John W. Foster (2025)
California State Underwater Archaeologist (ret)
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University (ret)

John W. Foster earned a BA (UCLA) and MA (Long Beach State) in Anthropology (Archaeology) and did further graduate study at the University of Arizona. He was hired by Fritz Riddell to develop and manage CRM programs in State Parks. John retired from a 34-
year park career and held an Adjunct Faculty position at Indiana University for 20 years. As the California State Underwater Archaeologist, John helped extend state park management offshore in California to include shipwrecks and submerged cultural features. John has published widely on underwater archaeology, rock art, park management and other research topics. He has done field work across California, the American Southwest, Baja California, central Mexico, and the Caribbean. He has been part of 3 National Geographic specials including the search for a Columbus shipwreck and Capt. Kidd’s pirate ship. He also worked with INAH of Baja California to record and identify a Manila Galleon shipwreck. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interview with John W. Foster

SCA: If I remember correctly, your father was in the military, and you lived in a number of places while growing up. Can you tell me about that time in your life?

JWF: My Dad served in the Army Air Corps in New Guinea as a pilot flying
P-38s in WWII. He was a squadron commander at age 24 flying reconnaissance missions with no guns, only cameras and flying skills to survive. At the end of the war, he was chosen by Howard Hughes to be his private pilot. He also flew many experimental aircraft that were being developed and crashed a few in testing their limits. After a few years, John G. Foster decided to go back into the US Air Force about the time I was born. As an Air Force family, we moved every 2-3 years, so I’ve lived in 7 different states, some of them twice. I started high school in Japan, continued in Arlington, VA, and finished in Palos Verdes, CA. We never had a “home hometown,” but we did get to experience a lot of different parts of the country. I think, perhaps, this nurtured a curiosity about different people and the world which may have led me to anthropology. As a kid I didn’t know any different because all our friends lived the same way.

SCA: What are some of your earliest memories growing up?

JWF: We lived in Burbank when I was born. Our house was at the end of a dirt road in the middle of orange groves. Our nearest neighbors owned a horse ranch where “Mr. Ed” - the talking horse from TV fame resided. I think we both learned to talk about the same time. He got to be really famous for it, but on the other hand, I didn’t have to wear a saddle or have a laugh track. Things tend to even out, I suppose.

My Dad was a New Yorker and Mom was a journalist from Shenandoah, Iowa. There were 6 kids, so there was plenty of drama and plenty of fun. I was the oldest. Almost every year our folks would pack us all in the family station wagon and drive back to Iowa to see our relatives.

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Dad was not much for casual sight-seeing, and he would stop only for gas. One year we begged him to take a detour to see the Grand Canyon and have a picnic lunch. He finally agreed and we found ourselves at a picnic table with bologna and cheese sandwiches, overlooking that fabulous chasm. He finished his beer and gave the can a mighty heave, over the stone wall and into the mystic. For the next several days he would ask, “You think its hit bottom yet?” The environmental movement was slow to arrive at the Fosters.

SCA: What attracted you to pursue a career in archaeology?

JWF: In the 6th grade we lived in Sumpter, South Carolina. One of my friends had an uncle with a large farm outside of town. He invited me to join him in walking behind as the spring plowing was done. Gary advised, “bring a couple of coffee-cans; we’re going to need them.” We filled those up and several more with chips and stone points of various shapes and sizes. Then we sat down and put them in categories. Sadly, I left them in South Carolina but always remembered the excitement of their discovery. Years later I managed to create similar arrow points from obsidian as best as I could remember.

Something else happened in the 6th grade for me. I learned that Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, was the first European to visit the “New World.” I was sure this factoid was something my parents did not know, so of course I was anxious to demonstrate my superior knowledge at the dinner table that evening:

John 6th grader: “So, Dad, who was it that discovered America,” I asked innocently?
Dad: “Well, it was Christopher Columbus, the greatest mariner who ever lived. I thought you knew that!” (The Fosters were proud members of the Knights of Columbus in Queens, NY.)

I had him!
John 6th grader: “No, it was Leif Erikson, a Norse explorer, who was the first European to set foot on Continental America. He made it to Vinland some 500 years before Columbus.”

I continued to blather on with my newly acquired facts for several minutes. Then came the thunderbolt.

Dad: “Well, all I know is that once COLUMBUS discovered America, it STAYED discovered! The family all nodded in agreement. Truer words were never spoken.
SCA: Who was the first archaeologist you met?

JWF: That would be Dr. James Deetz at UC Santa Barbara. He was a fantastic teacher and filled Campbell Hall with Intro to Archaeology students. Then he would invite us all to do some kite- flying in Isla Vista (when it was open fields). I also volunteered a few times at La Purisima, where Deetz had ongoing excavations. He was just a really fun guy to be around. After his class I decided to become an Anthro major and on a visit home one weekend, I shared that with my parents.

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The next time I was home my folks were entertaining one of their friends from Hughes Aircraft and I overheard this conversation:

Guest: “So, what has Johnny decided for a major at Santa Barbara?”
Dad: (pause) “He tells us he’s going to major in Anthro-pology.”
Guest: (longer pause) “So what do anthropologists do, exactly?”
Dad: (excessively long pause) “Well, they teach others how to be anthropologists, I suppose!”

SCA: Do you recall your earliest field experience?

JWF: Absolutely. While at UCSB I signed up to work for 6 weeks on an excavation project during the summer at Ft. Vasquez in Platteville, Colorado. I’d had a little weekend experience working at La Purisima Mission and enjoyed it, so I was excited to be hired to participate in an excavation. Shortly after we began the crew chief fell ill and I was selected to be the temporary replacement. Our digging focused on establishing the adobe wall placement which formed the boundary of the 1835 fur trading post. Amazingly, this actual site (restored by WPA) lies in between N and S lanes of a major expressway – US Route 85. You have people going by at 75mph very near the excavation.

I oversaw a test unit near the highway shoulder. At a depth of several feet, we encountered what appeared to be the top of an adobe wall several bricks wide. We followed it for a short distance and happily documented its position, awaiting a supervisory archaeologist to confirm our discovery. He finally arrived and jumped in the unit to examine the feature. He took his trowel and cut into my beautifully exposed adobe. “Foster,” he said, “what you have here is a Caterpillar track in the mud from the highway construction.” Well, that remains the most beautifully excavated Caterpillar track in the history of Colorado archaeology, but I’ve steered clear of working in that state since!

SCA: Where did you go to school?

JWF: I started at UC Santa Barbara, then transferred to UCLA where I earned my BS in anthropology in 1969. I earned an MA in anthropology from CSU Long Beach in 1973. I did further graduate work at the University of Arizona before taking my career job at California State Parks in 1975.

SCA: Recently, I’ve admired your drone photography. What else do you like to do for fun?

JWF: I have developed this fascination with World Heritage sites. It’s really great to see and photograph places were extraordinary human achievement or consequential interaction occurred. I’m particularly drawn to Mesoamerican sites where brother Dan and I have extensively travelled and explored Maya ruins. I enjoy making short videos or slideshows of these adventures and posting them on YouTube. I have 180 or so of them from California, Nevada, the Southwest, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Peru, China and Egypt. https://www.youtube.com/@JohnFoster-uc1vi

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SCA: Tell us about your training to become a naval aviator.

JWF: Upon my graduation from UCLA, I received my draft notice and lottery number that assured me I would soon be called to the military. Like most of my contemporaries, I was torn between a dislike of the Vietnam war and the loyalty to my country. I decided if I was going to serve, I’d prefer to follow in my father’s footsteps and become an officer and pilot. In early 1969, the Navy accepted me into Aviation Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. I really enjoyed the flying and must have inherited something useful because I was the first of my cadet class of 50 to solo in a T-34 trainer after only 7 hours of dual flight instruction. It came naturally to me, and I really loved flying. I earned my commission as a Naval officer. I next went to training in the T-28, a plane equivalent to a WWII fighter my father had flown. That was really exciting. Firing up an 11-cylinder radial engine on the T-28 and feeling its power will get your attention! We learned how to escape a ditched airplane in the water and use evasive and survival skills in case we were shot down. We survived a week in a tropical forest finding something to eat and digging beach wells for water. I enjoyed those challenges and hoped I’d never need to use them.

Then it all came to abrupt end. The Navy called us into a ready room one morning and said the top brass decided there were too many pilots in the training pipeline, and we were all going to be sent home with the country’s thanks and an honorable discharge. We’d signed up for a 6-year hitch and worked for a year towards becoming naval aviators. Like that, it was over. I was in the best shape of my life and had some nice white uniforms, but I was jobless. I did get some great training out of my Navy experience in mapping and survival that became useful in later years.

SCA: How did you come to work with California State Parks?

JWF: I was enrolled in the PhD program at Arizona, working part time for the National Park Service, and teaching introductory classes at Pima Community College in Tucson. I spent a summer working for the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. I’d finished all my exams, advanced to candidacy, selected my dissertation subject, formed my committee, and was awaiting approval from INAH to conduct studies of the northern Sonora coast. I’d scouted the area north and south of Puerto Peñasco with marine biologists and was planning a landform archaeology study of this remote coast. I published a paper on the shell middens and their research potential. All of a sudden, I heard from my former professor Franklin Fenenga of a full- time position being advertised in Sacramento to be the State Park assistant archaeologist to Fritz Riddell. I’d never met Fritz but knew of his work in California. Having done some teaching, I realized my career preference was doing archaeology and preserving heritage sites rather than teaching about them. I competed for the position, was selected, and moved to Sacramento in 1975 from Tucson.

SCA: What was it like working at State Parks in the early days? How did that compare to the later years?

JWF: It was a dream job for me. I’m a generalist, a big picture person. State Park lands in California offer a great canvass of human experience across 12,000 years or more. With Fritz as

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my teacher, I had the chance to see and appreciate this incredible park landscape of history and archaeology. I also studied State Park history and read Fredrick Law Olmsted Jr.’s State Park System Plan and papers from 1928. Those documents are foundational to the state park system we have today. Olmsted consulted with Dr. A.L. Kroeber of UC Berkley on how to best include Native California history in California’s State Parks. I became committed to that goal as well in recommending new State Park acquisitions. I made myself an expert on park philosophy, conservation, and heritage resource management. I felt a connection to Olmsted, Aubrey Neasham, and Fritz Riddell – three pioneers who came before us and established the professional standards we use today. It was a different time – a time of expansion. We felt driven to push park boundaries to encompass and protect a more diverse cultural and natural resource inventory. The mission period and gold rush were well represented, but there were many important historic themes and unique cultural examples to be preserved. We established underwater park areas “beyond the beach.” They included the SS Pomona shipwreck (1908) at Fort Ross and the Frolic shipwreck (1850) at Caspar Cove in Mendocino. I also pushed for the acquisition of Emerald Bay because of its iconic beauty, but also because of the “miniature fleet” of recreational boats preserved in cold water on the bottom. We stretched the system and made it better.

Over the decades, things changed. A big driver was the requirement that park rangers and lifeguards become Peace Officers. Then they needed Code-3 vehicles, AR-15s, and an endless amount of training to maintain that public safety function. Over time this discouraged recruitment of naturalists or historians who wanted to be a ranger but not a peace officer. It also dominated the training budget and effectively blocked most advancement in the park organization to anyone not a peace officer.

The peace office requirement has now been reversed. That’s a good thing, but there remain the silos of government which prevent many needed holistic approaches to management and collaboration. It’s unfair to compare eras, but I don’t see the same level of commitment to acquiring and preserving cultural heritage in today’s organization.

SCA: Who were some of the archaeologists (and non-archaeologists) who most influenced you over the course of your career?

JWF: I consider myself very fortunate to have learned from some of the greatest teachers and archaeologists of my time. That would include Franklin Fenenga, Emil Haury, Bernard Fontana, Dave Fredrickson, Jim Deetz, Tom Layton, Sheli Smith, and Michael B. Collins. Of my contemporaries, Breck Parkman and my brother Dan Foster were very influential. I want to single out two folks who were particularly important in shaping my outlook as an archaeologist.

Francis A. Riddell was my mentor and boss at State Parks. He grew up in Lassen County and with his brother explored Indian sites and culture in NE California. Fritz was, I believe, the first state archaeologist hired outside of a university setting when he began work for the State Indian Museum. Fritz was a keen observer of the human past. He was, to my mind, the best archaeologist I ever met at reading a landscape and decoding its use by humans. He also had a real love for Native Californians and their cultures. He knew and worked with many Tribal people over the course of his career and was their preservation advocate in state government.

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The other mentor I want to acknowledge is Geoffrey W. Conrad. We worked very closely together on research and conservation projects in national parks of the Dominican Republic. Geoff was a great scholar and teacher. He was a former Chair of Anthropology at Indiana and Director of the Mathers Museum. Geoff was trained as a Peruvian specialist but adapted to a focus on Taíno culture and archaeology. I loved spending time with him and always came away with new insights about archaeology and Taíno culture. Geoff was instrumental in getting our Taíno archaeology studies published and available to a wider world.

As far as non-archaeologists, I was greatly influenced by Carmen Lucas, an Elder of the Kwaaymii Laguna Band from San Diego County. Carmen was a principal advisor to California State Parks on matters of cultural history and management pertaining to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, and Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area. She shared her knowledge and passion with me on heritage matters and challenged us to be better stewards of her cultural homeland.

Floyd Buckskin was another heritage expert and protector of cultural traditions. He served as Headman of the Ahjumawi Band of the Pit River Nation. We worked together on preserving and understanding the stone fish traps at Ahjumawi Lava Springs State Park. Floyd explained the importance of these features and why their maintenance, preservation and use are crucial to his people. I miss him very much. He allowed me to capture some of his insights in this video: https://youtu.be/lVdf_qNkHN8

SCA: Archaeology has changed since you entered the field. What do you see as some of the most important changes that have occurred?

JWF: Archaeology is always changing and that’s a good thing. As a generalist, I see many positive improvements in today’s archaeology. It’s somewhat like medicine. I can remember in my parents’ time cure for an undiagnosed ailment sometimes started with “exploratory surgery.” They would cut you open and look around for a malfunctioning or diseased organ. In a way, we did the same in archaeology by digging exploratory trenches across the cultural landscape in search of features, burials or clues about the past. Medicine doesn’t function that way today and neither does archaeology. In an ideal situation, we can extract data about the past with remote sensing, cadaver dogs, geophysical mapping, and auger testing to focus our excavations as well as our preservation efforts to maximum effect. Archaeologists today can extract much more information about the human past per volume of site disturbed. That should result in more archaeological sites being recognized, mapped, evaluated and preserved.

The other big change is the increased involvement of the cultural heirs or descendant community affiliated with the site in question. This is a complex subject and an evolving dynamic. Fritz Riddell always envisioned a time when ancient, preserved heritage sites within California State Parks would be available for the inspiration and study by Native Californians. That has actually happened with some of my colleagues earning advanced degrees using archaeology to help reconstruct ancient lifeways to which they are related. That’s a very good thing. Our goal as archaeologists should be to develop collaborative approaches with descendant communities and together support the study and preservation of heritage sites.

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SCA: Do you have any concerns over the future of archaeology? What can archaeologists do to ensure our field will have relevance in the future?

JWF: Yes, I do have concerns about the long-term viability of archaeology as a technique to study the ancient human past. Relevance in the future presumes that our discipline will be around to contribute to an understanding of earlier cultures and people. That’s by no means a given. In the past year the California legislature has held hearings over the lack of progress in implementing NAGPRA and Cal-NAGPRA and put the blame on the archaeologists for delays. While that’s not entirely fair, we archaeologists need to be in compliance with the laws governing human remains and cultural objects. We need to build bridges for future collaboration if we are to have relevance as prehistorians. Our common ground should be the identification, preservation, and respectful treatment of ancestral sites as California landscapes are modified. But, at this critical time, UC and CSU seem to be moving away from teaching archaeology. So, who is going to train the next generation of specialists to find and preserve threatened heritage sites across California?

Another aspect to the question of relevance involves the value of preserving heritage sites themselves. Do ancestral places on the landscape have special meaning? Do they deserve to be preserved and understood? Don’t all people have a right to a past that is known, preserved, and interpreted? How do we balance the needs of an expanding population with historic preservation goals?

SCA: Can you tell us about becoming the State’s first underwater archaeologist?

JWF: I loved my job and being the assistant to Fritz Riddell. In the 70’s and 80’s there was a growing capital outlay program in state parks with dozens of large acquisition and development projects across the state. Someone had to manage the cultural input, prepare and track the budget requests, and ensure necessary planning and mitigation measures were completed. Fritz turned to me with that assignment. I had taken two CRM classes at Arizona, and worked for NPS, so I was equipped to do it and knew the standards, but I wasn’t happy about having to be in office meetings most days. Fritz made me a deal. He challenged me to find a specialty that parks needed and didn’t have, and he would give me release time to contribute more directly to the overall program. I chose underwater archaeology and set out to become the state’s expert in that narrow field.

In 1979 I went to Scripps and completed my open water dive training and specialties in navigation, rescue and photography. Jim Stewart, a legendary SCUBA diving pioneer, was our instructor. It was great training and great fun. I joined the State Park Dive Team and the Diving Control Board. I took many other specialty courses to expand my technical knowledge and reached out to work with Jim Delgado, Jack Hunter, Sheli Smith, and others. Turns out that underwater archaeology is pretty much the same as terrestrial archaeology, but it requires you master diving skills so as to focus on doing the archaeology. Working with Jack Hunter and Sheli Smith, I learned helpful techniques for recording underwater sites and documenting them. We worked together recording gold-rush ships in the Sacramento River, stone anchors off Palos Verdes, a ditched F4-U Corsair at Crystal Cove, and a fleet of vernacular boats on the bottom of Emerald Bay. I worked with traditional Ahjumawi experts in documenting stone fish traps in Big

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Lake, Shasta County. I was the first state archaeologist certified to do and manage underwater archaeology in California. There were so few of us I occasionally was called upon to assist in other agencies with their projects. That took me to the Florida Keys to map shipwrecks for NOAA, to a remote beach in Baja California to help INAH document a Manila galleon, to a “schooner graveyard” near Candlestick Point to help NPS map old hulks, and to the ocean bottom at a depth of 800 feet in a mini-submarine, to map the wrecksite of a 400-foot oil tanker torpedoed by a Japanese submarine two weeks after Pearl Harbor. I have Fritz to thank for giving me the opportunity to contribute. At the time of my retirement, I’d logged over 600 dives.

SCA: What is it that you like most about doing archaeology underwater?

JWF: Underwater sites can be a bit different than their land counterparts. Shipwrecks represent a “snapshot in time.” They encompass whatever technology produced them and their cargo plus everything they have on board at the time of their loss. That is a single moment in time. There may be some slight contamination from later human activity, but it is minor. On land we like to encounter “sealed deposits’” which would be the terrestrial equivalent. The other attraction to underwater archaeology is the amazing preservation of cultural objects in a wet environment. Deep cultural deposits are often very well preserved. I had the opportunity to see this firsthand off the California coast, in the Florida Keys, and in the Dominican Republic.

SCA: Do you have any regrets as a park archaeologist?

JWF: Well, I do have a few regrets. When I look back on my 34-year career at California State Parks I feel we accomplished quite a bit. I worked in and eventually managed a very skilled team of folks who knew archaeology and historic preservation as well as the research techniques necessary to protect a wide range of sites, structures, and landscapes. We had a publication series that reported our findings, and a tremendous collection of historic California material culture in our State Archaeology Lab rescued from all time periods. We had great training, reached out to engage Tribes, universities and history organizations, and were leaders in professional history and archaeology activities and conferences.

But in spite of all we accomplished, we were unable to gain the internal recognition our cultural program deserved. Of the five core program areas in state parks (natural resources, cultural resources, interpretation, maintenance, and public safety), cultural is the weakest and least- supported program. Audits demonstrated that fact even though we were THE state’s heritage agency. Some districts simply ignored their heritage resource responsibilities. Our salaries were lower, our funding was more tenuous, and more support was always at the top of “List B.” Fritz tried his whole career to have cultural accepted as a primary responsibility within State Parks. I followed and moved the needle a little, but it’s still not where it should be.

SCA: You’ve carried out research in the Dominican Republic for many years. Can you summarize what attracts you to this landscape and its past?

JWF: I was an adjunct faculty member in anthropology at Indiana University for almost 20 years. I helped teach in their Caribbean Studies program, which was a combination of Underwater Science and Anthropology. I added the park preservation element, which was important to the

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Dominican government. In 1993 we undertook a research survey of Bahia Isabela on the north coast of the Dominican Republic in search of a Columbus-era shipwreck. La Isabela Historica was the first Spanish capital (1494) in the Americas. It’s a Dominican National Park and a proposed World Heritage Site. We discovered and retrieved some offshore artifacts of the right time period but could not hand-excavate through the compacted mud bottom to reach detected magnetic anomalies. There should be six or more shipwrecks deeply buried in those bay sediments. Someday, perhaps, those alien vessels that connected two worlds may be revealed by archaeology.

In 1995 we were recruited by Dominican authorities to help them investigate a limestone sinkhole deep within the tropical forest of Parque Nacionál de Cotubanamá. Park rangers had reported looters accessing the site and taking artifacts. This led to a three-year study of what proved to be the only known offertory site or cenote within the Greater Antilles. A land team surveyed Manantial de la Aleta while the underwater team explored this deep-water sinkhole. Our efforts were guided by Dominican government officials, Taíno heritage experts, and archaeologists. The President of the Dominican Republic assigned his helicopter to our project.

The underwater documentation recovered some 240 carefully selected artifacts that were beautifully preserved in anaerobic conditions at the bottom. Site depth ranged from 120 to 180 feet. Each object was plotted before recovery. Pottery, gourds, basketry, wooden objects, and stone tools were recovered. Tools, weapons, containers of wood, pottery and basketry, ceremonial objects and status markers were documented. Some are unique – never before seen or held in any museum in the world.

Interpreting the meaning of this offering site was aided by Taíno descriptions of their religion and spiritual beliefs over 500 years ago. Ramón Pané, a humble priest who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, wrote a summary of what he learned about the supernatural from Taíno people themselves in 1494-1498. His summary, “An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians,” is the first ethnographic documentation of a New World people. We believe the purpose of these offerings in this sacred geography was to venerate spirit ancestors who inhabit a Taíno watery underworld called Coaybay. This provided balance in the universe and the perpetuation of Taíno life. Radiocarbon dates span the 1000-1400 CE period, thought to be a time of emerging powerful chiefdoms among Taíno society. Our work has been published in a number of journals and book chapters. It has also helped today’s Taíno descendants reach a greater understanding of their fabulous ancestral culture – crushed but not eliminated by Spanish conquest. That kind of contribution, I would argue, makes archaeology relevant in today’s world.

SCA: Any final thoughts or advice for archaeologists today?

JWF: Archaeology is about human history and change over a vast time expanse. We are experiencing change in our discipline today as we struggle to find relevance in a rapidly changing world. I’m not equipped to issue brilliant remarks about the future but will offer a couple of tips my mentors gave to me years ago.

Your job as an “archaeologist” may not fully align with your interests or passion. Don’t despair. Find a way to pursue your passion. Be a leader. Find a research niche and make it your own. Be

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active in scholarly activities and conferences. Support SCA and your local or regional archaeology society. They are always looking for speakers and volunteers to lead members to cultural heritage areas. You’ll also find they often ask good, direct questions about archaeology. Be familiar with current research trends and participate if you can. Knowing heritage resources in other areas also helps lend perspective.

In today’s CRM work environment, research may seem out of reach. Remember, research takes many forms. It means pushing back against the unknown, even in small, incremental ways. That’s important to the future of our discipline, and to your sanity over a long career. Be mindful of descendant communities. Be inclusive. Learn from people who may have knowledge about their ancestral past. Make them partners in the effort to understand and wisely manage heritage sites.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More about John’s presentation:

Manantial de la Aleta is a flooded limestone sinkhole deep within the tropical forest
of Cotubanamá National Park in eastern Dominican Republic. Archaeological
investigations were requested by Dominican authorities in 1996 to determine the nature of the site and how to preserve it in a National Park. This led to a 3-year research effort by Indiana University, guided by Dominican experts, to document La Aleta as the first known offertory site in the Taíno culture area - a Taíno cenote. Underwater preservation conditions were extraordinary – allowing the recovery of select artifacts that normally don’t survive in tropical climates. These examples, some 600-1000 years old, reveal much about Taíno material culture and their offerings to sustain a watery underworld called “Coaybay.” This talk will examine the La Aleta artifacts and the sacred landscape they occupy. Taíno cultural observations recorded by Fray Ramón Pané in 1494-98, can help us understand the nature of votive activity in
an extraordinary archaeological context.

Note: No human remains were encountered during this study.

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