Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum announced earlier this summer that a joint Canadian-Cuban archaeological team has discovered the first almost perfectly preserved Taino house at an underwater site in Los Buchillones, Cuba.
According to the museum, the astonishing condition of the house, thought to be 400-700 years old, may be due to the natural preservatives in the clay sediments at the underwater site.
Complete remains of houses made of perishable materials are not commonplace in any archaeological context. Found be neath the sea-bed, the house consists of main posts, beams, rafters, roof timber and portions of the thatch along with fragments, food remains and a wooden dish.
"The preservation of this house is so good that some of the pieces almost appear as if they were made recently," reported Dr. David Pendergast, ROM's research team co-director. "It is one thing to see a wooden hook or a pin or even a clay dish preserved, but, I could not have predicted that our investigation of a group of posts would reveal an entire house still essentially intact."
The house, part of a Taino village site, was brought to the attention of the Cuban government and ROM when two local fishermen uncovered numerous wooden artifacts. The site is the largest known thus far in Cuba; it extends for at least a mile along coast. The Taino are the agricultural people who inhabited most of the Caribbean islands from approximately AD 500. Their occupation of Cuba and other islands continued until the Spanish arrived.
Previous discoveries in the Antilles have uncovered house remains although the findings have been limited to individual posts. The Canadian-Cuba team discovery provides a relatively complete picture of a Taino house which will help, again accord ing to Dr. Pendergast "to help elucidate other discoveries of Taino artifacts."
The Deep Dive Takes A Dive in Lake Erie's Dive Zone
For once there were volunteers ready to go down with the ship! And why not, a team of divers out of Leamington, Ontario had ideal shipwreck conditionscalm seas, warm water, excellent visibility and blue skiesas they created Lake Erie's newest scuba sites.
In the middle of August, the 38-foot steel-hulled cabin cruiser Deep Dive, was scuttled by a team of divers. The cruiser sank about two miles west of the tip of Point Pelee in Lake Erie within the boundaries of the ErieQuest Marine Heritage Area.
ErieQuest is a project supported by local government, dive boat operators and organisations like the Save Ontario Ship wrecks (SOS) which identifies and manages diveable wrecks in the Northwestern region of Lake Erie. To date, ErieQuest has marked 15 shipwrecks in the region.
According to newspaper reports the sinking of the Deep Diver will take pressure off the nearby wreck of the George Stone
a 283 foot steamer which went down 81 years ago. Last year 2,000 divers visited the ErieQuest Marine Heritage Area and the
Stone was the most sought after destination. With the creation of the Deep Diver wreck, visitors now have a site that they can
visit while waiting for a mooring over the Stone and groups looking for a second dive after the Stone now have something to visit
as well!