeologist David
Pendergast new insights into the movement of peoples in the Caribbean 1,500
years ago.
For 30 years, Dr. Pendergast thought that the 25-centimetre-long carved rib
of a manatee he uncovered at Altun Ha -- a Mayan excavation site in Belize --
was just a strange spoon.
"I thought the Maya were pretty bad spoon designers, because the bowl
wouldn't hold much of anything," said Dr. Pendergast, a curator emeritus at
the Toronto museum. "It was a very elongated narrow bowl, but made out of
manatee rib, which is something the Maya used fairly frequently for carvings."
But now he thinks it was used by Taino Indians in Cuba, a pre-Columbian
people known for ritual regurgitation.
The Taino stuck the spatulas down their throats so they could purge the
contents of their stomachs before sacred ceremonies, where they communicated
with the supernatural world or prayed for good health. After they had thrown up,
they would inhale cohoba, a psychoactive drug made from the seeds of a tree, to
induce a trance.
Dr. Pendergast encountered Taino vomit spatulas in 1995, when he was
negotiating the ROM's participation in the joint excavation of a Taino village
in Cuba. Although Dr. Pendergast has yet to uncover any manatee-rib spatulas at
the Los Buchillones site -- on the north coast of Cuba near the village of Punta
Alegre -- he did see similar artifacts in Cuban museums.
"My Cuban colleagues looked at [the ROM spatula from Belize] and agreed
with me that you could drop this thing down in any Cuban collection and you
would never be able to sort it out again. It would fit right in with any vomit
spatulas made by the Taino."
The story of the spatula will appear in next month's issue of Rotunda, the
ROM magazine. Dr. Pendergast thinks it may prove that the Taino, descendants of
South American people who migrated to the Caribbean in 500 BC, had some contact
with the mighty Maya.
However, the archeologist isn't sure whether his discovery holds historical
significance, since the Taino and the Maya didn't even speak the same language.
"It could have just been a souvenir that someone brought back after a
trip over there," he said. "What it does show is that there was
contact. It doesn't tell us what the nature of that contact was, and it doesn't
tell us whether it was a durable connection or a very short term one."
Right now, the spatula is on display in the ROM's gallery of indigenous
peoples, arranged in a case with Mayan artifacts from Altun Ha.
Mark Engstrom, director of research at the ROM, said experience counts for a
lot when an archeologist goes into the field. The more they know about different
regions, the more qualified they are to compare civilizations.
"As far as making serendipitous discoveries, that happens a lot,"
he said. ". . . What happens in research projects is, number one, you make
discoveries you didn't expect to make, and secondly, you wind up generating a
lot more questions than you ever answer."
Indeed, University of Manitoba archeologist Louis Allaire doubts the Altun
Ha artifact is a vomit spatula because the time frames don't fit. Although the
Taino's descendants started spreading to Cuba after 500 AD, he said the real
Taino culture -- the distinctive poetry and art, including wood and bone
carvings -- didn't emerge until 1200 AD By that time, the classic Maya period
was long over.
"It's unlikely you would find a Taino artifact in a classic Maya site
because they weren't making those artifacts at that time."
Dr. Pendergast considers the first descendants of those South American
ancestors as Taino, and said they overlapped with the classical Maya period,
which existed on the Yucatan peninsula between 300 and 900 BC.
Still, Dr. Allaire said a description of the spoon, with its simple
ball-like decoration at one end, doesn't sound like it fits in with other Taino
vomit spatulas, particularly the wooden ones. They feature a paddle at either
end with a carved figurine in the middle.
"I'm skeptical until I see it. If it's a simple one, you know anything
carved out of manatee rib can look alike."
Bill Keegan, the curator of Caribbean archeology at Florida Museum of
Natural History, agreed with Dr. Allaire that the time period of the Taino and
classic Maya did not overlap. But he said it was possible that there was some
contact between the Maya and the people who were living in Cuba before the
classic Taino civilization arose.
"We don't know enough about them to know whether they had those kinds
of artifacts or not."
Beyond that, Dr. Keegan said there is a problem with Dr. Pendergast's
discovery: The ROM archeologist only found one vomit spatula at Altun Ha.
"It's a real stretch making the connections. I think we need more than
one similar artifact."
Dr. Pendergast said he intends to pore over the literature on Mayan culture
and look at the artifact illustrations "with Taino eyes" to see if he
can spot any other strange spoons.
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