Heritage sites must be preserved, says archaeologist

Rad­hi­ca de Sil­va

Her­itage sites in Trinidad and To­ba­go must be pre­served to safe­guard the coun­try’s his­to­ry, ac­cord­ing to vis­it­ing ar­chae­ol­o­gist Pro­fes­sor Mark Hauser, who is lead­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion work at the his­toric Cedar Grove Es­tate in South Trinidad.

Hauser, a pro­fes­sor of an­thro­pol­o­gy at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, said pro­tect­ing sites like Cedar Grove is crit­i­cal to un­der­stand­ing the lives of en­slaved and in­den­tured work­ers who shaped the na­tion.

“Recog­nis­ing his­toric sites like this is crit­i­cal,” he said, not­ing that preser­va­tion ef­forts by the Na­tion­al Trust of Trinidad and To­ba­go and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies are a key step in en­sur­ing these spaces are not lost.

He said the Cedar Grove Es­tate, which dates back to the late 18th and ear­ly 19th cen­turies, be­gan as a sug­ar plan­ta­tion be­fore be­ing con­vert­ed in­to a co­pra-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty in the late 1800s. Hauser de­scribed the site as “unique,” point­ing to the re­mains of a pre­served co­pra fac­to­ry that of­fers rare in­sight in­to the re­gion’s in­dus­tri­al past.

“What we’re do­ing right now is doc­u­ment­ing this struc­ture, map­ping it, iden­ti­fy­ing ar­chi­tec­tur­al fea­tures and un­der­stand­ing the wider land­scape, in­clud­ing where bar­racks, vil­lages and the su­per­vi­sor’s house once stood,” he ex­plained.

He added that the Caribbean’s role in the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion is of­ten over­looked.

“When we think about the In­dus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, we think about Eng­land or North Amer­i­ca. But ac­tu­al­ly, process­es tied to that trans­for­ma­tion were hap­pen­ing here first,” he said.

Find­ings so far sug­gest the fac­to­ry was built in the 1880s or 1890s, pos­si­bly atop an ear­li­er sug­ar-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty. Stamped bricks re­cov­ered at the site in­di­cate ma­te­ri­als were im­port­ed from New Jer­sey, help­ing re­searchers date the struc­ture and trace glob­al trade links.

Hauser, who has worked in Caribbean ar­chae­ol­o­gy since 1991, said ar­ti­facts pro­vide a more in­clu­sive his­tor­i­cal record than writ­ten doc­u­ments.

“Doc­u­ments are gen­er­al­ly writ­ten by those in pow­er, but ar­ti­facts are de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, every­one left them be­hind. Through them, we can tell the sto­ries of peo­ple who didn’t write their own his­to­ries,” he said.

He said the Cedar Grove Es­tate lat­er formed part of the larg­er Palmyra Es­tate, which, at its peak dur­ing in­den­ture­ship, em­ployed more than 1,200 work­ers, un­der­scor­ing the site’s im­por­tance.

He al­so said preser­va­tion does not al­ways re­quire ex­ca­va­tion.

“Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites are of­ten best left in the ground. Pro­tect­ing the past is just as im­por­tant as un­cov­er­ing it,” he said.

Mean­while, lo­cal ar­chae­ol­o­gist Dr Shad Gob­ins­ingh said the project high­lights the un­tapped po­ten­tial of her­itage re­search in South Trinidad.

“In or­der for us to know where we’re go­ing, we have to un­der­stand where we came from,” he said.

Gob­ins­ingh, who spe­cialis­es in zooar­chae­ol­o­gy, said com­bin­ing ar­chae­o­log­i­cal work with oral his­to­ries from el­der­ly cit­i­zens could pro­vide a more com­plete pic­ture of the coun­try’s past.

“We have to speak to our el­ders, their sto­ries, com­bined with what we find on sites like this, will give us a com­pre­hen­sive un­der­stand­ing of our his­to­ry,” he said.

He said stronger pub­lic aware­ness and con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions and her­itage bod­ies are es­sen­tial to pre­serv­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al lega­cy.