A magnetometer would be a fantastic looter’s tool. It is like a sophisticated metal detector which picks up anything with a magnetic field – this includes metal, but also areas of significant burning activity such as fireplaces and hearths, kilns or even pottery vessels (which have been fired). El Cabo site has been looted by collectors for decades (a local doctor employed locals to dig up pots for him which is why they have so many stories about whole pots and burials of “indios”). So when we went to the site today armed with coordinates of some magnetic ‘hotspots’, I felt a little bit like a treasure-hunter with a map saying “X marks the spot”, and had fantasies about burials with decorated funerary urns…scientific fantasies of course (which means that 10 archaeologists read the article you publish, rather than 10 friends look at the pots you have in your Taino art collection)…

We arrived at the site to the spectacle of the Dominican national anthem being sung round the flag by the schoolchildren of El Cabo.

Later that day they gave us another rendition at the edge of a test-pit because we enjoyed it so much the first time. The fact that it is term-time is a little problematic for our investigations seeing as most of the adults and the children who do not go to school (many of them work on their parent’s farm gardens) are illiterate. I was sadly reminded of this when we asked Kelin, a boy of about 12 years old, to move the rope 25cm at a time along a measuring tape while we surveyed the rows. I first asked him if he could read numbers. He shook his head, and went back to using his machete on the weeds. One of the mayor’s children the same age undertook this task for us last year. He went to school, he can read and write.

As for the treasure…we unearthed a chunk of rusted iron at the first X. A salutary lesson. The story behind the piece of rusted iron was interesting however. Belto told us that when he was a young boy, horses used to drag Guayacan hardwood treetrunks to a loading bay (made of iron) on this area of the coast to be shipped. The iron bay contraption was left to disintegrate over time, until we jogged those memories with the magnetometer.

The second spot was more promising (from the POV of our research questions), and may prove to be a cooking place. We will excavate this feature fully tomorrow.