The Godfather of Dominican archaeology pronounces...


This weekend we have been partying in El Cabo and making “los padrinos” of Dominican intellectual society dance bachaton and swig rum with the campesinos…it was the Cabo BBQ, which coincided with official visitors from the Museo del Hombre and the Academia de Ciencias (i.e. knobs of Dominican archaeology). On Saturday we went shopping in Beron for ice, chicken and cola (Juana and the mayor provide the beer and rum and present us with the bill afterwards – it keeps their small colmado (house/shop) in business) and in the afternoon we all piled into the trucks and set off for the site with the Museo taxi in tow. It was a strange caravan – elderly archaeologists (Elpidio Ortega is 80 and investigated the Cabo site in the 70s) and their wives and us lot driving through torrential rain up and impossibly bumpy track to give them a tour of the site and then to cook chicken with the locals. We removed the bars of the fence so that our unsteady guests could clamber over to the large trench and admire the postholes. Elpidio held forth on pottery sequences and mused that there must be a plaza somewhere close by the stones of which the campesinos probably bore off as building material, and I strained my ears and Spanish comprehension to see whether any of his reminiscences and experience could help us unravel the site further.






I spent the rest of the evening barbecueing chicken in Juana’s kitchen in a fire created between some bricks. Checking whether chicken is raw or cooked is hard to do in an unlit kitchen filled with smoke whilst pigs, chickens, cats and dogs run around your feet, but the constant top-ups of cold Presidente beer helped wash the soot out and meant that I could escape the pawings of the local men outside (the alcalde forced me to sit on his gangrenous knee, a position I was very happy to vacate for the other traditional Dominican woman’s position in the kitchen, far from the men’s quarters).



The stereo system is the only thing in the village which claims a constant electricity supply and the speakers blast out ear-splitting dance music (reggaeton and bachata) mercifully loud enough to mask the inebriated mutterings of the local boys. It was a wonderful party – I managed to get away from the kitchen at about 10pm and had a dance or two in a very inept British way, much admiring the fantastic moves of the locals which is a very beautiful sight to see. The BA2 students departed for Belto’s house nextdoor to play dominoes and soon the party shifted there. We intended to leave before it got too late, and before the villagers got out their guns, and the students ended up married, but the downpour started again and the only thing to do was keep on dancing. I hope you can’t get hepatitis from sharing a rum bottle…I think we got back at around 2.30am...