12/05/2022
Wow! This is cool.
Recently, the park’s archaeologist Ken Wild was going through some of the park's artifact collections. Unexpectedly, he came across a carved stone; a section of a Taino stone ball belt. The stone artifact was recovered in 1963 at Cinnamon Bay. He completed a 3D scan of the stone and defined the pattern carved into the rock (see upper left and upper right photo below).
The lower image is a photograph taken by Wild in 2013 of the stone collars on display at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Museum. These large stone collars were worn like a bandolier. What is most fascinating is just how these stone artifacts could have been carved from a single stone with such precision, that in some portions of the stone the diameter is only about an inch. According to Dr. Jeff Walker and Dr. Jose Oliver Stone collars such as these are extremely rare and are directly associated with the chieftains, or "caciques".
Almost always these stone collars are found in association with the ceremonial ball courts of the Taino, known as bateys. Therefore, finding a carved stone ball belt fragment at Cinnamon indicates a Taino ball court was present within the grounds of the Cinnamon Bay campsite.
Photos courtesy of NPS/ Ken Wild
