ArchaeologyandAnthropology Vol.20 No.1

ISSN 0256-4353
ARCHAEOLOGY AND
ANTHROPOLOGY
JOURNAL OF THE WALTER ROTH MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Volume 20 No. 1
Archaeology and Anthropology
Co- Editor
LOUISA DAGGERS, Amerindian Research Unit, Department of Language and Cultural
Studies, University of Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana; email: LouisaDaggers@gmail.com
Co-Editor
MARK G. PLEW, Department of Anthropology, 1910 University Drive, Boise State
University, Boise, ID 83725-1950; phone: 208-426-3444; email: mplew@boisestate.edu
Editorial Advisory Board

ARIE BOOMERT, Leiden University, Faculty of Anthropology
JANETTE BULKAN, Department of Forestry, University of British Columbia
GEORGE MENTORÉ, Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia
BASIL REID, Department of History, University of West Indies
STEPHEN ROSTAIN, Pantheon-Sorbonne University
Scope
Archaeology and Anthropology is a peer reviewed open access journal publishing articles,
reports and book reviews. Though the journal’s primary focus is the archaeology and
anthropology of Guyana—contributions relating to the Caribbean and Northern
Amazonian areas are welcomed. The journal is published once a year in November.
Contributions may be submitted at any time prior to May 1. The journal is published
cooperatively by the University of Guyana and the Department of Anthropology, Boise
State University as the journal of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology
Submissions
Articles should be submitted online to the Co-Editor at mplew@boisestate.edu. Upon
review and acceptance authors are required to electronically submit their manuscripts in
Microsoft Word. It is the responsibility of authors to insert illustrative materials and
tables into texts. Titles and headings should be formatted in Calibri, Bold, 12 pt. The body
of the text should be Cambria, 11 pt.
Style Sheet
Archaeology and Anthropology generally conforms to the style sheet of Plains Anthro-
pologist.
Back Issues
Back issues are handled by sending an email to anthropology@boisestate.edu or
downloading them electronically through http://anthropology.boisestate.edu/
archaeologyandanthropology/.
ARCHAEOLOGY AND
ANTHROPOLOGY
Journal of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology
Volume 20, Number 1 2016
CONTENTS
PREFACE
A History of Archaeology and Anthropology 1
Louisa Daggers and Mark G. Plew
ARTICLES
Rentier States in Guyana and Suriname and the Consequent Lack of a 2

Social Contract
Janette Bulkan
Caring/Killing, Writing/Reading, Presence and Absence 19
George Mentoré
Extractive Capitalism, and Amerindian Land and Labour: Fifty Years After 33
Independence
Christopher Carrico
REPORTS
Archaeological Survey of the Aishalton Petroglyph Complex South Rupununi 53
Guyana
Louisa Daggers, Gerard Pereira, Mintie Pitamber
The Archaeology of the Piraka Shell Mound 69
Mark G. Plew
A Note on the Forts of the Rupununi in Southern Guyana 83
Gerard Pereira
Copyright © 2016 Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport. All rights reserved. ISSN 0256-4353
Archaeology and Anthropology, journal of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, is published cooperatively
by the University of Guyana and the Department of Anthropology, Boise State University.
Cover Photo: Photograph of Guyana’s 50th anniversary of independence logo.
ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 20 No. 1, 1 1
PREFACE
A History of Archaeology and Anthropology
LOUISA DAGGERS and MARK G. PLEW

Co-Editors
Founded in 1974 by the late Dr. Denis Williams, the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology
was officially opened to the public in February of 1982 by visiting anthropologists from
Puerto Rico. The museum houses invaluable archaeological and ethnographic collections.
Ethnographic holdings include a significant collection of Wai-Wai materials. Archaeologically,
the museum maintains a collection of Archaic period stone axes and implements from Guyana
and the Caribbean acquired by Sir Everard Im Thurn between 1879 and 1882, and extensive
ceramic collections made by Walter Roth in 1930 and by his son Vincent Roth in the 1950s.
The collection also contains burial artifacts recovered by J.J. Quelch in 1894 as well as a
collection of pottery from Joanna Creek in the Corentyne River area collected by Arthur
Goodland in 1964. Since the mid-1990s archaeological materials from the Rupununi
savannahs, the shell mounds of the Northwest, and the ridged-fields of the Berbice country
have added to the collections—these resulting from investigations of the Museum’s
participation in the Denis Williams Archaeological Field School program jointly conducted
with the University of Guyana and Boise State University.
The Museum’s journal Archaeology and Anthropology was launched in 1978 by Denis
Williams who served as its editor until his death in 1998. The journal is uniquely positioned
as the only English journal of its kind in South America and reports on scholarly research
conducted within the Guianas, southern Caribbean, and northern Amazonian areas. Jennifer
Wishart served as Editor of the journal between 1997 and 2015. In 2009 the journal was
revised and launched as an online peer-reviewed bi-annual publication with an international
editorial advisory board. In 2016 a decision was reached to make the journal an open-access
publication to be launched in 2017 as single year issue published by the Walter Roth Museum
of Anthropology in collaboration with the University of Guyana and Boise State University.
This December 2016 issue commemorates Guyana’s 50th Independence Anniversary, and
features a series of scholarly archaeological and anthropological papers by Guyanese and
nonresident researchers.
ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 20 No. 1, 2-18 2
ARTICLE
Rentier States in Guyana and Suriname and the

Consequent Lack of a Social Contract
JANETTE BULKAN
University of British Columbia
Abstract
Successive coastland-dominated governments in independent Guyana have retained both
rentier control of resource extractive activities located on State-claimed public lands and the
colonial tradition of absentee holders of State-issued concession licences to logging and
mining. The colonial pattern persists of concentrated control of mining licences by a small
number of persons who then rent access to evergreen concessions. Transnational logging
companies concentrate on the intensive extraction of a few key timber species for export as
unprocessed logs, leading to localized commercial extinction of iconic timbers. The State’s
failure to capture an equitable share of the economic rent from resource extractive industries
is evident in transfer pricing and the scale of illicit financial flows. The legal communal titles
held to some of their ancestral lands by about three-quarters of indigenous villages are
circumscribed by public access to all rivers and roads. Indigenous rights in State forests are
also ignored in practice by the quasi-corporate forestry and mining commissions
(government agencies). The centralized government control, combined with superficial and
ineffective parliamentary scrutiny, help to explain the lack of a unifying national narrative or
social contract. Rentier practices can be reformed by decentralized governance structures,
transparent allocation and civil society involvement in monitoring of concession licences and
equitable benefit sharing.
KEYWORDS: Guyana, Suriname, Rentier Practices, Indigenous Land Rights, Governance,

Transfer Pricing, Species Extinction
Introduction
Fifty years after independence in Guyana and 40 years after independence in Suriname, there
remain striking fault lines in each country. The lack of a common national narrative is evident
first among the majority settler populations on the coastland and then, just as strikingly,
Rentier Societies in Guyana and Suriname and the Consequent Lack of a Social Contract 3
between coastland populations on the one hand and hinterland populations on the other.
There is no shortage of nationalist rhetoric; but rhetoric is cheap and undermined by ethnic
political parties. So why the gap between the aspirations for nationhood and some shared
purpose for nation building? Why the persistent reality of plural societies co-existing side by
side, peering at each other from behind veils of distrust?
In this article I explore the consequences of the retention and transferral of plantation-
style land management from coastal plantations to the State-claimed and State-managed
hinterland forests. I suggest that one explanation for our lack of organic development lies in
the State structure or architecture, which resembles that of classic rentier societies. That
structure, in turn, explains the persistence of a small monied/propertied class closely allied to
the government of the day, never mind the stated ideology of the ruling political party or
coalition.
There is a well-established line of theorizing on the Guiana Nation States that speaks to
the long shadow of colonial plantation monopoly, oligopoly, State oligarchy and so on,
established on the concentration of assets (rent) in a few hands (DaCosta 2007; Khemraj
2015). I am interested in the persistence and consequences of the extension of the rentier
model from the coastland to the hinterland.
At independence the Executive arm of government inherited the role of rentier, with
consequent authority over the allocation of State assets (with little input or oversight from
the Legislative arm of government, never mind from communities with customary rights).
The influence of colonial history on the trajectory of forest politics persisted. Gentlemen
colonists did not labour, hence the historical pattern of absentee landlords of sugar
plantations on the coast, and a failure to put in place a land settlement policy and process for
interior peoples and interior forests, as had been customary almost everywhere else in the
British Empire (Bulkan 2016).
The ‘absentee landlording’ of State property would also persist: ‘evergreen’ (or
automatically renewed) concession licences in logging and mining allow the second level of
rentiers to extract rent from tributors in mining or to assume management control of forest
concession licences and log trading (Bulkan 2014).
The consequence was alienated labour in the Marxist sense—in forestry and mining:
hinterland communities and workers with limited rights to customary territories or in the
forest and mining concession licence areas in which they labour. Authority is either far away
or embodied in the private armies of mining concession holders or corrupt mining and
forestry wardens, rangers, and guards (Bulkan and Palmer 2016). The existing systems of
participatory democracy are pretty much limited to voting in national elections every four or
five years. It is scarcely surprising then that the colonial approach of viewing hinterland
territories as spaces primarily of natural resources extraction persists within these
independent nation states.
The sobering reality is that one cannot build a society, a common narrative, under such a
structure, or develop a shared attachment to the forested landscape of the Guiana Shield. I
begin with a definition of a rentier society and then provide some research findings from my
own long-term work on governance and corruption in forestry.
Classic Definition of ‘Rentier Society’

In classical economic theory, rent was first applied to agricultural land and understood as any
surplus left over after all the costs of production had been met. Rent was the sum paid to the
owner of the land for use of its natural resources. Thomas Malthus described rent as “that
BULKAN 4
portion of the value of the whole produce which remains to the owner of the land” and “the
sole fund which is capable of supporting the taxes of the State” (Malthus 1815).
David Ricardo developed the concept of differential rent: “Mines, as well as land, generally
pay rent to their owners and this rent … is the effect and never the cause of the high value of
their produce” (Ricardo 1817). In other words, an astute owner would pay close attention to
the marketplace and seek to extract a commensurate proportion of the selling price for
himself or herself.
Concentration of Power/Control
The theorists Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, who focused their analysis on petroleum-
rich economies and societies, defined the concept of a "rentier economy" as one in which rent
plays a major role, and in which that rent is external to the economy (Beblawi and Luciani
1987). In the colonial period rent was extracted from colonies for the Mother Country. Since
independence what rent is extracted from the hinterland has little backward or forward
linkages with the local economies. When applying the analysis of Beblawi and Luciani to
Guyana and Suriname, the parallels are striking: first, rent situations predominate in the
hinterland resource extractive sectors. Second, the origin of that rent is external to the coast
where the majority of people reside. Third, the concentration of concession licences and/or
management control is in a few hands. This is true in the case of Guyana; I do not have
equivalent information on Suriname. Fourth, the government is the principal recipient of the
external rent in the economy.
The ‘rentier’ is the legal owner of the natural resource. In many, but not all, petroleum-
rich countries, that rentier is the Nation State. In parallel, the rentier in colonies like British
Guiana and Dutch Guiana was the Colonial State. The independent governments in turn
inherited both sovereignty and property. They inherited the authority to set the terms of and
assign concession licences over State territory and natural resources. In the case of Suriname,
large-scale logging concessions—any concession over 250,000 ha—have to be authorized by
Parliament. In Guyana, it is the Executive branch only that retains that authority to award and
to rescind a State-issued concession.
The rentier—the governments of the Guiana Shield countries—might be expected to try
to capture an equitable proportion of the final market value of the non-renewable and
renewable (note that Guiana Shield trees are not renewable in a human lifetime) extracted
natural resources; AND to transparently allocate those earnings [rent] for net public benefit
at large and for the specific benefit of the hinterland communities in whose territories those
resources were/are extracted. The high-value resources of gold, petroleum (in the case of
Suriname) and of the Shield’s dark, hard, heavy timbers would allow more options for savvy
owners (i.e. the governments) compared with the usual constraints of high-weight low-value
forest crops.
Transfer Pricing and Illicit Financial Flows

Instead the evidence from both Guyana and Suriname is of the lion’s share of rent accruing to
the large-scale, long-term rentees. I summarize later some details on transfer pricing in the
log trade. In gold mining, conservative estimates are that perhaps 60% of all gold mined in
Guyana is not declared (Stabroek News 2016). In short national wealth is not captured for
national benefit.
Corroboration about customs fraud is in the report on ‘Illicit financial flows from
developing countries: 2003-2012’ from the Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (Kar
and Spanjers 2014). These flows are estimated for Guyana at US$ 84 million in 2003 rising
almost continuously to US$ 440 million in 2012. Around half of the illicit flows (US$ 1464
million for 2003-2012) are attributed to export under-invoicing.
We might well ask: why does an authoritarian but financially inefficient colonial model
persist? Why is it that decision-making is concentrated in the Executive arm of government
and why is it too often influenced by entrenched powerful interests? How did this state of
affairs come about?
I suggest the answers include our refusal to learn the lessons of history, to reform our
authoritarian government structures and let in the disinfecting sunlight of transparency and
participatory democracy.
Open Door
Guiana was infamously described as a prospective rape victim in Walter Ralegh’s account of
his exploration of the Guiana coastal region published in 1596:
“Guiana is a country that hath yet her maidenhead, never sacked, turned, nor wrought;
the face of the earth hath not been torn, nor the virtue and salt of the soil spent by
manurance. The graves have not been opened for gold, the mines not broken with
sledges, nor their images pulled down out of their temples. It hath never been entered
by any army of strength, and never conquered or possessed by any Christian
prince” (Ralegh 1928).
Both pirates and joint stock companies in the early 17th century served as proxies in the
service of European sovereigns who challenged the claimed Iberian hegemony over New
World territories. As happened depressingly in all the colonial encounters, the few early
treaties of alliance and friendship with Indigenous Nations were succeeded by European
assertions of sovereignty over AND ownership of territory.
Terra Nullius and Land Rationing
The property rights of their Indigenous hosts were ignored and the territory treated as terra
nullius.
‘Terra nullius has two different meanings, usually conflated. It means both a country
without a sovereign recognized by European authorities and a territory where nobody
owns any land at all, where no tenure of any sort existed. "In things properly no one’s,"
Grotius observed, "two things are occupable, the lordship and the
ownership"’ (Reynolds 1996, p. 12).
The rentier colonial governments set about extracting rent through land grants to
European immigrants for agricultural plantations based on the alluvial coastal soils. By the
late 18th century, there was a sizable percentage of absentee English plantation owners in the
British Guiana colonies, their affairs tended by Scottish overseers. This small elite in most
cases became a second level of rentiers, below the Crown. British colonial policies relating to
the forested hinterland were largely shaped by the plantocracy, resulting in a pattern of elite
domination over the developing forestry, mining, and ranching industries, but does not
capture a legitimate portion of economic rent. Active measures, including Crown Lands
regulations, were instituted to prevent the establishment of freed African communities in the
interior, to restrict access to licences to Crown Lands, and to tax gold mining heavily.
BULKAN 6
The British continued the Dutch practice of issuing grants on request, mentioning the
location (river/creek), the products to be exploited, the duration and the taxes to be paid,
including royalty. Harvesting of timber and other forest products was controlled during the
1700s–late 1800s through grants and leases with few obligations other than payment of
nominal royalties. This practice ignored pre-existing Amerindian land rights.
The Crown Lands regulations from the 1860s were designed to prevent the freed Africans
from acquiring grants themselves and restricted their role to serving as a reserve pool of
labour on the coastlands. As the historian Brian Moore explained, the planters ‘fear[ing] a
drain of local labour resources and increased wages’ used their control over the colony’s
budget to effectively prevent the ex-slaves from obtaining licences to settle in the hinterland.
‘A few hundred [free Africans] did opt to squat along the rivers in the hinterland, but they
were ferreted out by the superintendents of rivers and creeks. Furthermore, the price of
Crown lands was progressively raised to prevent the Creoles [ex-slaves] from settling or
working in the interior. Set in 1839 at $4.80 per acre for a minimum parcel of 100 acres, it
was raised to $10 per acre in 1861’ (Moore 2009, p. 142).
The colonial licences to cut wood or occupy Crown lands both ‘included a restriction on a
sub-division or sub-letting of the licensee’s interest except with the special permission of the
Governor’ (Ramsahoye 1966, p. 126), further constraining any independent role in the
hinterland industries for the colony’s working class. The 1909 Handbook of British Guiana
confirmed that ‘the area of tracts sold outright is ordinarily limited to from 25 to 100
acres’ (Bayley 1909, p. 245-6), confirming that land prices remained out of reach of the
majority of the colony’s population.
For the former African slaves, the hinterland held out a promise of riches and
independence from coastal oppressions. But the majority were permitted to work only as
hired labourers of elite grant holders in logging, ‘balata bleeding’ or gold- and diamond-
prospecting ventures. ‘If lucky, they could earn decent sums of money from these
occupations. But they were relatively few and the physical dangers were very great’ (Moore
2009, p. 147).
The influence of the planter class in the colonial Combined Court extended to their
blinkered approach to the Forest Department (FD from 1908), which was relegated to
research, and without influence over the large-scale loggers who disdained or ignored
research findings. The pattern of a small percentage of large-scale loggers benefiting
disproportionately from the State’s concessions without commensurate returns to the
economy has persisted. The rentier pre-disposition extended to the practice of timber grants
held in the name of an absentee grant holder but worked by Amerindians, African and mixed
Guyanese ‘sprinters’ (Bulkan and Palmer 2009).
Post-Independence
So, have post-Independence governments reversed inequitable policies and worked to build
a social contract premised on benefits from State-owned assets for the greatest good of the
greatest number? Successive post-Independence governments did not dismantle the system
that favoured the small but monied large-scale loggers, who relied on the ignorance and lack
of interest in forests of coastal-dominated governments to protect their own dominance. The
post-independence governments have largely used their exclusive rentier control over State
forests and State lands not for the greater public good but as plums to be awarded to crony
capitalists, initially Guyanese, and after the advent of the Structural Adjustment Program in
1989, to Asian loggers (Colchester 1997; Sizer 1996).
How Can There be a Common Vision or Narrative that Unites the

Coastland and Hinterland Peoples when Renier Practices
Predominate?
The hinterland is where the natural resources extractive activities are located—on mostly
State-controlled territory. Out of 21 million hectares (Mha) of total national territory, about 85
per cent (or 17.8 Mha) are declared publicly owned lands administered by the Government
(Guyana Forestry Commission and Indufor 2013, p. 13). The majority of those lands are
forested and a large part is under indigenous customary claims, about 43 per cent of Guyana
(Government of Guyana 1969). Consequently, the government of the day is automatically the
rentier of logging, mining, ranching, petroleum, etc. licences. Government decisions relating to
State (public) forests have direct impacts on the 80,000 Amerindians who are the majority
populations of the forested hinterland and on the trashed interior rivers and forests that are
the sites where logging, like gold mining, is treated as a non-renewable resource.
I now consider the relationship between the majority Creole/settler and the minority
Indigenous and Tribal peoples. How did the post-Independence governments respond to the
too-long-delayed but increasingly normative recognition of Native Title—the inherent
proprietary right of Indigenous Peoples to their customary lands, which are territories that
were under continued use and occupation by particular indigenous groups long before
European contact.
In the case of Guyana, a commitment to settle Amerindian land rights was expressly set
out in the 1965 Independence Agreement. The government set up the Amerindian Lands
Commission which travelled extensively from 1967-1969. The Amerindian Act of 1951 was
amended in 1976 to grant Amerindian Village Lands title to 64 named villages, totalling 4,500
square miles/1.165 Mha. Excluded were the Upper Mazaruni, Upper Essequibo, and Matthews
Ridge (because these areas were considered as security buffer zones in the sensitive border
regions and rich in mineral resources). 1.165 Mha was only about 1/5th of what the Amerindian
Lands Commission had recommended in 1969.
Note, there was no admission of Native Title until 2007 when both Guyana and Suriname
endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)
(United Nations Declaration 2008). The Preamble of Guyana’s revised 2003 Constitution
states: ‘We, the Guyanese people … value the special place in our nation of the Indigenous
Peoples and recognise their right as citizens to land and security’ (Government of Guyana
2003). While successive governments proudly assert that now some 16% of Guyana’s territory
is under legal communal title, that title is limited in key aspects.
Land Rights Under the Amerindian Act
An Amerindian community holding a communal resource title under part VI of the Amerindian
Act (cap. 29:01 of 2006) can restrict access by outsiders except persons ‘conducting official
business for the Government or who is acting under the authority of any written law or is
otherwise lawfully authorised’ (section 8). A communally titled Village may have its refusal to
consent to large-scale mining of Village lands negated if ‘the Minister with responsibility for
mining and the Minister [for Amerindian Affairs] declare that the mining activities are in the
public interest’ (section 50 (1)). As in other similar sections in the Laws of Guyana, there are
no public criteria for what is ‘in the public interest.’
BULKAN 8
The Minister is charged with investigating Amerindian claims and is allowed

administrative discretion to approve or reject the claim, but with no guidelines on reaching a
decision. Communities dissatisfied with the Ministerial response are allowed to appeal to the
High Court. The only such challenge is stagnating in the High Court since 1998, a claim under
the 1972 State Lands Act through which the land titles have been issued.
All sub-surface minerals and all water resources and a twenty-meter width of river bank
are all retained under government control; they cannot be included in communally titled
Amerindian Village Lands (AVLs) but the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) can
award mining concessions for the river bank between the boundary of an AVL and the water,
as well as for the river itself. Since earliest colonial times the justification for retaining State
control of the riverbank was/is to allow free passage along river and riverbanks. The
Governments of Guyana have seen no anomaly in allowing missile mining to destroy a river
bank while prohibiting Amerindian communal ownership of the stretches of river running
through their traditional lands.
In contrast, Amerindians cannot restrict use of public roads that run through their
territory by outsiders—loggers, miners, trappers of animals and birds for the pet trade, wild
meat hunters, and fishermen.
Forests Act
Amerindian land rights have been recognized in statute law in various forms and with various
degrees of consistency under British colonial and post-independence governments since
1838. What of the revised Forests Act? The Forests Act of 2009 appears to restrict
Amerindian rights of access to and usufruct in State Forests to ‘spiritual relationship’. Note
the usual obscure language in the Forests Act 2009, section 5 (2) (e) –
‘A person may, in relation to a State forest, exercise or perform any right, power, duty,
or privilege – (e) held by any Amerindian Village or Community under sustainable
none [non] commercial practices immediately before the commencement of this Act, if
the right, power, duty, or privilege (as the case may be) is exercised or performed
sustainably in accordance with the spiritual relationship of the group with the land.’
This appears to allow the non-commercial (domestic) harvest of any forest product from
State Forest, maintaining the Amerindian right as from 1838. This obscurely worded section
has not been tested in court. Indeed, none of the Forests Act of 2009 has been tested in court
because the GFC never takes anyone to court for fear of open cross-examination of its many
dubious and illegal practices. This obscure wording replaces the saving of expansive
Amerindian rights in Section 37 of the Forests Act 1953/1997 –
‘Nothing in this Act shall be construed to prejudice, alter or affect any right or privilege
heretofore legally possessed, exercised or enjoyed by any Amerindian in Guyana:
provided that the Minister from time to time by publication in the Gazette may make
regulations to him seeming meet defining the privileges and rights to be enjoyed by
Amerindians in relation to State forests.’
No Minister has made any such regulations.
Amerindian Act and Mining Act

Although not backed by primary or secondary law, the Government of Guyana has greatly
complicated the issue of communal land title. The REDD+ Governance Development Plan
(June 2011) under the Norway-Guyana MoU (November 2009) sets out the complex
procedure in section 2.21 in relation to the GRIF-funded Amerindian Land Titling (ALT)
project. The procedure splits the communal land titling into the issue of an absolute grant
and certificate of title followed by survey and demarcation. Although Regulation 19 of the
State Lands Act allows for land titling without demarcation if boundaries are creeks or other
well-defined limits (as is usually the case for Amerindian traditional territories), the
government has insisted on survey and demarcation by accredited survey teams.
Consequently, the ALT project is slow and expensive, and appears to be almost always
unnecessary (because of the natural boundaries) unless a community feels that official
demarcation provides some defence against incursion by miners. The tenure does not take
effect until the demarcation has been completed.
The Mining Ordinance No. 1 of 1903 safeguarded Amerindian privileges on all Crown
lands: ‘All land occupied or used by the Aboriginal Indians, and all land necessary for the quiet
enjoyment by the Aboriginal Indians of any Indian Settlement, shall be deemed to be lawfully
occupied by them’ (section 173), repeated in the Mining Regulations of 1905 (section 199).
However, section 200 of the 1905 Regulations denied their right to the mineral resources of
the land. The ‘right to quiet enjoyment’ provision has been passed down through revisions
of mining law to the current Mining Act 1989.1 However, the Guyana Geology and Mines
Commission (GGMC), miners, Amerindians, and the judiciary almost wholly ignore this
provision.
Until the titling process is complete, the community lands may be overlaid by easily
acquired and cheaply renewed mining licences. These licences are forms of property and
interest in commercial law. While mining concessions can be laid over Amerindian
customary lands that are going through the tenure process, the Amerindian Act prevents
such concession-covered land from being included in the Amerindian Village Lands title.
Thus cheap mining concessions may endlessly delay the conclusion of Amerindian land
titling, in contradiction to the government’s legal obligation outstanding from the
Independence Agreement of 1965.
A question that should be considered: if mining concessions are a form of property,
surely Amerindian usufruct rights from 1838 onwards are also a form of property? Why
should the mining concession rights be privileged over Amerindian property rights in the
land titling process?
Independent governments were not slow to realize the power and authority that
accrued from control over the issuing of natural resources and other licences. Since 1966 in
Guyana and 1975 in Suriname, there has been limited devolution or decentralization of State
power. In the case of Guyana, the accrued rent was not routinely transferred to the
‘Consolidated’ Fund which is the national exchequer, as required by law. Instead, rent was
treated as available for discretionary spending by individual agencies as authorized by the
Executive arm of Government, in spite of the lack of clear legal authorization (Bulkan and
Palmer 2014).
One image that recurs when I work on issues related to rentier practices in Guyana is
that of the locked desk drawer of a Conservator of Forests during the Burnham era. I was
born into and grew up in a logging and sawmilling family on my mother’s side. I heard that
the only record of the names of persons who held government-issued forest concessions –
details of area, duration of lease, good standing or not in relation to payment of area and
royalty fees – was in the locked top drawer of the COF. By 1992 we in Guyana assumed that
authoritarian secretive government was history. We live in a world of sophisticated
computer processing systems that can deliver information across multiple platforms in real
time. In Guyana, between 2010 and 2015, over US $500,000 of Norwegian donor funding
was spent every year on a claimed top-notch MRVS system that mapped every square inch –
‘wall to wall’ – of Guyana’s territory. A great deal of that money went to foreign consultants
BULKAN 10
and second salaries and emoluments for top government officials. The much-trumpeted
results are pretty much irrelevant – but that is a talk for another occasion. What remains true
is that in spite of Excel spreadsheets and data crossing the globe in real time, only the COF has
the information on who has management authority of the individual forest concession areas
in his locked top drawer. The same is true for mining and land leases. In essentials, not much
has changed.
What’s the Evidence for a Rentier Economy in the Forestry Sector?

I have documented both in scholarly articles and in over 200 letters and articles in the
national press in the last decade the evidence of the concentration of the best-stocked forests
in a relatively few hands. The successive governments, as rentier, have not negotiated an
equitable share of rent for national benefit. Why? I would suggest crony capitalism and poor
governance. The in-coming Asian companies, sensing the race to the bottom, wrote their own
secret FDI contracts. Predictably, there are no performance clauses, no penalties for not
fulfilling any of the vague promises of downstream processing. The ‘rent’ extracted has been
negligible: declining numbers of unskilled jobs, sub-contracting of jobs to Asian contractors,
and a free hand to engage in selective logging and log trading of Guyana’s and Suriname’s
iconic timber species.
Five points are critical to note: first, the rentees of large-scale concessions are all Asian
loggers, holders of large concessions of their own, under secret FDI agreements; second, as
rentiers the Asian loggers bank harvesting rights to more and more lands since the State
allows it informally even though most are not meeting their Annual Allowable Cut; third,
‘rents’ payable to the concession holders are a negligible cost compared with the value of the
logs exported; fourth, the only penalty, if any, which accrues to the rentee when the
concession holders are in arrears for area fees or royalties is a temporary halt in the handing
over of timber tags (interview with manager of concession rentier, 2006); and fifth, the newly
acquired concessions can be and are high-graded for the prime timber logs much in demand
in India and China, and which are exported at the lowest export prices worldwide for
comparable species, with no due diligence measures put in place by regulatory agencies in
Guyana.
By 2014 a few Asian companies had gained legal control over at least 80 per cent of large-
scale forestry concessions, and illegally acquired ‘management authority’ over the majority of
remaining concessions. The Asian forestland grabs have also secured for the grabbers a low-
cost source of logs for processing in Asian factories, an outlet for surplus Chinese labour and a
tangible good that can be converted into financial capital.
The Guyana Forestry Commission has a casual approach to logging. Contrary to the
stipulations of the National Forest Policy (Guyana Forestry Commission 1997, 2011) and the
Code of Practice for Timber Harvesting (Guyana Forestry Commission 2002, 2014), it does
not impose species-specific limits per coupe area. In spite of Guyana having over one
thousand species of trees (ter Steege 2000), logging and log trading have concentrated on a
very small number of hard, heavy, impact- and decay-resistant timbers which are preferred
for civil and marine construction. The preferred commercial timbers, the iconic greenheart
(Chlorocardium rodiei) and purpleheart (Peltogyne venosa), grow typically in clumps—locally
called ‘reefs’—on well-defined combinations of slope, soil texture, and soil colour. This
clumping or clustering facilitates cut-and-run logging, leading to localized and then
generalized commercial extinction of commercially preferred species.
Figure 1 shows the selective overharvesting of four tree species. For the years 2012-
2014, the GFC’s Forest Sector Information Report (FSIR) confirms this concentration. In
2012, the top three species for log production were greenheart, wamara (Swartzia
leiocalycina) and purpleheart (Peltogyne venosa) and the top ten species accounted for 76%
of total log production (GFC 2012:30). In 2013, the top class 1 timber was wamara, with no
information provided about greenheart or purpleheart. In the last published FSIR, for
January-June 2014, wamara and greenheart were the top two timbers and purpleheart was
fifth in log production (GFC 2014b:23).
The figures show two marked trends: first, the trend of forest degradation is evident in
the rise and fall in exports of commercially desirable timbers. Guyana’s iconic species—
greenheart (Chlorocardium), purpleheart (Peltogyne venosa), darina (Hymenolobium flavum)
and more recently, wamara (Swartzia leiocalycina) (and itikiboroballi)—are overharvested,
and are extinct or approaching commercial extinction in accessible forests. The ratio of their
log volumes to total log volumes far exceeds the ratio of the volumes of the standing trees in
the forest to total forest volume. Secondly, these four species together comprised more than
50% of total log exports in all but one year (2004), and more than two-thirds of all log
exports between 2007 and 2010.
Fig. 1. Guyana, production totals of 4 timber species and all logs, 2000-2015 (Source GFC data).
Enmeshing Small-Scale Loggers in the Rentier Web of Deceit

Asian loggers have also enmeshed Small Loggers Associations (SLA) and Amerindian Village
Lands in their rentier schemes, negotiating exclusive access for the purpose of logging. With
these agreements, the loggers log seamlessly across concessions or Amerindian lands
without paying attention to boundary lines. The log traders make use of Article 241 in the
Customs Act (Cap. 82:01) that allows a broker to present documents on behalf of a client. The
log traders—generally citizens of China or India—pay in cash for the logs delivered to the
roadside or to an address in Georgetown. The amount paid is about a quarter of the CIF sale
price of the logs landed in China (Bulkan 2012). The traders also pay a token fee of around
US $2 per Removal Permit to make use of the name of the SFP holder or agricultural
leaseholder for passing the documents through the GFC and the Customs and Trade
Administration of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA). This practice is illegal since the
BULKAN 12
Forests Act makes no provision for the use of brokers to manage documents in this way, to
obtain timber grading or export certificates. In addition, it is an offence against section 158 of
the Customs Act to make a false declaration of ownership. As the logs had been sold for cash
to the log trader/broker, the use of the original owner’s name on the GFC and Customs
documents is illegal. The GFC colludes in these practices, maintaining the fiction that, ‘Many
community organisations are also now export [sic] forest products to international markets
and have expressed plans to expand in this regard’ (Guyana Forestry Commission 2012:23).
It’s difficult to explain the indifference of citizens and successive governments to capturing the
economic rent for national benefit. Governments of other nation states have overseen the
liquidation of nature’s bounty and built secondary processing industries (e.g. Malaysia) or
invested in sovereign wealth funds (e.g. Norway).
In our case, at one level I wonder whether it is the indifference of coastlanders
accustomed to a treeless environment? The implications of forest degradation through
selective logging do not resonate. It appears as if a model of the State as rentier to large
concession holders has grown normative. ‘The trees grow back, don’t they?’ is one reaction.
‘Pristine forests’ is another. The citizens—in the hinterland or coastland—who might long for
a different model, one built on forest resilience and good forest management, have no organic
links to the decision makers. There is thus no social contract in the making.
In the forestry sector, it is the log traders who capture the rent. The remarkably large
difference between the declared FOB prices for logs exported from Guyana compared with the
declared CIF prices for the same or similar timbers landed in China and India is conventionally
a signal of transfer pricing. This practice involves incorrect customs declarations and indicates
collusion by the GFC and the Guyana Revenue Authority. In addition, taxes for our excellent
timbers are notably much less than for equivalent timbers in Malaysia (Palmer and Bulkan
2007).
Some Consequences of the Rentier State
Politics
One of the striking peculiarities of Guyana follows from the dominance of its two large ethnic
political parties, each annealing over time into anti-democratic and authoritarian moulds. In
2006, the governing PPP/C and the principal Opposition party, the PNC-R, that generally
never collaborated in or outside of the National Assembly, agreed on a constitutional
amendment that removed the choice by an MP to ‘cross the floor’ or to vote independently on
any issue. The ‘MP Recall Bill’ formalized the practice of MPs explicitly serving at the pleasure
of the Party Leader, thereby reducing the legislative arm of government to a farce. The two
principal parties are still locked into fighting the battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and each
places a premium on loyalty, not on merit or country. That loyalty generally correlates with
ethnicity. MPs do not represent geographic constituencies so the old system of patronage
flourishes instead of direct representation.
Society
A rentier government benefits from the 1980 national constitution that confers on the
executive president unusual powers to make appointments to the top offices of the judiciary
and civil service. There is little civil service autonomy or independence or parliamentary
scrutiny, leading to a government service that is particularly inefficient. In practice ideas do

not move between levels of government, creating an effect akin to oil and water. In the
forestry and mining sectors, the small stratum in control at the top may have better paper
qualifications but do not build on or use the institutional memory that is held by lower-level
forest and mining wardens and guards, much less the indigenous and non-indigenous
communities in whose backyard mining and logging take place. Each level operates its own
hustles and shakedowns. The barrier created by this entrenched distrust is further cemented
by the past administration’s propensity to fire lower-level guards and wardens for petty
corruption while covering over and protecting the larger malfeasances at the top. The actions
of the judiciary are even more discriminatory against small crimes while never bringing
commensurate court actions against top drug lords and white-collar criminals. A World Bank
2001 “survey of 454 public officials in Guyana, whose views were sought on a wide range of
civil service issues… respondents believed … that recruitment is not always based on merit. …
Decision-making is, however, characterized by poor communication and employee
participation” (Gokcekus 2001, p. vii).
The practice of officials being appointed through civil service competition was replaced by
Executive decision-making and contractors. The overall effect is a low premium put on merit
and an unusual premium on party loyalty, more recently army buddies. Government
negotiators also made and continue to make themselves vulnerable to suspicions of bribery
on account of their failure to make use of existing guidelines on multinational companies (for
example OECD 2011) and FDI (OECD 2002). The open door to bribery coupled with the long
tradition of rentier behaviour mean that criminal and semi-criminal modes of operation easily
segue into becoming the dominant mode of business. The ‘State as a vehicle for criminal
enterprise’ (Thomas 2003) persists on account of the failure of constitutional government in
Guyana. There is no effective accountability to Parliament, no prosecution of major law
breaking by the judiciary, nor clamour by the beaten-down civil society for change.
Economy
The almost unique durability of the dark and heavy hardwoods of the Guiana Shield have been
recognized since the latter decades of the 18th century. These timbers are not easily processed
with older technologies and the durable woods, Greenheart (Chlorocardium rodiei) in Guyana
and Basralokus (Dicorynia guianensis) in Suriname in particular were used locally as framing
timbers in civil construction and exported for marine construction, consistently from the
1880s. The improvements in wood processing technology, incorporating modern cutting
steels in the late 20th century, have made processing of these timbers feasible. The Chinese
wood processing plants that have invested in this technology are able to capture the economic
value derived from Guyana’s heavy hardwoods. The hardwoods of the Guiana Shield are being
turned both into high-end furniture and heavy-duty flooring, the latter much in demand for
containers used in the seagoing trade. Guyana’s failure to notice and then develop a marketing
strategy for its unique timbers—derogatorily branded by the GFC as ‘lesser used species’—
repeats the lack of marketing evident in Guyana’s other major export products—‘cargo’ rice
sold to Europe for animal feed, and in the case of sugar, Guyana failing even to protect the
appelation controlee (geographic provenance) of its eponymous Demerara sugar.
BULKAN 14
Transfer Pricing
The scale of transfer pricing by rentier loggers and log traders has repeatedly been pointed
out in the independent press and repeatedly ignored by the GFC. The price range for exported
wamara logs was reported as being between US $200 and 220 per cubic meter during January
to March 2015 (FPDMC Market Export Report, April 2015, 10). However the CIF import price
for wamara logs into China was US $760 per cubic meter, as reported in the Tropical Timber
Market Report of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) (19 (11) 1-15 June
2015). This difference of US $500 per cubic meter provides another indication of the scale of
Customs fraud.
So, what might be some pointers for reversing this dismal state of affairs?
Reform of Practices:
● Publish all the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) agreements.
● Institute the disinfecting quality of transparency in award of contracts—all
contracts and the holders of management authority to be fully visible; details on
roll-overs; indebtedness; jobs created; foreign workers employed and for how
long.
● There should be no private trading of public assets.
● Non-performance should lead to rescission of concession licences and re-
advertisement and auction of rights.
● Performance should be measured in the field—post-harvest silvicultural
assessments, not by minimum royalty payments.
● Security deposit by large-scale long-term concession holders should be index-
linked, not the perennial debts.
Reform of Tax Distribution

● Percentages of the rent should be returned to the regions from which the wealth
accrued.
Dismantling the Rentier State and Building a Social Contract
Concessions (TSAs) originally awarded in 1985 should have been closed in 2000 for the eight
15-year concessions. Other logging concessions vary in length from 14 to 50 years (Demerara
Timbers Ltd, 1991-2042). Most of them should have been closed on expiry, or more properly
several years earlier because of repeated failure to comply with the conditions of the GFC
harvest licence and for persistent debts. Given that Guyana has among the lowest annual
forest rents (acreage fees) and timber royalties in the world for tropical hardwood timbers,
this state of affairs is a national disgrace, allowing Asian loggers and log traders to generate
super-profits on a huge scale.
In short, these valuable rights of access to public forest assets (State forests) are being
given away by the GFC for almost nothing, without proper advertising or checking of
credentials or imposition of security deposit or performance bond. The continued
indebtedness to the Government of Guyana by the loggers shows the ineptitude and
incompetence of the GFC as managers of public assets. These are failures to carry out the legal
mandate and to implement the paper procedures. The sense of immunity from scrutiny and
responsibility, confirmed to date by the lack of prosecutions of wrong doing, explain the
uncontrolled pillage of public assets.
In the absence of State enforcement of the law, the top level of rentier will continue with
the following four actions in order to maximise their profits and lessen their obligations in
relation to the rented State forests:
1. Obtain public and insider information about upcoming allocations of State
forests in order to mount an effective bid at auction which matches government
requirements, secure the greatest licence area of State forests, shorten the
period for legal compliance as much as possible, minimize legal obligations and
minimize the premium to be offered.
2. Develop and manipulate a database of reliable rentees (contractors) who
will absorb and address the licence conditions passed down from government,
deliver the agreed goods and/or services to the rentier alone, and maintain good
relations with the government field officers.
3. Pass down to the rentee as many of the legal obligations as possible without
such transfer being an illegal transfer of interest.
4. Engage a variety of rentees with different skills so that the inability of a
logger to understand timber markets is countered by arranging for marketing to
be undertaken by a contract marketer, to maximize market opportunities and
prices.
The rentier traditions are so deeply entrenched that they will not disappear soon. What
might the government do to secure the greatest net social benefit from a rentier approach to
natural resources management? I suggest the following eight actions.
1. Develop the National Strategic Allocation Plan for forests, a requirement of
the National Forest Policy.
2. Apply a resource allocation system to maximize competition between
eligible rentiers and so secure, through competitive transparent auction of
resource licences, conformity to national policies and compliance with resource
management obligations as well as a premium bid on top of the floor price for a
licence.
3. Ensure that the rentier is wholly responsible legally for delivery of the
outputs (goods and/or services) from the rented State forests in accordance
with the terms of the licence and associated obligations such as implementation
of a long-term forest management plan, implementation of an annual
operational plan, compliance with national laws and regulation and obligatory
codes of conduct including environmental management plans and permits,
prompt and full payment of all forest charges such as taxes and penalties.
4. Prevent the rentier from shedding responsibilities or transferring legal
interests in the licenced resource.
5. Ensure that penalties for non-compliance with the terms of the resource
licence are proportionate to the economic, environmental, and social damage
caused by the non-compliance and are sufficiently severe as to be deterrent.
6. Provide cross-agency coordination so that co-benefits such as hinterland
roads constructed for forest management are to national standards and are
usable by other stakeholders under fair terms for damage prevention and
maintenance (for example, by gold miners and wildlife hunters).
7. Implement integrated national land use planning so that wastage of forest
by superficial hydraulic mining is minimized by spatial and temporal
BULKAN 16
coordination between miners and loggers.

Verify that the rentier undertakes or organizes the social aspects of hinterland
development such as rural health, education and skills training; conforms to health and safety
requirements; pays corporate and income taxes, social charges such as worker insurance and
pension, etc.
External Support, e.g. EITI; EU-FLEGT

There remains a single external source which has the potential to push Guyana to implement
its claimed sustainable forest management (SFM). In 2012, as one of the commitments under
the Norway-Guyana MoU of 2009, Guyana agreed to develop a voluntary partnership
agreement (VPA) under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT)
action plan (EFI FLEGT TEAM n.d.). A key component of the VPA is the legality verification
system (LVS), whose functioning would be checked by EU-appointed auditors. In the six VPAs
concluded to date, and the nine countries in negotiation, the EU has been careful not to dictate
the precise components of the LVS, as these should depend on the appropriate national laws,
regulations, and administrative procedures. At the same time, the EU technical staff have
pointed out that the EU Parliament, which must approve VPAs, is keen to see evidence of
strong commitments to good forest governance in the VPAs. This could be one effective
channel for stimulating genuine improvements in the forest sector of Guyana and dismantling
the rentier State.
Acknowledgment
The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, provided
fieldwork support for Janette Bulkan during 2013.
Footnote
1 ‘All land occupied or used by the Amerindian communities and all land necessary for the quiet
enjoyment by the Amerindians of any Amerindian settlement, shall be deemed to be lawfully
occupied by them’ (Cap 65:01 Mining Act 1989, section 111).
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ARTICLE
Caring/Killing, Writing/Reading, Presence and

Absence
GEORGE MENTORÉ
University of Virginia
Abstract
I plea for an anthropology engaged with producing a more bearable world in which to live. It
is a call for a poetics of care. Drawing attention to the modernist contradiction between
eradicating acts of illicit killing and the actual practice of violence, my underlying presumption
is that not everywhere and at all times do “suffering” and “dying” hold the same meanings and
the same felt experiences. To take account of such differences has to be a priority for an
empathic anthropology, and the place to begin is with the powerful effects culture has upon
our experiential understanding. Arguing that an ethic of killing infiltrates the process of
modern literacy, I point directly to the cultural limit within our very own act of writing.
KEYWORDS: “Death,” Writing, Doubling, Anthropology
Introduction
This essay introduces a core set of ideas I have been working on for a larger research project
on empathy. Here I make an initial plea not only for an anthropology concerned with gaining
more understanding about the world, but also one actively engaged with producing a more
bearable world in which to live. It is a call for a poetics of care rather than of violence and
slaughter. It attempts to draw attention to the modernist contradiction between the ideal of
eradicating acts of illicit killing and the actual practice of state and masculine violence. My
underlying assumption, throughout, is that while we might all agree that such experiences
identified as “suffering” and “dying” may indeed be human universals, not everywhere and at
all times will they hold the same meanings and perhaps, in the end, not even be the same felt
experiences. Taking account of these differences has to be, for me, a priority for an empathic
anthropology, and the place to begin, I believe, is with us and the powerful effects culture has
upon our limits of experiential understanding.
MENTORÉ 20
I begin with the concept of a cultural limit within the very act of writing, highlighting that
for us in the West, despite all desires to the contrary, our memory, thought, and experience can
only take place in the presencing of culture and only by Being. I reenter an old debate (perhaps
familiar to many but not to all) about the death of the author. My reasons for doing so have to
do with revealing how much the ethic of killing infiltrates the process of modern literacy. I ask
why it has become important to this debate that the kind of presence which the life of writing
inscribes produces its unity as the written work. The answer provided entangles the author
function in the process of transformation which, if it does not justify, then at least seemingly
necessitates the very act of killing. I then turn to the central problematic for anthropology, as
well as for all of us who live within the Western culture of literacy: how to deal with the
essential nature of ends—of death itself. All thought on this topic, I argue, becomes deviously
suspicious because of the deep dilemma in any literary act of having to use the very same
weapons—of language and representation—as those being attacked. Given the postulate of
culture-as-text and following through on the idea of a transformative killing which takes place
between writing and reading, I theorize that the so-called anthropological “reading” of the
other must then similarly “kill” the “written” by the other.
Using one particular example of textual artifact and relying heavily upon Heideggerian
theory, I present my case for doubling and its mimetic force gained from human contrivance. I
posit that within its contextual literary acts, anthropology produces a series of doublings, for
example, between its writing and reading, and again between its writing and its targeted
objective of the other. I claim doubling accomplishes the mimetic and confirms a precedence
and difference precisely because similarity and difference to the original occur in the copy. The
essay concludes that, as with all attempts to know the other, even for anthropology, the
doubling process necessitates a nearness of the other as an unavoidable absence. Thus, as the
practiced literary life of anthropology inaugurates, it also resists; it inaugurates to the center
the textual Western self while at the same time resists any direct narration by the other of its
experiential life. The question remains, therefore, of how to know any “thing” which we cannot
encounter directly?
The Plea of a Pacifist1

What have we done recently in anthropology to make not just the world more understandable,
but a world more bearable in which to live? In posing this question, I am not seeking to
disparage the venerable pursuits of the discipline or even to repeat the accusation that it is in
perpetual “crisis” (Ahmed 1991; Grimshaw and Hart 1996). I am also not looking to place all
blame on historical “structural changes in the intellectual community, ” on “expansion of the
universities,” on “intellectuals … been absorbed into the state,” or even on the increase and
centralization of the mass media into corporate organizations (Wilcken 1994:8). Rather I am
attempting to draw attention to the huge contradiction between the intellectual ventures of
the discipline and their effects not only for achieving an understanding but also a concern for
otherness that would not require a hurting or killing.
I could go further and ask what has any formal intellectual pursuit of the academy done in
the past century to persuade ourselves and others, even momentarily, to reflect upon such
concern for otherness, and from such reflections be able to eliminate, for example, the various
forms of large and small-scale cruelties? Such, clearly, may not be the kinds of questions
academicians ask themselves, their colleagues, or their research. I ask them here simply
because of the pride I once felt in reading:
Let us say that social anthropology apprehends these facts, either in their most distant
manifestations, or from the angle of their most general expression. From this latter point
of view, anthropology can do nothing useful without collaborating closely with the
particular social sciences; but these, for their part, would not know how to aspire to
generality were it not for the co-operation of anthropology, which alone is capable of
bringing them the accounts and the inventories which it seeks to render complete (Lévi-
Strauss [1967] 1974:17-18).
Leave aside for a moment an obvious objection to the above-mentioned “collaboration” with
the “social sciences”—potentially a fervent protest, asserted controversially because of a more
preferential partnership with the humanities. We could gently mention also (not yet making
any commotion, that is) about the pomposity of a statement which claims that anthropology
“alone” has the capability of delivering complete accounts. It would be more humble, honest,
and certainly more accurate, to say that only together with their native collaborators can
anthropologists actually provide any delivery of descriptive generalities.
Even beyond the academy, however, what would it take any general intellectual curiosity
not only to move towards but also to arrive at solutions for the uncontaminated relief of
sadness, pain, and hate? More and more, it seems, we should now be talking about the
outbursts of joy rather than sadness. We should be wishing for the rediscovery of old words or
the creating of new terms to construct innovative sentences that turn melancholy into laughter
and impending doom into the pleasures of life. Let us talk about the poetry of care rather than
the prose of slaughter. From such discourse, perhaps we might effectively seduce violence off
from center stage, out of the theater of modern-day politics, and into the abyss of the
forgotten.
Here let us speak not about the moral base of a desire driven by a belief in either a market
principle or an innate natural tendency. Having invented and handed out the possibility of the
existence of an autonomous individual difference, as well as the promise of both a discourse
on and a representing of such difference, modern political economies have proceeded to
devalue, humiliate, and keep at bay all those differences that they consider rationally and/or
ethically reprehensible. To contemplate the mean-spiritedness of this process we have merely
to consider the many devious ways current rational economics succeeds in morally justifying
the making of monetary gain by impudently foregrounding such justifications.2
It is no longer a question about a quest that begins because of the apparition of a lack,
demanding fulfillment. It is not about an inquiry driven by a pursuit for what is missing. It is
not even about an idea motivated by a sense of an incompleteness that longs for perfectibility.
No. It is about already knowing and experiencing an intense passion, joy, and laughter that
closes out all else but the object of such knowledge and experience. In this kind of achieved
existence perhaps, the actions of hate, unhappiness, and killing may not only have no
consciousness to live in, but also no intentional object to dislike, to be sad about, or to kill.
Is this being overly romantic? Is it perhaps even exposing an anthropological idealism and
naïvete, that is, a limp pacifism that refuses to accept the hard truth about an inevitable human
condition and destiny? After all, is not this “hard truth” well known (or at least thought to be
so), that dreadful degradations, agonies, and deaths regularly take place in the so-called
primitive communities historically identified as the object of study for anthropology? Is this
not ultimately one of the principal reasons why we (claiming to live in “civilization”) call them
“savage?” May be, but surely, for pacifists and peace seekers alike, it can no longer be sufficient
simply to live in a world that aspires to an ideal. Our world institutes the legality of that ideal
by eradicating the act of illicit killing from the cultural space of civil society, only to continuing
killing and humiliating under the disguise of a more humane or just form of dealing out death.
Obviously part of the forceful upkeep of such “civilized” ideals seems to stem from thinking
and believing that suffering and dying must be universal experiences and that, as such, they
must hold the same meaning universally. It also appears that merely possessing an ideal does
22
MENTORÉ
not involuntarily secure a sense of truth for that ideal, but requires the additional
implementation of a power capable of transforming the ideal into practice.
In many nation-states today, the fact that the large majority of citizens do not kill or,
indeed, do not have the right to do so, has not removed the recurring and escalating use of
lethal force. Having juridically and politically insisted that the use of deadly force be
appropriated from and denied to its civilian population—but of course passing on to its own
agents the authority to use such force—modern polities often act swiftly and with righteous
indignation when any of its citizens illegitimately take back the use of the force to kill. One
could argue that, like all bodily-constituted energies, the potential for the exercise of violence
lives within every individual member of all social collectivities. Moreover, the contemporary
cultural work of knowing and mastering this energy has been famously referred to as “the
political technology of the body” (Foucault 1979:26) and, indeed, even as an aspect of an
“intellectual bricolage” (Levi-Strauss ([1962]1974:17). Yet this “diffuse technology” or
“heterogeneous repertoire” of the modern expression of violence appears to have outstripped
even the world-out-there that we have called “nature.”
From nuclear power to the outrageous popular fantasies of the cinema, the knowledge and
command of violence no longer take their lead (if they ever did) from the natural world. In
modernity, they coerce the world to mimic the contents of the collective imagination. We
operate, particularly in Euro-American collectivities, as though we must never again be
surprised, never again be caught off guard by the horrors of another European holocaust. It is
implicitly assumed that such shock to our ethical and emotional life can be avoided by over
stimulating the human imagination with representations of the effects of a violence that are
beyond the pale and often even in the realm of fantasy.3 Yet the irony remains: we must also
never forget and must always keep on the edge of our consciousness, the deep and irrevocable
“certainty” that such power of violence truly exists and possesses the capacity for producing
its devastating effects. Without this “faith” in the power to kill with physical force, the political
authority of the modern state could not sustain its credibility.
In my own small enclave of influence over those whom confess to not knowing (much less
ever experiencing) any alternative possibility for acting more humanely, I have often sought to
introduce to them the knowledge of an actual community comprised of people who proclaim
no “will to power,” or perhaps better still “no will to genocide.” When presenting traditional
Amerindian philosophies to my interested Euro-American companions, I do so assuming
(rightly or wrongly) that, when it comes to the practice of violence, they believe and act on
their believes, at least in part, because they have no confident knowledge for supporting any
other theory of power than that which privileges the possession of physical force. Agreeing in
turn with my own Marxist teachers on the crucial defining role played by any ability to control
access to power, I have come to understand why it is that almost all the classic definitions of
power have primarily focused on its possession, in other words, “of power as a property.”
Nevertheless, I have to say, that like others before me, I have found it somewhat unrewarding
not to be additionally informed about why it is that some particular forms of possessed power
have been privileged over others so as to become the source of an access worth controlling.
Very few of us since Structuralism have hardly been convinced by the essentialist explanations
for human needs and action. Indeed many of us consider it one of the finer contributions to
anthropology from Structuralism and Structural Marxism that they placed primary emphasis
upon the production of meaning rather than on the causal material determinants of social
formation. From such theoretical approaches we have come to appreciate more, I think, why it
is that certain resources become crucial players in the power relations between social
categories. The problem for me however—and the one I relay before my skeptical enclave—
does not have to do with the possession of power as a property or, indeed, with power
possessed as an object of exchange and control. Rather, it has to do with the very desire to use
power, indeed what has already been regarded as significant in the “regime of truth” (Foucault
1984:74), that is, the greater importance not of possession but of the “exercise of power” (ibid
1979:26).
It has been historically argued for us who live within the Western tradition that the body
serves as the principal substantive means for exercising power. It usually follows from such an
argument, however, that the very placement of the human soul or subject brings corporeality
into existence with its own conspicuous presence of desire. The modern forms of knowledge
and power we work with have contrived to make it known that the seat of individual desire
and the very source of human intentionality are confined to the various attributes of the
autonomous self. The effects of Enlightenment epistemologies and tactics of contemporary
power concentrate on these attributes of the self not only to create the truth of the existence of
individual will, but also to bring about a wider and deeper control over its sentient and
energy-producing body.
In my attempt here, therefore, to wrap my thoughts around an anthropological
presentment of a more sympathetic secular care for other people through a greater
understanding of their socialities, it is towards this partnership between knowledge of the
desiring self and its embodied power that I turn. I do so, believing that a particular kind of
knowledge about being human forcefully occupies the intellectual space between caring and
killing. In my idealism and obvious over-ambition to find ways to disarticulate our use of
violence from power, I have found myself left merely with the experience of a comparative
anthropology and what living with peoples diverse in their placement of the self and its
relation to power and the body have taught me.
The Writing and the Killing

When here I write, I wish to think (following, as best I can, Barthes 1977 essay on the topic)
that I do so with the thoughts and memories I know of now. My writing does not script
thoughts I might know of in the morrow: the ones that will allow for a return to a past in order
to find the present. Nor does it script that which I knew of yesterday, so as to find the future
once again. As such, to forget the present so as to find the past, to forget the past so as to find
the future, and to forget the future so as to find the present “is always conjugated in the
present” (Auge 2004:57). All forgetting and remembering, constitutive of thought and
memory, must seemingly take place in time and being, as well as within the limits of language/
culture (Heidegger 1972). When inflected in the present of my writing and of my dominant
language community, however, my thoughts and memories will unavoidably lead to my
“death” as a writer (Barthes 1977:148).
Seminal debates on this topic have argued that, particularly when it is transformed into the
read object of the text, the life of writing always points to the death of the writer (ibid). The
writer obviously comes into being in the act of writing, that is, within the symbolic and
performative functions of narrating the world (ibid:142). In fact the reader does the same in
the act of reading, but in specific conjugation with the written. Thus in the reading, the object
of the written may be considered to be the “killing” of the writer (ibid:148). Yet as long as
writing remains (in the process of conjugating memories and thoughts), the writer continues
to be present. What appears to have been important for the whole debate, however, has been
the kind of presence the life of writing inscribes, that is, the kind which produces its unity as
the written work. Why is this so? Well, in the very object of “the work,” in the making and
remaking of the writer, unity provides the opportunity for impregnating the space of the
reader. The life of writing gives birth to the reader and the reading kills the writer. This
MENTORÉ 24
indeed seems to be one reason why some debaters have troubled themselves with drawing a
careful distinction between the use of the term “author” and that of “writer” when referring to
the presence of the absence of the latter. The author function appears to bring into being a
presence wholly transformed, wholly remade by the act of killing. Death serves life as the
necessary means of rebirth. Already believing the truth about its anticipated death, writing
lives its life as destiny (Malraux [1953] 1978).
Yes, writing has to end, but meanwhile, it lives in the present capable not only of an
inevitable destiny, but also of a range of possible significations in the rendering of its own
death. Anticipating that in the very act of presencing, its death will occur with the birth of the
reader, writing arms itself with all the possibilities of threat and resistance. Thus does its
“dangerous” and “transgressive properties” appear as life enabled to resist the “indivisible and
decisive” event of destiny and to do so indeed, as life lived with “multiplied and differentiated”
deaths (Deleuze 2006; but see also Foucault 1993). Distinctively, the representations of these
latter kinds of When entering into the “literary act,” writing defies, impedes, and suspends
death. But in bringing the writer into the discursive function of “author (and the work),” it is in
part the communicative enticement of language which enables death to lure the writer
whenever writing becomes a text and is read. This bringing into language of the writer—as a
culturally constructed social being—draws upon specific, historically available meanings
while, at the same time, making known (if not completely understood) the various openings to
(or “play” of) other contingent possibilities by signification. Admittedly this central
problematic of availability and openings to contingent possibilities has drawn the most
interest in recent debates on identity making (Butler 1999; Foucault 1980; Spivak 1994). For
with such a problematic, all thought about the essential nature of the end, of death itself,
becomes if not vulnerable then surely deviously suspicious. The deep dilemma for any literary
act, therefore, particularly for one which understands itself to be anthropological—struggling,
as it must, not only with but also against language and representation—is that its only
available weapons remain those of language and representation.
Clearly the life of writing cannot win such a struggle. When engaged against language and
representation, while using no more than language and representation: for whom would the
victory be achieved? Such a question frequently brings nothing but disappointment;
particularly when thinking of the literary act as having drawn its weapons to allow for the
emergence of those thoroughly Western concerns of self-presence and/or the unity of thought.
Even when this is not the case and it is instead an attempt ostensibly to represent the Other in
text, the life of writing can either provide the conviction of subterfuge, the disappointment of
stratagem, or simply the contentment of knowing the limits of its capabilities. As it exists
currently in the discipline, however, the literary act of anthropology continues to give life to its
strategic social science identity: charged as it is with the task of “documenting” and “analyzing”
otherness—particularly that of the so-called “primitive” other. This may be why, in
considering the anthropological within the context of its life as writing and reading, we should
perhaps be thinking of it just as much in terms of power as of metaphysics.
It resists. It transgresses. It produces a twining between its writing and reading. A
doubling, to be sure, wherein the likenesses between the two seem shaped by the similarities
operative in their use of language and representation as well as in their acts of resistance. Thus
considered within its contextual literary act of a doubling, the anthropological can be said to
succumb to an inevitable siblicide. Against the presumed indivisible and decisive event of its
destiny, anthropology works constantly to write and rewrite, read and reread the world: in
other words, like all well-interpreted ritualized activities, it lives, it dies, and it is again reborn.
But, in doing so, a strategic additional doubling occurs, one that takes place not only at the
level of the twining between the writing and reading of its textually documented
representations, but also at that of the twining between its targeted objective of the other and
the act of writing. In this specificity of its process, its writing can be thought of as a kind of
“reading” and, logically, that of which it “reads” in the other, as a kind of “writing.” It generates
thus a perspective about an agential other, a causative subject, intentionally engaged in
narrating the world. It is a view which permits an interpretation of the other producing
representations of the world as if these functioned like text, or as if they acted just like text in
their communicative capacity of signs (Geertz 1973; Levi-Strauss [1962]1974; Turner 1977).
Given this postulate of culture-as-text or of objectified sign, and following through on the idea
of a transformative killing which takes place in the siblinghood between writing and reading,
the so-called “reading” of the other by anthropology must then similarly “kill” the “written” by
the other. Apprehended by the read/writing of anthropology, that which has been “written” by
the other dies, but then, with strenuous proclamation, it is given new life in the literary act of
anthropology. Said to be reborn again in anthropological text, the written by the other
presumably succumbs not only to the power of language but also to the particular literary
genre of anthropology. By the strategic maneuver of creating new life for the other in its text
and, consequently, sustaining its own life as a particular genre of writing about the other,
anthropology successfully exercises the power to make truth claims about its own identity.
Conceptually and conscientiously it projects onto the other what it interprets to be the
representations produced by the other (that is, the “text” which the other presumably
produces for itself). It then proceeds to believe in this its own “invention” (Wagner 1975) of a
text-producing-other; not as something it has made, but as something which, because of the
distance in-between them, can be beheld as independently produced. Having convinced itself
that it has not produced what it has indeed produced, anthropology now can, of course, also
believe in the truth of its own ability actually to destroy what it has invented: a necessary
death, one required for the rebirth of new life. But because it kills only what it has produced
out of its own imaginings, even this, its power to kill, becomes a product of its own invention.
It believes its inventions to be real. It also believes that what its inventions produce are real. It
has to believe, because, without such belief, it could not continue to be creatively productive in
what it does as an authoritative member of its social science community.
These rather disquieting examples of its possibilities to resist and to transgress, indeed, of
its threatening and dangerous life lived as death multiplied and differentiated, may be said to
stem ostensibly from an apprehending of its initiatory force. Within such statements,
anthropological writing may be thought to become “dangerous and anguishing” precisely
because “it is … inaugural” (Derrida 1978:11). What does it then mean for its danger and
anguish to seem so essential to its particular character of writing? Concomitantly, how does
the inaugural bring to writing its particular dangers and anguish?
The answer to the first question could well be the hopelessness of any attempt to erase the
presence of Being from death itself—even in the literary act of writing. Thus the strikingly
Western understanding which claims that “[a]s the shrine of Nothing, death harbors within
itself the presencing of Being. As the shrine of Nothing, death is the shelter of
Being” (Heidegger 2001:176). For us, life does not continue into death, hence death becomes
the space/time where/when nothing exists. In this capacity, death serves as the memorial of
nothingness. But because nothingness and absence do not amount to the same thing, the
service of death to Being turns out to be one of sanctuary. Hence the presence of Being
continues to be protected inside of death. The very processes of danger and anguish fill,
therefore, the life of writing as it simultaneously inaugurates a certain kind of death as
nothingness and Being as presence.
The answer to the second question (how does the inaugural bring to writing its dangers
and anguish) may be found in the actual processes of the becoming. The inaugural delivers
MENTORÉ 26
danger and anguish exactly where expectations linger, expectations for the life of writing to be
already possessed of an objectified independence and, hence, in no need of fabrication. With
any apprehending of the life of writing as made (as opposed to being predetermined), the
potentials for danger and anguish open up. The life of writing inaugurates its danger and
anguish on occasions when such a detainment of writing occurs—not as a represented object,
that is, “as the self-supporting independence of something independent” (Heidegger
2001:164), but rather as a standing vessel in the “process of setting, of setting forth, namely,
by producing” (ibid:165). A certain kind of reflexivity becomes possible (but see Weiner
2001:10). A roaming threat of “defacement,” of disfigurement (but not of erasure) grows to be
feasible (Taussig 1999). Consciousness of the very act of making makes the presence of a re-
making possible and, hence, that of a different kind of Being. And yet, because of the constant
concealment of its presence, Being itself can never be effaced. The argument has been that we
humans cannot arrive at the presence of Being directly through the objectivity of the object.
As with the presence of Being, so too with the life of writing, both remain in the sanctuary of
what we understand to be oblivion.
Incidentally, given its anticipatory existence, what might be an example of the actual death
of anthropology? The question is not meant to interrogate the imagined prospective death
which stands forth before each writing, haunting the writer with an extinction that can be
stayed only through a vitalization achieved by killing the other. Rather, it seeks to identify the
appearance of another end, one sought not in the immediacy of the literary act, but in the long-
term of the collective work. What might this end actually look like? Well perhaps a successful
end—seemingly always desired but never fulfilled by practicing anthropologists—could be
that instance when the anthropological no longer has a professional site in which to continue
its existence and, instead, is located in every and any literary act about the other. In other
words, when anthropology becomes the property of a generalized literary act about the other,
it will be finished, done, and capable only of a rebirth in constant normative ponderings about
each and every engagement with the other. But maybe we should not be voicing here an
opinion about a desire belonging to anthropology when in fact it is one belonging solely to
individual anthropologists in pursuit of their own interests for the discipline. An additional
critique here could then be that while anthropology has over the years taken possession of the
gateways and hallways to the knowledge it produces, the actual content of such knowledge
may not strictly speaking be the exclusive property of the professional anthropologist. Indeed,
much of this content might already be located outside of the anthropological parameters of
knowledge, inside of what some now call “local knowledge.”
What anthropology has historically cordoned off for itself, in its knowledge of the other, it
may not now be able to give unconditionally to any populace other than its own. It was once
the curious hobby of Victorian travelers and private intellectuals, but now has pretty much
become the paid enterprise of a mostly academic profession. Personal prestige, social status,
and the market place today appear to govern, predominately, its production of knowledge. In
this context, its authors may be said to see their death not as the demise of writing in the
reader, but rather as the obvious loss of pay, of wages culled by opponents in an aggressively
competitive market place. Death in such a scenario would amount to a once provided service,
being no longer the means of a salaried career. No longer produced and distributed by
specialists, but in fact the property of everyone, imagine such a process of knowledge as the
bases for the establishment of greater tolerance and the normative practice of conflict
avoidance.
The Textual Artifact

“Plate 1,” in Metaphysical Community: the Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect, is not, as the
author claims, “a photograph of field notes typed by Patricia Kent in 1975” (Urban 1996:2),
but rather the mass-produced graphic image of the original photograph copied for print in the
1996 edition of the book. In fact, Plate 1 cannot even confirm that its image records the actual
moment when Patricia Kent typed her notes, because what it copies—the photograph—could
well have been taken any time after the notes were typed and anytime before the image came
to print. So the “textual artifact” or the “empirical object” being discussed cannot be the
photograph and, also, it cannot be the original typed notes. In other words, neither the
photograph nor the typed notes have, as empirical objects, moved through time and space to
be present in the book being read in the now. What the reader perceives, in the now-being-
read, presences an absence of the original and, at the same time, grounds the very truth of
origins—in this case, the factuality of the authentically creative moment which the writing
brings into effect and, even perhaps, the reality of that which the writing records. By enabling
the represented aspects of the original to manifest in the copy, the copy manages to mimic the
original as well as to confirm the precedence and hence the difference of the original to the
copy. To accomplish this, however, a doubling needs to have taken place in the copy between
its similarity and difference to the original.
This doubling permits the subterfuge of the counterfeit, but it also implicitly guarantees
the copy an effective force. Perceiving the inauthentic only occurs at the moment when the
original exposes its lack of autonomy. When it no longer can offer itself as self-sufficient and,
indeed, betrays the presence of the non-identical, the original deprives its imposter of any
further concealment. Yet in such disclosures of the inauthentic, that which disqualifies the
copy from being identical to the original also brings to the fore an authenticity for the copy
which it actually shares with the original.
Successfully to repeat the original, in exactitude, exemplifies the power of the copy to
mimic. This force has to have been applied for perception to be convinced by the imitative. The
force of mimesis works in the copy to disguise it well enough to be convincing as the original.
The original and the successful copy (while it avoids recognition as a duplicate) have had to
have been judged as authentic in the same way because, at the moment of judgment,
perception perceived them both as possessing the same credentials for being real. It could be
argued, therefore, that what in the doubling allows the copy its mimetic force is in fact that
which it already shares with the original, and, that is, its obvious capacity for being humanly
made.
It seems that regardless of how hard we try to bring the other near (for example, through
our current case of the textual artifact); its nearness still remains absent. We could certainly
agree with the view (as some have for modern technology in general) that literacy,
photography, and the print press have enabled a conquest of distance between self and other.
Yet we still continue to be “unsettled” and “terrified” by “the way in which everything
presences … the nearness of things [as] absent” (Heidegger 2001:164). “What about nearness?
How can we come to know its nature? Nearness, it seems, cannot be encountered directly. We
succeed in reaching it rather by attending to what is near” (ibid). And, we usually call that
which are near to us “things.” “But what is a thing?” (ibid). In addressing this last question and
demonstrating its relevance to our case in point, let us take a rather odd kind of liberty with
what is now perhaps a famous quotation:
[Language] is a thing. What is [language]? We say: a vessel, something of the kind
that holds something else within it. … As a vessel [language] is something self-
sustained, something that stands on its own. This standing on its own characterizes …
MENTORÉ 28
[language] as something that is self-supporting, or independent. As the self-supporting

independence of something independent … [language] differs from an object. An
independent, self- supporting thing may become an object if we place it before us,
whether in immediate perception or by bringing it to mind in a recollective re-
presentation. However, the thingly character of the thing does not consist in its being a
represented object, nor can it be defined in any way in terms of the objectness, the over
-againstness, of the object.
[Language] remains a vessel whether we represent it in our minds or not. As a
vessel … [language] stands on its own as self-supporting. But what does it mean to say
that the container stands on its own? Does the vessel’s self-support alone define
[language] as a thing? Clearly [language] stands as a vessel only because it has been
brought to a stand. This happened during, and happens by means of, a process of
setting, of setting forth, namely, by producing [language]. … When we take [language]
as a made vessel, then surely we are apprehending it—so it seems—as a thing and
never as a mere object (ibid:164-165).
So perhaps now we may be able to gather more clearly and cogently the overall strategy our
ethnographer seeks to operate and the specific project he aims at with his focus upon the
textual artifact. To think of language not so much in terms of its objectification, but rather in
terms of its “thingly character,” apprehended as a self-supporting “vessel,” could serve to
provide equal recognition for both the sensible and the intelligible, but in such a way as to
return to Empiricism its once lost and highly disavowed academic legitimacy. In giving to
language a thingly character and allowing it the ability to transport not only meaning but also
experience, a remarkable facility has been attributed to it. Thus understood as noumena and
phenomena, language offers direct commerce and even interconvertability between sensibility
and intelligibility. But, in addition, it also presumes to make possible the defeat of the inability
to encounter directly the nearness of the other. By presencing nearness in itself as a thing,
language can presume defeat of the distance between self and other.
The original notes were part of an ethnographic encounter, situated within space
and time. As I examine them today, nearly two decades later and more than four
thousand miles removed, I recognize them as part of a present empirical world, and
also as my link by an invisible thread to a remote and forgotten corner of the planet, to
a world gone by, the notes‟ still faintly musty and smoky smell rekindling old sensory
experiences (Urban 1996:2-3).
Whose time and space? Whose understanding of time and space? If we work with the
obvious clues that they are the understandings of time and space which belong to the
ethnographer, and not those belonging to the people whom he had encountered, then the
original notes and what they document exist inside the specific realities of the ethnographer.
In the “here-and-now” of his remembering, when the process takes place of his perceiving of
the empirical presence of the original notes, the additional presence of an absence stimulates
his senses and delivers to them the experience of the past. A particular kind of passing of time
and traversing of space has been deployed to produce the present absence of the past. The
faint musty and smoky smells which the original notes have retained assist in the processes of
perceiving, remembering, and experiencing. At the moment our ethnographer recognizes the
notes “as part of a present empirical world” he experiences them as an original object. But
when he additionally perceives them as his “link by an invisible thread to a remote and
forgotten corner of the planet, to a world gone by,” it could be argued, that he then experiences
them as the copy of the original left behind in a past time and distant place, but which now he
remembers and experiences in the present. The doubling of the textual artifact has brought
the present and the past to the fore of his imagination, but only through and by means of an
immediate relation between the textual artifact and his conscious perception, memory, and
embodied experience. Note, however, how this immediate relation is referred to as an
“invisible thread.”
To remember is … to thrust deeply into the horizon of the past and take apart step by step the
interlocked perspectives until the experiences which it epitomizes are as if relived in the temporal
setting (Merleau-Ponty 1962:22).
It is the “as if relived” which serves here to be instructive for an anthropology of
intersubjectivity and empathy. For if an earnest tolerance can be entreated for the idea that
imagining or make-believe can take place in the memory of the perceiver and that this
stimulus makes possible the relived experience in the past—which the taken apart interlocked
perspectives epitomize as the experience—then it seems possible to move on and argue for
such past experience (when memorialized in the present) to be a represented “thing.” Of
course, this is the kind of “thing” or “thingly character” which provides imagining with its
made capacity to be a self-supported vessel for the past experience. To understand, therefore,
that even the imaginings of anthropology must be subjected to an assemblage, that is, to
procedures of inventive production, allows the discipline to be judged in terms of the very
same criteria it applies to all forms of sociality. It can no more extricate itself from its own
specific histories and cultures than any other form of human productive expression. And, of
course, what also become apparent with such understandings—secreted in its folds of
representation—will be its various concealed yet unavoidable proclamations on truth and
power. Simultaneously stated with the voiced veracity of anthropological existence, the
contested authority of the “relived” in the “as if” exposes where truth and power should reside.
Conclusion
Itself inaugural of, but, nonetheless, resistant to, the other, the practiced literary life of
anthropology allows for an understanding of how and why the various cultural
representations by the other actually end up being read as if they were a kind of text. Making
this allowance has meant adopting a certain degree of artifice; the kind which can, in unison
with a critique of text itself, smuggle into discourse the additional but concealed intent of
establishing the “condition of existence we may rightly call textuality” (Said 1983:143). This
state of textual being has been significantly accused not so much of existing as the product of a
clandestine deployment by European ethnocentrism—in that despite its “much-publicized
critique of the sovereign subject… actually inaugurates a Subject” (Spivak 1994:66)—but
rather of being conceived and swaddled within the limits of Western science and philosophy
(ibid:89).
In such scenarios, the often strident call for transparency to be the way forward, always
appears to crash on the rocks of “Being as presence.” Thus precisely because it first thinks of
distance in terms of time and space, and then proceeds to consider (by the various means
made available to itself) that shrinking time and space can also reduce distance, modern
Western thought comforts itself with the knowledge that it has achieved nearness—even
perhaps that so-sought-after nearness between self and other. The textuality given to the other
serves this dual purpose: it provides the other with an interpretable culture and a knowable
presence which can bring it nearness.
We cannot relinquish, however, the inevitable centering of the self which also positions the
other on the margins. Marginalized from the center, where only the Subject can exist, the other
cannot “speak.” From the point of view of the centered textual Western self, no direct
narration of the world, by the other, can actually take place. Othering, by the centered self,
dissipates all attempts at expected agency by the marginalized other. All such narrations of the
MENTORÉ 30
world die in the moment of othering. The postulates of culture-as-text, of culture as objectified
sign, and of culture as a transformative killing (which takes place in the siblinghood between
writing and reading) thus propose an anthropology which murders the other. It does violence
against the category representations of the sentience and experience of the other. In the very
gesture of privileging the other during the literary act of anthropology, the anthropological
subject extinguishes direct access to the experiential life of the other even while continuing to
make its own. The utterances of the other cannot be translated (cannot, that is, be at one in
Being as the subject), either in speech or writing, despite the earnest claims to the contrary in
many ethnographies. What in the end does materialize, standing out in all its continuity as
textual being, is the veracity of the subjective presence of the West in its anthropological
existence. And yet, hopefully, in this very limit, there still remains the promise of a stimulus to
the imagination and to the prospect of an achieved empathy with otherness.
Footnotes
1 Some of the contents of this essay, under the title of “Excerpts from ‘an Empathetic Anthropology:’
What We Can Still Learn from Indigenous Amazonian Societies,” were presented on October 12, 2007
at the Senior Seminar, Department of Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
2 To name but three which immediately come to mind at the time of writing this passage: raising the
price of airline seats for corpulent passengers, making the elderly pay for their medication, and
dictating the legality of access to a pregnant woman’s body.
3 See Kill Bill and Sin City, but this genre of movie has been developing and becoming more tolerated
since the Second World War, to the point where they have even taken up cultural space in the video
games for children.
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MENTORÉ 32
Wilcken, Patrick
1994 Anthropology, the Intellectuals, and the Gulf War. Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press.
ARTICLE
Extractive Capitalism, and Amerindian Land and

Labour: Fifty Years After Independence1
CHRISTOPHER CARRICO
Towson University
Abstract
This article examines the encroachment of capitalist resource extraction on Amerindian lands
in late colonial and postcolonial Guyana. Amerindians practiced sustainable resource
extraction and horticulture along the coast and in the interior of Guyana long before the
colonial era. However, the ways of life introduced by European colonialism have been socially
and environmentally destructive and unstable. The postcolonial era has inherited all of the
contradictions of the colonial era, and with increased investment in extractive industries
during the fifty years since Independence, the destructive impact of these industries on
Amerindian life and land has increased as well. Extractive capitalism in the Guyanese interior
has been characterized by miserable social and labour conditions for its workers, and has
posed a serious threat to the health and survival of Amerindian communities. This article
argues that while Guyana has been deeply racially divided (historically and at present), ending
the domination of extractive industry by national and international capital will require the
involvement of Guyanese workers from all sectors and from all backgrounds acting in
solidarity with one another. In order for development in Guyana to be socially and
environmentally sustainable, ownership and control of its extractive industries and natural
resources need to be in the hands of its workers and indigenous people.
KEYWORDS: Indigenous, Labour, Land, Colonization, Extractive, Capitalist
Introduction
In 2016, Guyana celebrated fifty years since the end of authoritarian colonial rule. However,
what replaced the authoritarian colonial state was first one form of authoritarian postcolonial
state under the People’s National Congress (PNC 1966-1992) and then another under the
People’s Progressive Party (PPP 1992-2015). The outcomes of the struggles taking shape
since 2015 under A Partnership for National Unity—Alliance for Change (APNU-AFC)
CARRICO 34
government remain to be seen.

At the end of the colonial era, as the negotiations for the 1966 Independence Agreement
approached, Guyanese Amerindian2 political leaders expressed concern over the security of
Amerindian land tenure, and over how their communities would be treated by a postcolonial
government. The reasons for their concern are complex, and are at least partially the legacy of
a colonial divide-and-rule strategy which cultivated racial antipathy between Amerindians,
and African and East Indian “coastlanders” (Carrico 2007).
In some ways, however, it has turned out that the Amerindian leaders were right to have
been concerned. The Independence Agreement included a commitment on the part of the new
government to recognize Amerindian land title, and the government’s own Amerindian Lands
Commission made policy recommendations in 1969 that could have made Amerindian land
title a substantial reality (Amerindian Lands Commission 1970). However, the Rupununi
Uprising of the same year derailed this process, and had tragic and long-lasting consequences
for Guyanese Amerindians. While only a handful of Amerindians were involved in the Uprising,
Guyana’s entire Amerindian population would suffer government repression in its aftermath.
When the process of granting titles to Amerindian lands later began, the PNC government
demanded loyalty oaths from Amerindian leaders, and would use a policy of “villagization”
which recognized no large, contiguous areas under Amerindian control, but rather gave title to
small, concentrated settlements surrounded on all sides by State Lands. In many Amerindian
areas, the government gave concessions to small- and medium-scale gold and diamond miners
on the State Lands in between villages (Hennessy 2013). After the PPP came to power in 1992,
the patterns of villagization and land titles awarded only in exchange for political patronage
continued, and the drive to extract natural resources in the interior intensified (Bulkan 2016).
In one area of the country, no Amerindian land titles have yet been granted. In the Upper
Mazaruni, the PNC government began making plans in the 1970s to build a hydroelectric dam
that would have flooded all of the sub-region’s Akawaio and Arekuna villages. Amerindians,
anthropologists, and religious leaders campaigned against the dam and brought it to the
attention of international environmentalists and human rights activists, but when the World
Bank later withdrew its offer to loan money for the project, it cited the border dispute with
Venezuela as its ultimate reason. The Reagan administration’s opposition to a project that
would benefit a socialist government also played a significant role in the decision (Bartilow
1997; Carrico 2007; Hennessy 2005, 2013).
In 1998 the villages of the Upper Mazaruni filed a lawsuit against the Government of
Guyana, suing for recognition of the contiguous Amerindian controlled area that existed in the
late colonial era. Eighteen years later the High Court proceedings have still not concluded, and
the Government of Guyana has revived plans for the Upper Mazaruni hydroelectric project.
While the project has been shrouded in secrecy, the plan seems to be basically identical to the
proposals of the 1970s and 1980s. The proposed dam would be located 12 miles below the
confluence of the Kamarung and Mazaruni Rivers, and would cause the flooding of all of the
Amerindian villages of the Upper Mazaruni (Butt Colson 2013). A second dam has also been
proposed at Amaila Falls, along the Upper Potaro River, but its backers claim that this dam
would not displace any Amerindian settlements (“Hydropower in Guyana” 2013).
Meanwhile, in the postcolonial era, resource extraction in the interior has come to be far
more important to the national political economy than it was during the British colonial era.
Much of this extractive economy has taken place on or near Amerindian lands, and often
makes use of Amerindian labour. A few Amerindians have also become involved in mining as
owners of artisanal, small- and medium-scale gold and diamond mining operations. Where it is
practiced, mining has had serious environmental, health, and social consequences in
Amerindian communities. While these industries have been given an increasing number of
Extractive Capitalism, and Amerindian Land and Labour: Fifty Years of Independence 35
concessions in the interior, Amerindians have been given title to only a fraction of the land that
they lived on and used. Conflicts over land and resources emerge as Amerindian land has
become increasingly encapsulated during a time when Amerindian populations have grown
steadily.
This article will briefly examine the development of traditional foraging and horticultural
modes of production, and will then examine the encroachment of capitalist resource extraction
on Amerindian lands, and the threat to Amerindian land and life that extractive capitalism has
posed in the late colonial and the postcolonial eras. Particular attention will be paid to the
Upper Mazaruni, which has been the site of continuous struggles over land since the late
colonial era.
Traditional Amerindian Economies Versus Modern Extractive

Capitalism
While postmodern and postcolonial academics might accuse us of romanticising indigenous
life for saying so, it is a historical fact that traditional Amerindian ways of life in Guyana have
been far more sustainable, socially and environmentally, than anything that has been
introduced to Guyana from the outside during the last 500 years.
The way of life that has the longest track record of sustainability in Guyana is that of the
Warao people.3 Their ancestors occupied the Orinoco Delta and the coast of the Guianas since
at least around 5200 B.C.E., and the large shell middens in Guyana’s Northwest are formed out
of several millennia of their refuse. They subsisted as foragers, hunters, and fishermen, the
world’s oldest forms of extractive economy. They gathered wild plant materials, such as the Ite
palm, and exploited marine resources such as oysters, conch, lucines, mussels, netirites, crabs
and snails (Williams 2003:86).
After around 3300 B.C.E. they began making canoes and the stone tools that were used in
canoe manufacturing (Williams 2003:130-148). There also developed a division of labour
between communities, as skills and resources were unevenly distributed between proto-
Warao groups. Canoes led to an increase in the productive capacity of fishermen and collectors
of marine resources, and there was a resulting increase in population density (145). The
pattern of resource extraction which emerged among the proto-Warao after 3300 B.C.E.
continues to be practised in Warao communities today, though now this indigenous extractive
economy is articulated in complex ways with other indigenous economies as well as with
various forms of capitalism.
The way of life based on a horticultural mode of production, with cassava (manioc) as its
most important crop, has also proven itself to be sustainable in the region over several
millennia. According to Jennifer Wishart (1995), the first farmers to move into Guyana were
the ancestors of modern-day Lokono Arawaks, who settled the coast around 1550 B.C.E. Denis
Williams (1995) elaborates on this, attributing the rise of horticulture to Amerindian
adaptations to non-anthropogenic environmental change:
Around 3550 years ago, all of the factors that were necessary for the transition to
horticulture existed in Guyana several varieties of wild manioc, adequate flour-
processing expertise and its associated implements, sedentary populations and the
indispensable technology of pottery-making. The only thing needed to precipitate the
change to horticulture was a major subsistence crisis. At this time, comprehensive drying
out of the swamps over several generations provided that crisis. Neo-Indian culture
based on horticulture was the result.
CARRICO 36
Cassava subsistence production is a labour intensive activity involving under brushing, the
felling of trees, burning and clearing of logs, planting and harvesting; as well as labour
intensive food preparation involving squeezing, grating, boiling, straining, baking, etc. Every
stage of this process is communally organized along kinship lines. This mode of production
relied on the activities of part-time specializations in basketry, ceramics and stonework. It also
relied on the expansion of the stone axe making industry especially in order to continually
supply firewood for food preparation (Williams 2003).
These new horticultural societies developed exchange relations of mutual dependence
with each other, and with the still thriving Warao people of the Orinoco delta and the
Guyanese North West. This horticultural way of life still forms the subsistence base of the
Carib, Arawak, Akawaio, Arekuna, Patamona, Makushi, Wapishana, and Wai Wai peoples in
Guyana, though like the extractive economy of the Warao, these horticultural economies have
been intertwined in uneven and unequal ways with the various forms of capitalist economy
which have moved into the area over the course of the last 400 years.
In sharp contrast to the indigenous economies of prehistoric Guyana, the extractive
industries which have come to dominate the Guyanese economy in recent decades cannot be
considered sustainable, socially or environmentally, in any substantial sense. While the
Guyanese state, under the leadership of President Bharrat Jagdeo (1999-2011), began to
promote, at an ideological level, ideas like “reduced emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation” (REDD+), and a “Low Carbon Development Strategy” (LCDS), this same
administration oversaw a dramatic increase in mining (especially in gold mining) and in
timber harvesting. Both industries have had enormously destructive impacts on the natural
environments in which Amerindians live, and on which they are dependent for their ways of
life. While these industries have generated a great deal of wealth, almost none of this wealth
remains in local communities for their use and benefit, and these industries are accompanied
by a range of negative social consequences.
Gold mining has so far been the most destructive of these modern extractive industries. As
it is currently practiced, it has caused many problems for Amerindian communities. Some
settlements have been entirely displaced by the presence of miners, and in some areas the
traditional subsistence base is seriously threatened by the environmental damage that is
caused by mining. Fishing becomes impossible along the rivers where mining occurs, sources
of bathing and drinking water are poisoned, and conditions conducive to the spread of malaria
and tuberculosis emerge.
The gold mining sector’s cash economy puts strains on traditional non-monetary economic
relations, and many Amerindians, especially young men, opt to work for wages in the mining
sector. This practice draws a critical source of labour away from farming, hunting and fishing.
The lifestyle of the mining camps has also involved young Amerindian women in prostitution;
and wages, miserable working conditions, and easy availability of liquor and drugs have
resulted in serious substance abuse problems. While the control of the industry by small- and
medium-scale domestic producers might be a positive development from the point-of-view of
national capital, these kinds of operations are notoriously difficult to regulate, making it nearly
impossible to ameliorate their environmental and social impacts on Amerindian communities.
The patterns of ecological and social crisis set into motion by the modern extractive
industries began in earnest during the late British colonial era. While the growth of these
industries slowed down in the immediate postcolonial era under Forbes Burnham’s “Co-
operative Socialism” (1964-1985), the growth of extractive capitalism has accelerated rapidly
ever since.
The Late British Colonial Era

Extractive Economy
By the late colonial era extractive industry was already growing in significance. The largest
scale extractive industry was bauxite, whose biggest operations were located in the Upper
Demerara, an area accessible from the coast, around 100 miles inland from Georgetown. But
timber, gold and diamond mining, and balata bleeding also became significant extractive
industries in the late colonial era, and were pursued in ever more remote areas of the interior.
These latter industries were the ones that came to involve a significant percentage of
Amerindian workers, and came to be practiced predominately on or near Amerindian lands.
Small pit gold mining began in the Upper Cuyuni in the 1840s, using panning techniques
developed during the North American gold rush of the time. Local syndicates first began
mining in the Lower and Middle Mazaruni in 1863-4, but it was the decade of the 1880s when
the gold industry really took off, with reported production increasing from 40 ounces in 1882
to 11,906 in 1887. The North West was demarcated as a district and opened to mining in
1887. By 1893 Guyanese were mining 138,000 ounces of gold, and by 1923 they were mining
214,000 carats of diamonds (Colchester 1997:62; Daly 1975:276).
The North West was the main gold mining area until the 1930s, but small miners (known
as “pork-knockers”) made their way through the interior from the beginning of the mining
industry in the country. Diamonds were found in the Mazaruni in 1887, and in the Upper
Cotingo (just beyond the Upper Mazaruni across the Brazilian border) in 1912. Mining spread
up the Cuyuni and the Potaro by the 1890s, up the Demerara in the 1900s and into the Middle
Mazaruni by 1920. In the 1930s, the Middle Mazaruni, inhabited primarily by Akawaio, was
changed from Crown Lands reserved for Amerindians to a mining district—a precursor to the
1959 expropriation which took lands away in the Upper Mazaruni (Colchester 1997:64-5).
Medium-scale mining mainly brought whites as owners of operations, and African
Guyanese as labourers, but by the 1890s there were also some 6,000 mainly African Guyanese
independent “pork-knockers” working the interior (Daly 1975:276), where they have been a
constant presence ever since. Amerindians were also employed as labourers in the industry as
mine workers, droughers, rowers, and guides.
A merchant economy developed alongside the mining industry. Merchants bought gold and
diamonds from the miners cheap, and sold them at higher prices for export, or for jewellery
domestically. They also sold provisions, equipment, and other goods (including copious
amounts of rum) to the miners, loaned money, invested in mining operations themselves, and
later invested in air transport. The Portuguese especially entered Guyana’s national capitalist
class by way of this merchant route.
By the 1840s and 1850s, the timber trade was also thriving, initially also in areas relatively
accessible to the coast, such as along the Demerara River (Forte 1996:54). British authorities
had attempted to limit the access of non-Amerindians to interior timber resources, but these
regulations were either unenforceable, or could be subverted by a variety of means. As early as
1815, Amerindians were complaining to the authorities of encroachment on their lands by
woodcutters. The unrestricted rights which Amerindians had to woodcutting on state lands for
much of the nineteenth century meant that it was often possible for loggers to gain access to
these lands by bribing or otherwise working with local Amerindians (Menezes 1979:xxi-xxii).
Beginning in 1839, licenses were issued which granted colonists legal access to some areas.
These licenses were five year permits to log on tracts of up to 1,000 acres, for the cost of only
£1 per acre (Forte 1996:54).
CARRICO 38
Selective harvesting methods were used, with greenheart (Ocotea rodiae) being the most
prized species. Guyana is one of the few places in the world where greenheart is common, and
it is highly valued because of its strength, and because it can be exposed to water for many
years without rotting. Consequently, greenheart is used for making piers and other marine
constructions, and was exported from Guyana to the UK and the US. Other hard woods such as
Mora were harvested for overseas export, and more common timbers were harvested for
domestic use or for sale to Suriname. By the mid-20th century, some 11 million cubic feet of
timber were being cut annually, while the industry was being regulated by a small, under-
funded Forestry Department (Colchester 1997: 97).
It was mainly Amerindians who laboured in the timber camps, and by all accounts they
were a quite productive labour force—highly skilled and industrious. Work in the timber
camps was seasonal, and took place mainly during the rainy season, when high water levels
meant that logs could be more easily floated downriver to the saw mills. Logging mainly took
place on the lower reaches of rivers, with Amerindians travelling from upriver or from the
interior to work seasonally for wages or trade goods (Colchester 1997:96-97; Forte 1996:54).
The labour conditions in the timber camps were highly exploitative. Janette Bulkan described
them as follows:
The system became quickly transformed into a form of debt peonage, a pattern of
exploitation that still exists. Amerindians were often fleeced by their employers and
demoralized by rum. The practice of paying wages entirely in rum was not uncommon
on these rivers (Forte 1996:54-55).
In theory, the British colonial State maintained ownership and control of all of British
Guiana’s interior forests, and so it reserved the right to regulate the use of the forests using
various state agencies. However, as Bulkan also wrote:
The institutions that were set up in colonial times to monitor resource extraction
industries (the Geology and Mines Commission, the Forestry Commission, and the Lands
and Surveys Department) were all autonomous, vertical, parallel organisations, dealing
with low levels of interior resource exploitation in a colonial State where the focus was
on commercial plantation agriculture on the coastal plain (Forte 1998:143).
Timber never made it far up the Mazaruni, but it was common for young men from the
Upper Mazaruni to travel to the Bartica region, as well as to the Demerara to work in timber.
This pattern was still common when Audrey Butt Colson did her fieldwork in the Upper
Mazaruni in the 1950s (Butt Colson 1977).
Another important adjunct to the timber industry was balata bleeding. Balata is the latex
of the bulletwood tree (Mimusops globosa), and was one of the main raw materials for the
manufacture of rubber products during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While it never
achieved the scale in British Guiana which it had in Brazil, production was still quite high by
the early 20th century. Balata exports peaked in 1917 at 1.6 million pounds, and most of this
was produced by Amerindian labour (Forte 1996:55-56; Forte and Melville1989:209-210).
Rubber “tapping” is done by using a machete to make grooves of around an inch and a half
width around ten inches apart in a feather-stitch pattern on one side of the tree trunk. Grooves
are cut from the base of the tree to the first forking of the trunk—usually around a height of 50
to 75 feet—with leg spurs being used to climb the tree (Forte and Melville 1989:209-210). The
tree then “bleeds” its latex sap, which was collected by Amerindian labourers, who sold the
balata to merchant middlemen.
Balata bleeding was most significant as an industry in the Rupununi; it was collected on a
small scale in the Upper Mazaruni after the advent of air transport to the area in 1938, but by
that time the demand for balata had nearly disappeared because of the invention of synthetic
rubber substitutes.
The Peberdy Report
From 1934-1939 there was labour unrest throughout the British West Indies. Strikes and
riots took place, mainly on the sugar estates in Trinidad, Jamaica, British Guiana, Barbados
and elsewhere on the smaller islands. The turbulence brought the extreme poverty and
exploitative labour conditions of the plantation economies to the attention of the British
Government, and is generally considered to have given birth to West Indian nationalism and
the independence movement.
In response to the unrest, in 1938 the British Government sent the West India Royal
Commission to the Caribbean to examine the social conditions which led to the disturbances.
The Commission was chaired by Conservative politician Lord Moyne, and the Report of the
Commission, known as the Moyne Report, led to the passage in 1940 of the Colonial
Development and Welfare Act, which allocated funds intended to ameliorate the miserable
social conditions described in the Report (Bolland 2001:383).
The Welfare Fund which the Act created was mainly directed at addressing conditions on
or near the sugar estates, but it also funded a study of the social conditions of Amerindians in
British Guiana, conducted by Phillip Storer Peberdy, Field Officer of Amerindian Affairs (Roth
1952:13).
Peberdy travelled throughout the interior from 1943-1947 to study Amerindian
conditions. He spent much of 1944 and 1945 traveling in the Upper Mazaruni and
surrounding areas (Peberdy 1948:7-8). Peberdy suggested that the North-West, Potaro-
Mazaruni, and Rupununi Districts be demarcated and declared Amerindian Districts. Within
these districts, Peberdy argued for the development of co-operative industry. He had two
specific recommendations: the purchase of all assets of the Rupununi Development
Corporation and of the Barama Mouth Sawmill in the NW district (44-6).
Purchase of these industries was meant to be made possible through an interest free loan
advanced to the Department responsible for Amerindian Affairs, with the current
management of the industry kept intact, and the profits from the ventures to be lodged with
an Amerindian trust fund dedicated “to be utilized for the social, health, welfare and cultural
progress of the Amerindian communities residing within the proscribed Amerindian
Districts”. The current management would “train Amerindians in the practices of
management and in the effective operation of business”. Peberdy recommended, as well, that
Amerindians should be encouraged as owners of mining operations and that in the balata
industry Amerindians should be the producers and sellers without the intermediary of the
“industrialist-adventurer-capitalist” (ibid).
The report also recommended Central Tribal Councils be set up and supported by
Amerindian Village Councils, that the Rupununi Development Corporation’s Georgetown
office be transformed into a Central Marketing Depot for products from the Amerindian
districts, and that craft schools be established in central locations in each of the districts.
Also, the possibility of an international Amerindian district in co-operation with Brazil and
Venezuela should be investigated (ibid).
While Peberdy’s idea of Amerindian apprenticeship was certainly guilty of colonial
paternalism, Peberdy did recommend the immediate transfer of substantial land title to
collective Amerindian hands. He also recommended transfer to Amerindians of ownership
and management of the major operations of extractive industry on their lands in a few years’
time. These recommendations seem remarkably progressive in comparison to what has
actually occurred since that time.
CARRICO 40
The implementation of most of the recommendations of the Peberdy Report was

ultimately incompatible with the goals of capital accumulation which the late colonial and the
postcolonial states pursued. Demarcation of lands was postponed for many decades, and
titles were given to much less land than recommended. Furthermore, land title was non-
contiguous (see above), and there was no recognition of tribal levels of political organization
(Carrico 2009). Apart from the short-lived projects of “co-operative socialism” during the
Burnham era, Peberdy’s recommendations promoting co-operative industry were ignored, as
was the suggestion of pursuing an international Amerindian district in co-operation with
Brazil and Venezuela.
One of Peberdy’s recommendations was followed when the Upper Mazaruni was turned
into an Amerindian reservation in 1947 (Seggar 1952:43-5). An administrative headquarters
was built at Imbaimadai, with William Seggar appointed as District Officer. A health
dispensary was built, Anglican missionary Father John Dorman moved to the district, malaria
and tuberculosis eradication programs were initiated, and commodity production was
encouraged (45-51). In 1959, Amerindian title to the Upper Mazaruni was reduced by one
third. Just after a major diamond find at Imbaimadai the area around the headwaters of the
Mazaruni was de-reserved and opened to mining.
A government station was built at Imbaimadai in 1946, and the state appointed local
leaders of its choosing to be the “chiefs” of various villages. In 1949 the government station
was moved to Kamarung, and Amerindians were encouraged to relocate nearer to the good
agricultural land there. In 1959, the system of government appointed chiefs was replaced
with Captains, Vice-Captains, and Village Councils that were elected by secret ballot (Seegar
1959-1960). The tendency from early on was for these positions to be filled by young literate
men with connections to the missionaries or the government, rather by elders whose
authority came from their position in kin networks (Butt Colson 1983).
Decolonization
During the late colonial era, the state, missionaries, and private enterprise entered into areas
of the deep interior where they had not been a presence previously. Whites actively sought
to promote their own enterprises in the Upper Mazaruni, while attempting to prevent the
small mining activities of African Guyanese “pork knockers” who also were beginning to
enter the area. In the name of protecting the Amerindians, white missionaries, miners, and
state agents promoted racist ideas among Amerindians to enlist their aid in excluding African
and other non-white small miners from the area. As in earlier eras, the internalization of the
racial worldview was uneven and incomplete among Amerindians, but it made significantly
greater inroads than it had in earlier periods. It was most developed among those
Amerindians who had closest connections with the whites, and it is still today held most
strongly by Amerindian elites (Carrico 2007).
During decolonization, the pro-colonial political activists took advantage of these nascent
racial identities to promote the idea that Amerindians should be fearful of independence, as
the replacement of white rule with the rule of East Indian or African Guyanese would most
likely mean the confiscation of Amerindian lands by a state that represented “coastlander”
interests. This claim appeared likely to come true, when, under a PPP administration in 1959,
the government de-reserved major areas of the Upper Mazaruni, and declared it a mining
district.
The PPP was acting in the interests of national capital, and perhaps also to help alleviate
the problem of coastal unemployment by opening up economic opportunities for miners in
the interior (Jagan 1997). It is not clear that a British controlled administration would have
acted differently, but it is true that this was the first experience that Amerindians of the
Upper Mazaruni had of the consequences of a decision by a non-white government. The
Independence Agreement was signed without Amerindian land rights ever being resolved,
and conflict would soon also arise between Amerindians and the postcolonial PNC
government.
For the majority of East Indians and Africans in Guyana, the 1950s and 1960s saw the
crest of a wave of agitation and struggle against the British colonial elites that had been
building since the 1930s. The majority of Guyanese supported political parties that were
anti-colonial, and socialist-oriented. It was a time of great optimism for the coast that once
Guyanese independence had been won, a nation could be built that would benefit all
Guyanese, who would rise together instead of working only to enrich colonial Europeans.
However, the anxieties which Amerindians felt about independence were expressed in a
1962 petition to the British Crown written by Amerindian captains:
Our people have lived peacefully in their villages in the forests and savannahs of
British Guiana and have enjoyed the protection of Your Majesty’s Government for over
182 years.
Your Petitioners have heard that there is a possibility of Independence being
granted soon and they are afraid of what will happen after Independence when your
Majesty’s protection will be withdrawn.
Your Petitioners especially fear that their rights will then be abrogated and
ignored and the lands on which the Amerindians have lived for thousands of years will
be expropriated (quoted in Pierre 1993).
British Guiana held its first elections based on universal adult suffrage in 1953. The
People’s Progressive Party, with the overwhelming support of the working class majority,
won 18 of Parliament’s 24 seats, becoming the British Empire’s first Marxist party elected to
office (Thomas 1983), with party leader Cheddi Jagan as President. Alarmed at what it saw as
the radical rhetoric of the Jagan administration, the British dissolved the government and
suspended the constitution only 133 days after the elections, and occupied the country with
armed troops (Jagan 1997; Thomas 1983).
Subsequent events are matters that are still a subject of much controversy in Guyana. By
1955, the People’s Progressive Party was divided into two main groupings, those that
supported Cheddi Jagan (the PPP – Jaganites), and those that supported Forbes Burnham
(the PPP – Burnhamites). Many, including Clive Thomas (1998), attribute this split to “a
colonial policy of divide-and-rule.”
The British and Americans supported Forbes Burnham’s split from the PPP as part of
their Cold War effort to promote moderate left alternatives to the international communist
movement. In 1957, the Burnhamites founded the People’s National Congress, a party whose
rhetoric, while still socialist-oriented, was at the time more conservative than that of the PPP.
In the next few years, the leadership and the mass bases of the two parties came to be
polarized along racial lines, with East Indian Guyanese supporting the PPP, and African
Guyanese supporting the PNC.
The most significant third party during the late colonial and early postcolonial period was
the United Force (UF). Started by Portuguese Guyanese businessman Peter D’Aguiar, who
admired the far right politics of Portuguese President Salazar, the UF was conservative and
pro-colonial. Largely through the influence of the Catholic Church missions, and of
industrialists who worked in the interior, the United Force was able to win the support of the
majority of Amerindians in the country. The first Amerindian parliamentarian, Stephen
Campbell, an Arawak from the North West, became a member of the United Force steering
CARRICO 42
committee in 1960 (Pierre 1993).

Six Amerindians living and working in Georgetown (including Stephen Campbell, UF
Parliamentarian, and one PNC Parliamentarian) founded The Amerindian Association of
Guyana. Their stated aim was the unity of Amerindian tribes, and the integration of
Amerindians into national society with the same rights and privileges as other Guyanese.
During 1965, they canvassed the country with the slogan “No independence before the
Amerindian land question is resolved.”
While Amerindians started the organization for Amerindians, it was linked in the minds
of many people with the United Force. The organization experienced fragmentation in its
leadership, and in 1965, Stephen Campbell was deposed as President. The executive stated
the reasons for his removal were his inactivity and dictatorial nature, but perhaps also
significant was his desire to tie AAG to UF politics.
Continuous internal conflict occurred because of attempts by members of one or another
of the political parties to dominate the AAG. In the wake of the Rupununi Rebellion, and
under Burnham’s authoritarian regime, Amerindian organizations would lie dormant for
over two decades (Pierre 1993; Sanders 1987; Farage 2003).
In Amerindian areas, the UF campaigned by promoting the idea that Amerindian land
would not be secure in an independent Guyana. UF was a major player in the 1966
independence negotiations, and they demanded an agreement on the part of the Government
of Guyana to recognize approximately forty-three thousand square miles as Amerindian land.
In 1966, the British changed the election laws to allow for proportional representation and
overseas voting, and PNC and United Force formed a coalition which won the elections. In
May 1966, Guyana achieved independence from Great Britain, with a commitment in its
Independence Agreement to recognize Amerindian land title (Jagan 1997; Sanders 1987).
The Postcolonial Era

So-called “Co-operative Socialism”
The postcolonial government inherited all of the contradictions of the colonial state. During
the late 1960s and the 1970s Amerindians came to be wrapped up in the politics of the newly
independent state mainly through their participation in and support of the United Force.
However, it quickly became apparent that after independence, the PNC would hold all of the
power in the supposed coalition government. Furthermore, in 1969 an event came that
would impact the Amerindian communities for years to come.
In the Rupununi savannah, a group of ranchers attempted to secede from the country
through armed struggle. The Uprising was lead by locally powerful ranching families: the
Harts and the Melvilles. A number of Amerindians who worked on the ranches and were
closely tied to the ranching families joined in this insurrection. The leaders expected that
Venezuela, who had competing claims on the area, would deliver arms and support to them.
No such support materialized and the rebellion was quickly put down. The ranchers who
were involved in the incident fled to Brazil, while the Amerindians who participated were
jailed, and the Amerindian communities suffered from repression in the rebellion’s aftermath
(Farage 2003).
After the Rupununi Rebellion, only a fraction of the lands considered at the time of
Independence were granted, the government owned all sub-surface mineral rights, and land
titles included many conditions unheard of for other Guyanese. Land could be taken away if
communities did not take loyalty oaths to the Guyanese government, or at any other time
deemed necessary. The government also increased its military presence in the interior,
especially in Amerindian villages near the national borders. Many Amerindians deeply
resented the army’s presence, military-community relations were often not good, and most
Amerindians allege that abuse at the hands of soldiers was common.
At the national level, the country was deeply divided under the rule of the PNC and its
leader, Forbes Burnham. Nearly all Guyanese who were not PNC loyalists describe the era as
“a dictatorship,” and most independent observers believe that the elections were rigged
throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1970, the country was declared a “Co-operative
Republic.” Under “Co-operative Socialism,” there were supposed to be three sectors of the
economy, the private, the state, and the co-operative, and the co-operative sector was
supposed to lead the economy. The working population was supposed to form “People’s Co-
operative Units.” Often, in reality, the co-operative sector was controlled by the state, and the
state took control of the real co-operative sector that had arisen independently in the villages
during earlier eras.
Political economist Clive Thomas refers to Forbes Burnham’s PNC regime as "State
Capitalism" (1983, 1984). Thomas argues that in the capitalist metropole, the consolidation
of the economic power of the bourgeoisie preceded its control of the state. In Guyana,
however, as occurred elsewhere in the capitalist periphery, the seizure of state power was
the means by which a new ruling class began to emerge (1984).
The PNC used socialist rhetoric in an attempt to transform itself into a national capitalist
class. By the late 1970s it had nationalized the sugar and bauxite industries and many other
enterprises, and claimed to control 80 percent of the national economy. State run firms were
purchased by the government on terms made possible by foreign loans that included
conditions of repayment that put serious structural constraints on attempts to transform
relations of production that were the legacy of colonialism.
In the largest of the state owned enterprises, the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo),
the main trade union, the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers' Union (GAWU), was
tightly tied to the opposition PPP, and had an antagonistic relationship with the PNC-
controlled state which was often about more than just wages and working conditions. Sugar,
along with most other state owned enterprises in 1970s and 1980s, experienced heavy
losses, which decreased Guyana’s ability to repay the debts which were incurred in its
purchase. The relatively small "co-operative" sector was run as a state capitalist enterprise
benefiting a small group of bureaucrats, and party "vanguardism" was used to justify
bureaucratization, militarization and state control of civil society, and precluded the
possibility of a participatory socialism (Thomas 1983).
The PNC’s strategy for interior development was to create the conditions for state capital
accumulation, as well as the accumulation of national capitalists loyal to the PNC. This was
done at the expense of Amerindian autonomy over the development of their own areas. An
example of these processes at work can be seen in the villages of the Upper Mazaruni. In
1977, all of the rivers in the Upper Mazaruni were opened to mining, and in 1978 the entire
Upper Mazaruni, formerly an Amerindian reservation, was declared a mining area. The
miners who entered into the area were national capitalists, and small miners, who sold to the
state, or to black market merchants with party connections.
In the late 1970s, following its commitment to the development of a co-operative sector,
the Burnham government created the Upper Mazaruni Development Authority. This was a
state-controlled operation, which purchased a series of dredges that were supposed to be
owned and run by the Amerindian villages. Many allege that these dredges were never really
community owned. They were used for the private accumulation of individuals from the
ruling party. Amerindians were not trained to run the dredges, and Amerindian neglect was
CARRICO 44
then blamed whenever the dredges were not kept in working order. Whatever else we can
say about these mining operations, they do not seem to have been a model of socialist
production, and racism against Amerindians remained a factor in the organization of
production.
Another example of PNC Amerindian policy that threatened Amerindian land and life was
the Upper Mazaruni hydroelectric project. The intention of the project was to build a
hydroelectric dam that would generate electricity for the coast and for aluminium smelting.
All of the villages of the Upper Mazaruni were to be flooded, including Amokokopai – a
sacred site and the headquarters of the Alleluia Church – and all Amerindians living in the
area were to be relocated. After considerable opposition to the dam, spearheaded by
religious leaders in the community, and by anthropologists like Audrey Butt Colson, and after
opposition from Venezuela because of the border dispute, the World Bank eventually
cancelled the loans which would have funded the dam.
The PNC broke with the colonial state in a number of ways. It nationalized sugar and
bauxite, and favoured national over international capital investment. It played a prominent
role in the Non-Aligned Movement and the movement for Caribbean integration, and it
aggressively pursued import substitution policies. In the late 1970s, it declared the state
sector to be in control of the commanding heights of the economy.
In spite of these changes, the national economy still operated according to market
principles, the rule of value still governed through prices and wages, and most importantly,
proletarians, peasants and indigenous peoples did not have direct control over the state.
Furthermore, even though most whites fled or were expelled from the country, production
itself remained racially ordered. Guyanese nationals now took the place of white managers
and owners, but production was still racially segmented, and racialist assumptions about the
suitability of various races for various kinds of labour remained a seldom challenged part of
Guyanese society. In the interior, production still operated according to a racial hierarchy,
with Amerindians at the bottom of that hierarchy.
The Post-socialist Era
It was under Burnham’s successor, Desmond Hoyte, that IMF and World Bank policies of
structural adjustment were implemented. In the late 1980s, import substitution programs
were discontinued, Guyana’s currency was devalued, and the state began its attempts to
restructure property-relations in a way that facilitated the private accumulation of capital
(Bartilow 1997).
One aspect of the attempts to restructure property-relations was the privatization of
capital that had previously been held by the state and by the co-operative sector. The process
caused a bubble in capital investment in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the state divested
public assets, and eliminated restrictions on foreign ownership. One major exception to the
privatization of state-owned industry has been GuySuCo (Egoume-Bossogo, et. al. 2003).
Because sugar workers form the backbone of support for the PPP, who returned to power in
1992, privatization of sugar was recognized as politically untenable. In the bauxite industry,
by contrast, control of all of the bauxite operations have been transferred into the hands of
privately owned Chinese and Russian corporations.
Foreign direct investment, which had dwindled during the Burnham era, grew rapidly in
the late 1980s and 1990s. The biggest influx of investment went into extractive industries in
the interior. Of these, mining was the most dynamic: gold mining in particular. During the
first half of the 1990s, domestic gold production more than tripled, and total production
including production by foreign mining companies increased by 1996 to over 28 times 1980
levels. One year after the introduction of a major gold mining operation at Omai, this
company became the single largest earner of foreign exchange in the country (Thomas
1998).
Large firms from Canada, Brazil, Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. entered gold mining in
the late 1980s and in the 1990s, and gold surpassed agriculture and bauxite mining as an
earner of foreign exchange. The percentage of gold produced by these large-scale operations
was declining by the early 2000s (Canterbury 2016: 696), while the boom in gold mining in
the country which has taken place from 2005 until the present has been dominated once
again by the small- and medium-scale domestic producers. In the five years from 2005 to
2010, artisanal gold production in Guyana more than tripled, and by 2012 gold exports
accounted for 25 % of Guyana’s GDP. Around 80% of the gold produced came from artisanal
small- and medium-scale producers (Bulkan and Palmer 2016). As noted above, the
problems that mining poses for the Amerindian communities are many, especially in the case
of small- and medium-scale gold mining.
While gold has come to be more firmly under the control of national capital in Guyana in
recent years, the bauxite and timber industries have come to be under the control of foreign
capital. Unlike during the colonial era, however, these sectors are now controlled by foreign
capital from the developing world. Bauxite is controlled by firms from China and Russia, and
timber is controlled by firms from China, Malaysia, and India. They are part of a pattern of
investment that Cheddi Jagan once championed as “South-South cooperation.” But there is
little reason to believe that these capitalist firms from the global South are any less
exploitative than “Northern” capitalists from the U.K., Canada, and the U.S.
From 2005 to 2010 bauxite output in Guyana increased by 68%. Most of this increase was
used to supply Chinese alumina refineries which currently import 45 million tons of bauxite
a year from around the world. Since 2004, the controlling interests in the bauxite mines at
Linden are owned by the Chinese company Bosai Minerals Group, and at Kwakwani they are
owned by the Russian Aluminium Company (RUSAL). In each case, the Government of
Guyana also owns a share in the operations. Since the arrival of the Chinese and Russian
firms, labour unions assert that workers have been increasingly exploited, and labour unrest
has increased (Canterbury 2014).
Conflicts between bauxite workers on the one hand, and corporate and government
interests on the other became particularly intense in Linden in 2012. Increases in electricity
rates for Linden residents led to protests which shut down the town and the bauxite
operations, with protestors also blocking off ground transport to the interior. During the
unrest, 3 protestors were shot and killed, and several others were injured, allegedly by the
police. These struggles brought mine workers in conflict with the government and the
bauxite companies, but as a result of protestors blocking the road to the interior, it also
brought the bauxite workers into conflict with those involved in the gold industry (workers,
owners and merchants) (ibid).
For the time being, bauxite mining does not take place on or near land that Amerindians
still occupy or use, and it does not employ a large percentage of Amerindian workers.
However, the recent disturbances at Linden are not the only example of how the bauxite
industry might affect life further in the interior. In her recent report on hydropower in
Guyana, Audrey Butt Colson (2013) noted that there are high quality bauxite deposits in
many areas of the Pakaraima Mountains. These deposits are remote enough that mining
them has not been viable in the past, but proposals to mine them may become more likely as
roads are developed in the Middle Mazaruni, and along the Potaro en route to Amaila Falls.
CARRICO 46
Amerindian areas would also be indirectly but dramatically affected by bauxite if the
hydropower projects are pursued. One of the major reasons for the hydropower projects,
since the first proposals in the 1970s, is to provide the energy that would be necessary for
aluminium smelting. This has long been a goal in Guyana because aluminium smelting would
mean value added to the primary resources extracted through bauxite mining, instead of
bauxite ore being sent to more industrialized countries for processing.
Foreign direct investment has increased significantly not only in bauxite mining, but also
in the timber industry. Timber concessions were opened up to foreign investors for the first
time in 1989 as part of the IMF supervised Structural Adjustment Programme. In 1991, the
Guyanese government issued seven new Timber Sale Agreements to foreign firms which
totalled 2.6 million hectares of land. Concessions to the majority of this land were given to
three large Malaysian firms: Samling, Prime Group, and Berjaya. These firms incorporated
nationally using names like “Barama Company” and “Demerara Timbers”—names that would
give the public the impression that they were locally owned companies. Since 1991, the total
area of land given in timber concessions to foreign firms has been several times the total
amount of land held as timber concessions by Guyanese nationals (Bulkan 2014).
Another wave of foreign investment came after 1997, this time mainly from Chinese firms
like Jaling, and Bai Shan Lin, and Indian firms like Vaitarna Holdings Private Inc. (VHPI), a
subsidiary of Coffee Day, Inc. whose interest is in timber for the production of high-end
furniture (Bulkan 2014; “Logs shipment” 2012). Malaysian, Chinese and Indian firms today
own timber concessions on 15.8 million hectares of land—on around one third of the total
area of all of Guyana’s public forests (Bulkan 2014).
When foreign direct investment returned in gold, and got under way in timber after 1991,
it quickly became obvious that the Government of Guyana did not have the capacity to
monitor and regulate extractive industries on this scale. Recognizing the problems that it had
in monitoring its own interior resources, the Guyanese state began to put a number of
regulatory measures into place. It strengthened the capacity of the Guyana Forestry
Commission, created an Environmental Protection Agency, established the Iwokrama
International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development, and adopted the
International Tropical Timber Organisation’s objective of sustainable forest management
(Forte 1998:143).
Despite the efforts which the Government of Guyana has made over the last two decades
towards developing an infrastructure that is adequate for managing its vast interior forests,
there remain serious deficiencies in the State’s ability to regulate timber and mining. Some of
these deficiencies were mentioned in the International Tropical Timber Organization’s
publication Status of Tropical Forest Management 2005 (International Tropical Timber
Organization 2006). The ITTO publication states that ‘few if any companies fully conform’ to
the Forestry Commission’s code of practices (241). The ITTO also states that ‘Amerindian
communities are afflicted by severe social and health problems, particularly in communities
adjacent to gold-mining and timber concessions’ (244, emphasis added).
Large-scale timber operations in Guyana portray themselves as having sustainable and
responsible practices, but even the companies that have been held up as examples of best
practices have consistently experienced problems. Barama Company, owned by the Chinese
transnational Samling Global, for example, called itself a pioneer in sustainable forestry, the
first company in Guyana to undergo Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. But in
January 2007, the FSC deemed Barama’s lack of compliance with Forestry regulations severe
enough to suspend its certification. Rather than conform to the FSC standards, Barama
instead sought alternative certification.
As they did historically, Amerindians form a large percentage of the workforce in timber
operations today. And as was often true in the past, labour relations in the industry are often
contentious. In August of 2007, for instance, workers at the Chinese owned Bai Shan Forestry
operation at Coomaka complained of low wages, unsafe working conditions, discrimination
against Guyanese workers, and even called the operations “a slave camp” (“Bai Shan Lin a
slave camp” 2007; Earle 2007).
Even Tigerwood Guyana, Incorporated (TGI), the company working with the Iwokrama
International Centre and nearby Amerindian villages to develop environmentally and socially
sustainable timber operations, has had its share of labour disputes. On 8 October, 2009, the
Guyana Chronicle reported that the ‘the Ministry of Labour represented two persons… in
charges against’ Tigerwood Guyana Incorporated. The Ministry of Labour’s statement
indicated that TGI:
failed to meet with the Ministry on several occasions and bail was set at $40,000 for
Anita Mohan, the company secretary. The matter was then moved to court and charges
were made for failure to give notice, failure to pay in lieu of notice, and failure to pay
severance allowance. The two employees were awarded $150,000 each (“Ministry
urges employers” 2009).
In addition to the foreign ownership of bauxite and large timber operations, Brazilian small-
and medium-scale mining has also proliferated throughout the country, and the road from
Brazil has facilitated an even greater influx of Brazilian miners, merchants, timber operators,
and other prospective capitalists.
Conclusion
Development in the late colonial era was characterized by the growth of capitalist extractive
industry in the interior. The colonial government also sought ways to regulate and reform
these industries, and ameliorate the social damage that they caused to Amerindian
communities. The postcolonial state inherited these contradictory goals from the British
colonial government.
During the Burnham era, the government sought state ownership of the commanding
heights of the economy, and encouraged the development of publicly and privately owned
national industry through policies of import substitution. While the Government of Guyana
conceived of its political and economic goals as “co-operative socialism” during this time,
Clive Thomas called Guyana’s path during the Burnham era “State Capitalism” – an economy
where a national capitalist class was formed through the capture of state power (1983;
1984).
For the interior, state capitalism meant the encouragement of national capital, in the form
of timber and mining concessions to businessmen with ties to the ruling People’s National
Congress, and the development of a “co-operative sector” that many Amerindians remember
as not having been very co-operative. The co-operative sector mining dredges of the Upper
Mazaruni, for example, were owned and managed by the Amerindian villages in theory, but
many Amerindians allege that they were run by PNC party loyalists, who also controlled the
use of the profits from these ventures.
In the years since the end of the Burnham era, from 1985 to the present, the Government
of Guyana has pursued a path of capitalist development that is dominated by foreign-owned
firms. Some of the foreign investments have come from the “Northern” countries, like
Canada, who had a strong presence during the late colonial era. But many more of these
investments have come from developing economies, especially from Asia.
CARRICO 48
The mining and timber sectors have expanded dramatically since the late 1980s and early
1990s, and have grown to many times their size during the colonial era. However, in
industries like timber and bauxite mining, very little of the economic benefit stays in Guyana.
Guyanese labourers occupy the lowest paid positions in Asian and Russian owned
companies, and they have unsafe working conditions and few rights. The main beneficiaries
of the new extractive economy seem to be the bureaucrats who negotiate the deals with
foreign investors. They offer cheap natural resources and ineffective industry regulations in
exchange for legal and illegal pay-offs from the foreign firms.
Unlike timber and bauxite, gold mining has remained largely under the control of
national capitalists. However, this is the sector that has caused the greatest amount of
environmental and social damage in Amerindian communities. While a great deal of wealth is
being created in gold mining, the majority of this wealth is controlled by a small number of
concession owners. These concession owners act as “landlords” over the industry, and
demand “tribute” from small- and medium-scale operators. They also collude with
bureaucrats who have captured the regulatory functions of the state and turned them into
instruments for their own personal enrichment (Bulkan and Palmer 2016).
In addition to the direct threats which extractive industries pose to the Amerindian
communities in Guyana, some communities still face the threat of displacement from the
proposed development of hydroelectric dams. Unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, however, the
Guyanese government not only seeks loans from Northern development banks like the World
Bank, but also is actively courting funding from sources like the Brazilian government and
the Chinese Development Bank. These funding sources are closely connected to foreign
capitalists with growing interests in Guyana, and they may be even less likely than the World
Bank to be influenced by political pressure from environmentalists and human rights groups.
With the recent announcement by Exxon of plans for deep sea oil drilling off of Guyana’s
Essequibo coast, the challenges that Guyana faces in dealing with extractive industries in its
national territory are likely to enter a new phase which has the potential of exacerbating
many of its current difficult challenges. Any socially and environmentally sustainable path of
development will necessarily include bringing Amerindian land and the industries that
operate on or near it under the collective ownership and control of the Amerindian people. It
will also need to involve bringing control of the bauxite industry into the hands of the bauxite
workers, and control of the Guyanese state into the hands of Guyana’s workers and
indigenous peoples.
Most importantly, sustainable development will need to involve Guyanese workers from
all sectors and from all backgrounds acting in solidarity with one another rather than in
solidarity with elites of their own race. Guyanese are quite capable of this kind of collective
action, as shown repeatedly in the past: during the early trade union movement, in the early
PPP prior to the Jagan/Burnham split, and during the anti-dictatorial struggles of the
Burnham era. If Guyanese cannot find a way to develop this solidarity again, the future will
be one of successful divide-and-rule strategies pursued by its new colonial masters.
Footnotes
1 A portion of the ethnographic fieldwork that informs this article was conducted in the Upper
Mazaruni in 2001-2002, and was funded by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research. Additional fieldwork was conducted in Guyana from 2008-2011 when
the author was a Lecturer at the University of Guyana.
2 The term “Amerindian” is used in this article because it was both the official term used by the state,
and a term by which most of Guyana’s indigenous population self-identified during the late colonial
and postcolonial eras, the eras discussed in this article. In 2015, however, the official terminology
was changed to “Indigenous Peoples.”
3 Archaeologists Louisa Daggers and Mark Plew draw attention to the long-term sustainability of the
Proto-Warao extractive economy in a current project which examines the Proto-Warao diet as part
of a “low carbon way of life.”
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52
REPORT
Archaeological Survey of the Aishalton Complex

South Rupununi Guyana
LOUISA DAGGERS1, GERARD PEREIRA2, MINTIE PITAMBER3

1
University of Guyana, 2Karanambu Ranch, North Rupununi Guyana, 3Walter Roth Museum of
Anthropology
Abstract
The open-air petroglyphs of Aishalton were created over a period of five thousand years
leading up to our historic era, making these human renderings absolutely invaluable. Follow-
ing Williams’ (1979) first documentation of the Aishalton Complex, a survey was conducted
to identify sites previously documented and to create a detailed map of the landscape; in ad-
dition this report details the current status of the complex and addressees panel deteriora-
tion and other impacts sustained by the petroglyphs over the last three decades, as part of a
larger management approach to the complex. Three of the sites mentioned are newly discov-
ered within the complex. General observations of vegetation, exfoliation, and community in-
teraction with the landscape were made, and we recommend that a systematic documenta-
tion of motifs and a comprehensive condition assessment of the site be done. Key panels
should be targeted for immediate conservation works.
KEYWORDS: Petroglyphs, Conservation, Cultural Landscape, Motifs
Background and Introduction

The Rupununi savannah was “identified by a range of chipped stone tools including projectile
points (Evans and Meggers 1960; Roth 1929; Williams 1978), and features which include
rock alignments (Brown 1877; Henderson 1952), rock circles (Brown 1873; Henderson
1952) and rock piles (Henderson 1952). The region is also characterized by the presence of
pollisoirs and petroglyphs. Early explorers to the area noted petroglyphs in the north Savan-
nahs (Hortsmann and Tollenaer in Harris and Villiers 1911) while additional glyphs have
been described by Brown (1877) on the Kwitaro. Petroglyphs have also been reported by
Dubelaar and Berrange (1979), Hanif (1967), Poonai (1970), and Goodland (1976) at Aishal-
ton and at Shiriri Mountain (Plew and Pereira 2001). Most notable are the extensive studies
by Denis Williams of the rock art at Aishalton (Williams 1979a) and on the Essequibo and
DAGGERS, PEREIRA, PITAMBER 54
Kassikaityu Rivers (Williams 1979b, 1985b) where he proposes a role for petroglyphs in
fisheries management” (Plew et al., 2014).
Although reported on by most explorers of the Rupununi savannahs, first recorded by
(Williams 1979, 1985) a total of 1000 petroglyph elements and 150 pictographs were report-
ed by Williams (2004). Dubelaar (1986) was among the first scholarly works on petroglyphs
published on South America and the Caribbean. Williams, however, systematically investigat-
ed the Aishalton petroglyphs in the late 1970s. During his survey he reported over 30 sites
ranging from (S1 to S30) with some 686 individual elements found on scattered boulders in
the savannah, on top of Makatau and within the Makatau cave system. The petroglyphs were
found to consist of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, phytomorphic, and geometric representa-
tions. Especially common are numerous dots (punctate) and furrows in combination with
geometric, anthropomorphic, and zoomorphic elements (Daggers et al., 2016). Pictographic
rock art has been archaeologically reported in the Rupununi consisting of motifs not com-
mon in petroglyphic panels of Aishalton (Williams 1979a) and of the Essequibo and Kassikai-
tyu Rivers (Williams 1979b, 1985b). The exceptions are Brown (1877) and Baldwin’s (1946)
passing reference to painted figures. The Shiriri cemetery pictographs consist of red painted
lines and dots which appear to be grouped together and a fairly large panel of connected dia-
mond motifs just above the floor of the shelter. Diamond motifs of the type at Shiriri are not
common in the Rupununi area. Plew and Saras (2008) reported pictographic rock art in Shul-
inab which they associate with entoptic hallucination. Plew and Pereira (2010) also reported
red and black pictographic rock art in the Shea Mountain Rockshelter; however, they were
not associated with burials. Though Williams (1979a:22-24) describes two small isolated
motifs at Makatau Cave to the south, the motif is clearly insignificant in its presence in the
Aishalton style (Plew, Pereira and Daggers 2014).
The manufacture of Aishalton elements utilized a broad line with a deep groove method
of engraving. The glyphs were engraved using stone scribes, gouges, groovers, and polishers.
A total of 84 stone tools were discovered by Williams (1979) that were used in the produc-
tion of the glyphs, and they were discovered in excavations around the edges of three petro-
glyph boulders including site S22 and S23 within the Ketenairon Savannah. This was the first
time that such tools have been recovered in Guyana (Plew and Pereira 2001).
Geographical Overview of the Landscape

At 57,000 sq km (22,000 sq miles), Region No. 9, also known as the Rupununi Savannah, ac-
counts for nearly half of the national territory of Guyana and remains relatively unexplored
(see Evans and Meggers 1960; Williams 1979a, 1985a; Plew 2005; Plew et al. 2014). The
South Rupununi accounts for a total of 2,800 sq miles of the Rupununi Savannah. This area
lies south of the Kanuku Mountains and east of the Takutu River. The savannah forest
boundary is located approximately eight miles east of Aishalton where it is close to the Ru-
pununi and Takutu Rivers. A biogeographic area providing a seasonal connection between
two major South American river systems. The Rupununi portal—a part of the great savannah
of northern South America which is semi-arid with clusters of rainforest and swamp lands—
seasonally connects the Amazon River (via the Takutu-Branco-Negro Rivers) and the Esse-
quibo River. Due to the fact that the land area of the Rupununi is low and flat, what is known
as ‘hydrological imbalance’ occurs.
Titled land in Aishalton consists of approximately 28039 ha of forest and savanna
(project Fauna 2013) which contribute to the economic development and livelihood needs of
its community members. A large portion of the territory is used for hunting, community
Archaeological Survey of the Aishalton Complex South Rupununi Guyana 55
farms, and harvesting of fruits and balata for personal and production purposes. Three km
from the village of Aishalton lies Makatau Mountain, a prominent local inselburg feature.
Found in this setting is one of the best known archaeological localities in Guyana (Figure 1).
The semi-arid savannah landscape of Aishalton is comprised of small-to-medium vegeta-
tion including Curatella americana, Casearia sylvestris, Himatanthus articulatus, Byrsonima
crassifolia, Attalea maripa, Mauritia flexuosa, Byrsonima verbascifolia, Amasonia campestris,
Psidium sp., Psidium guineense, Indigofera lespedezioides, Tibouchina aspera, Heliconia psit-
tacorum, Trachypogon spicatus, and Bulbostylis junciformis are among the dominant vegeta-
tion.
Note: A small area within the petroglyph complex itself is currently being utilized by the
local people for farming, grazing of cattle, and pig rearing. The settlement occupies a small
portion of the titled land while the main access road to the community also serves as the ac-
cess road to the newly established mining area Marudi Mountain, originally a part of the
Wapishana Extension territory (Figure 1).
Fig. 1. Map showing general location of the Aishalton Complex.
Methods
The site numbers discussed in this report were developed by Williams and published in his
1979 paper. These numbers were maintained throughout this survey for the purpose of con-
sistency. In the absence of a map or GPS coordinates, ground-truthing was deemed necessary
to relocate sites and to facilitate documentation and mapping. As a result of limited docu-
mentation of the geographic landscape and mapping, a site map was created utilizing a Gar-
min 620t Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to record waypoints. Digital cameras were used
for the purpose of photographic documentation of the petroglyphs and the associated envi-
ronment. Scales and tape measures were utilized during photography.
STP procedures were followed during the survey at S25; this was the only invasive meth-
od used during the site survey. Five STPS were established using one meter transects around
the base of the boulder in an attempt to recover artifacts employed in the manufacturing of
petroglyphs as reported by Williams during his survey. Standard documentation procedures

were followed when recording newly discovered sites. Measurements were taken for newly
discovered petroglyphs for the purpose of documentation and the depth of punctates were
recorded.
General observation was involved for the assessment of fishers and weathering process-
es of the sites. Observation of vegetation in the immediate environment of the site was made
and a list of plants found within the immediate vicinity was compiled.
Context
Based on previous comparisons with similar rock art styles in North America and the Carib-
bean, Williams (1979) created a relative chronology of the Aishalton petroglyphs which
dates the sites between 5000 to 3000 years B.P. Williams (1979) posits a system of enumer-
ation was developed to function as a conservation response to resource exploitation, a con-
cept alluded to by Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976) and Williams (1978).
According to Williams (1979) and Dubalaar (1986), the motifs associated with the
Aishalton Petroglyphs was categorized under the Enumerative typology. According to Wil-
liams these motifs have a wider distribution outside of the Caribbean and can be found in
countries including Brazil and Bahamas, Cuba and California. These motifs are of two kinds—
(a) Geometric and (b) Biomorphic.
The dating of the Aishalton Complex was done using comparative analysis of a punctuat-
ed boulder located within the complex. Using estimated dates from a similar site in Califor-
nia, a relative date was given for the Aishalton Complex. Several similar boulders have been
recorded and reported in the Caribbean and Central and South America to date (Fritot 1939;
Cruxent 1971; Kennedy 1970; Kirby 1976; Oliver 1973; Williams 1979; and Dubular 1986).
Known studies in the Caribbean and South America have attempted to provide a holistic
understanding of what these unique sites mean and/or represent; however, over the years
researchers have suggested various ways, theories, and ways in which one can adapt and ap-
ply the understanding to petroglyphs.
Williams 1979 attempted to categorize the Aishalton or Enumerative-type petroglyphs
by arguing that the type of petroglyphs at Aishalton reflects a system of enumeration com-
mon among hunter-gatherer people throughout the Americas. This system involves different
combinations and directional orientations of motifs indicating the location of raw materials,
and the range of edible plants and animals that were ‘harvested.’ In other words, the mo-
tifs— through a sequential reading of combinations of elements—signpost the presence of
specific resources and the amounts harvested in different areas, though the petroglyphs are
also likely to be associated with shamanistic rituals and may well have been produced by
shaman. The extensive nature of the motifs at Aishalton would seem to indicate that their
manufacture occurred over a number of individual events, and over the course of many
years. This also suggests that this particular area may have had ritualistic importance to the
people who engraved them (Plew and Pereira 2001).
Results
Following the records of Williams (1979) and Dubalaar (1986), the survey focused on reas-
sessing the site to determine its integrity, the impacts of weathering and human activities on
the complex over time. The Aishalton Petroglyphs discussed in this report are situated within
three savannahs within the boundaries of Aishalton: Makatau Savannah which includes Ma-
katau Mountain, Ketenairon Savannah, and the Eastern Savannah.
A total of three new sites 1X-1:90 = (S31), IX-1:91 = (S32), and 1X-1:92 = (S33) were rec-
orded within the complex, while site S7, which was mentioned by Williams but never located,
was located and documented (Figure 1).
Condition of the Rock Art

Several plant species located within rock spaces include Curatella americana, cactus, and
grasses. The presence of termite nests and leaf litter are lodged within existing fissures on
boulders with petroglyphic works. There are lichen spots and fungi present on approximate-
ly 60% of boulders within the complex; in 40% of such cases identical spots are present on
the shrubs found within fissures and or within close proximity to the outcrops. Reddish-
brown discoloration was noted at the periphery of several boulders within the landscape.
Cracking is evident on boulders within the complex. One third of all sites possess large visible
fissures ranging between 2 inches to 1.7 meters wide. Massive exfoliation is evident within
the Ketenairon Savannah and the Eastern Savannah, respectively. Entire rock surfaces are
eroded for 20% of the sites as a result of increased exfoliation. Several sites were not relocat-
ed. In the case of S24—the initial survey by Williams (1978)—noted that the site was com-
prised of 15 petroglyphs; however, a recent survey identified a total of seven partially visible
petroglyphs on the northern and western face of the boulder. An additional anthropo-
morphic, partially completed petroglyph motif was documented on the southeastern crown
of the boulder partially covered by a sand paper tree (Figure 2).
Petroglyphs grooves are heavily eroded as a result of direct sunlight and alternating rain-
fall experienced within the savannah-type environment. Human activities within the Aishal-
ton cultural landscape include the onset of savannah fires and cattle grazing, which have con-
tributed, to a lesser extent, rock surface erosion. Punctates are predominantly evident in the
Makatau Savannah, and 40% of sites bearing these motifs are heavily eroded and partially
Fig. 2. The Aishalton type petroglyphs display phytomorphic, anthropomorphic, geometric, and punctuate designs.
Fig. 3. Geometric motifs.
visible, while 25% of the sites are defaced by graffiti images which include cartoon charac-
ters, initials of names, and anthropomorphic patterns. These images are engraved using
sharp instruments, chalk, and/or paint within the immediate Makatau Savannah and Ma-
katau Mountain. Site S6 provides a general indication of the degree of ongoing modification
that petroglyph motifs within this area are subjected to, comparing the existing motif with
previous documentation by Dubalaar (1986) and Williams (1979), which suggests the cur-
rent glyph has been modified at the crest.
Water systems are prevalent within the Eastern Savannah landscape, and as a result a
small number of glyphs are situated closer to water sources, particularly S19. Placement of
the glyphs just above the surface resulted in the motifs being inundated with water in the
rainy season (spends a part of its life under water) and this has fostered some degree of veg-
etation cover during the dry periods and exfoliation. It was noted that pollisoirs were docu-
mented within close proximity of this site. Following the rationale of Williams (1978), four
shovel test pits were dug using one meter transects; however, petroglyph manufacturing ar-
tifacts were not recovered.
The Makatau Mountain cave systems that contain petroglyphs present a very different
situation. A collection of five sites were identified during this survey and are composed of
coarse sandstone, a very uneven soft surface. As a result of the sandy texture and the percola-
tion of water into the walls of the caves, erosion and fungi are evident on portions of the pet-
roglyph panels on at least four sites. In some cases there are fissures separating the petro-
glyph motifs. To a minimal extent sunlight penetrates into these caves; lianas/vines are pre-
sent on the face of the sites, including leaf litter. Water penetration during the rainy season
seems to be the contributing factor to the wear of the petroglyphs. This has also influenced
the colour of the rock surface sites within Makatau Mountain, which displays evidence of
chemical weathering as collection of clay-like materials are accumulated at the base of the
panels. A replica of these sites (S12 and S13) were produced in the 1970s using plaster. Dur-
ing this survey the team attempted to replicate parts of the site; this was minimal consider-
ing its fragility. Plastic tracing technique was employed at the site to replicate the petroglyph.
Length of Panel imposition of S10 (395 cm or 155inches)
Length of Panel imposition of S12 (411 cm or 161inches)
Length of Panel imposition of S16 (231 cm or 90 inches)
Fig. 4. Petroglyphs at Makatau Mountain.
Recent Discoveries within the Complex

Site S31: Geometric Motif
A small outcrop is located 53 meters NE of S22 and S23 in Ketenairon. The boulder surface is
extremely exfoliated, and has a thin layer of fungi. Grasses and small plants including sandpa-
per tree (Curatella americana) are currently within the boulder’s immediate surroundings.
Rock particles are visible in the immediate surrounding of the site as a result of the rate of
exfoliation. It is believed that parts of the petroglyph may have eroded. At the point of exami-
nation the grooves of the petroglyph were raised but signs of erosion is apparent on several
of the vertical lines.
Site S32: Geometric Motif
This site is located in Ketenairon, on an isolated boulder several meters away from S27. The
petroglyph on this site is only visible in shade or during sunset from a SW angle. Approxi-
mately 25% of the rock surface was exfoliated. Eroded patches around the boulder are pre-
sent; this seems to be caused mostly by water action. Lichen spotting is present on the boul-
der (Figures 5 and 6).
Fig. 5. Geometric motif at Site S32.
Fig. 6. Image and dimensions of petroglyph recorded at Site S32.

Site S33: Geometric and Punctates

No. of Petroglyphs recorded: Four (4)
This site is located in the Eastern Savannah, 30 minutes’ walk from S19. The boulder is par-
tially covered by shrub forest, and the remaining is exposed to the savannah environment
and has leaf litter accumulated in the crevices and fissures, and at the base. A white residue is
present on the crown of the boulder while most of the boulder is also covered in fungi and
lichen spots. There is massive exfoliation occurring in the Eastern Savannah, and this site is
no different. Erosion is present, the grooves of the petroglyphs are heavily eroded. Three (3)
of the motifs are arranged on the southwestern face of the boulder while Motif No. 4 is situat-
ed on the western crown of the boulder. This motif is visible only from the western angle
(Figure 7). It was identified on a gloomy day.
Fig. 7. Four images and dimensions of geometric petroglyphs located at Site S33.
During this survey several sites were not relocated including S15, S17, S18, S20 and S21,
S28, S29, S30. A large number of sites were subjected to extreme weathering and exfoliation
over time and no longer exist within the landscape today. Some sites are believed to be with-
in the borders of Brazil at the time of the survey, and permission was not sought from the
Brazilian government. All sites previously surveyed were chalked and this practice was not
reinforced during this exercise.
Distribution of Petroglyphs within the Landscape

According to Anati (1994) the physical characteristic of a particular site generally influenced
the production of petroglyphs and it functions. This view was further supported by Hays Gil-
pin (2004). It is believed that rock art shaped the landscape and encodes it with meaning.
These meanings are hidden long after the population that made them would have moved on
or have gone, leaving them behind to be studied in the spatial and relationship context
(Hayward et al., 2009).
Petitjean Roget (1997) suggests that “primitive art seeks to communicate a message, thus
rock art is more than just a visual imagery; it is a reflection of the artist worldview.” This is
further supported by Anati (1994) who believes that petroglyphs are a reflection of abstrac-
tion, synthesis, and idealization and it illustrates beliefs and practices unique to the intellec-
tual life and cultural patterns of man.
Below are a series of visual frequency distributions of the presence and absence of five
categories of motifs distributed throughout the Aishalton Complex (Figure 8). This diagram
does not provide the full picture as it relates to the quantitative number of a specific motif on
any given site, but instead simply indicates whether a category is represented at the site. Di-
amond-like motifs documented in the southern cave (Site S11) were not included in the fre-
quency distribution, as these are not typical to the Aishalton landscape and are only repre-
sented by two small glyphs (see Plew 2011 and Williams 1979a).
The addition of S31, S32, and S33 and the inclusion of two additional forms of motifs
from S7 and S24 speaks to the density of the complex and the cultural interaction within the
landscape. In the case of S33, located in the Eastern Savannah within the hunting territory of
the Wapishana people, this site was discovered by a hunter during his routine hunting activi-
ties.
It was noted that a number of motifs situated in the Southeastern and Eastern Savannah
are strategically designed to be identified during specific times of the day or at varying light-
ing intensity. They uniquely encode and shape the landscape many years after they were cre-
ated, leaving a vast open space full of life and hidden meaning that may never be interpreted.
Although many meanings and interpretations have not been assigned to the Aishalton
site, there are many fundamental values which connect the community to the petroglyphs.
Fig. 8. Chart illustrating the types of motifs represented in Makatau Savannah.

Fig. 9. Chart illustrating the types of motifs represented on Makatau Mountain.
Fig. 10. Chart illustrating the types of motifs represented in Ketenairon Savannah.
Fig. 11. Chart illustrating the types of motifs represented in the Eastern Savannah.
Discussion
“Unlike Historic monuments that are usually subjected to religion and politics, Pre-Historic
monuments are not captive to political, ethnic or religious clarifications, they are elements
likely to unify rather than divide a people” (Bednarik 2015).
The Aishalton Petroglyphs Complex represents a unique geographic and cultural land-
scape in the South Savannah, a landscape that is still active and alive as the population of
Aishalton constantly interacts with its surrounding on a regular basis for either recreation or
subsistence. These interactions add value to the site, as alluded to by Bednarik (2011), and
there are no reliable informants who might be able to tell us the meaning of the paleo art. But
the populations that interact with such environments may have some level of meaning or add
value to such art.
The complex contains elements which express its Outstanding Universal Value. The in-
scribed property includes elaborate engravings, which document and provide the most com-
plete evidence of prehistoric customs and mentality. The general state of conservation of the
rock surfaces and the visibility of the rock art images is good. Inherent aspects of these sites
in the context of an open air museum are responsible for its vulnerability, for instance, due to
the exposure of the rock and engravings to atmospheric and climatic factors, the presence of
vegetation and the possible damage caused by pollution, exfoliation, or direct human interac-
tion.
In the context of conservation, the identification of one or two single sites or boulders for
conservation or protection is impossible, as this massive complex is composed of approxi-
mately 33 known and newly documented sites with over 693 elements all unique to the
Aishalton landscape and possessing very different but significant values. According to Wil-
liams (1985), the distribution of these petroglyph types resulted from migrations of archaic
populations southwards from North America when conditions permitted. In the writing of
Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976), he refers to the indigenous Amazonian landscape as being natural
but he further noted that it is perceived as “man-made” by the Tukano. The indigenous popu-
lations viewed the environment as being modified by their ancestors imbued with symbolic
and meanings which provides a time perspective in understanding the environment.
Anati (1994) noted that the physical landscape may influence the types of petroglyphs
produced and their functions, applying this theory to the Aishalton Complex with reference
to the density and uniformity of art forms across the landscape. This concept may warrant
consideration to better understand the nature of the site. In relation to the Makatau Moun-
tain, this site represents the expenditure of intense human energy over an extended period of
time, and such expenditure of energy may be worth noting as it suggests the importance of
the environment to its occupants and their lifeway.
Rock Art Management

‘Rocks are Alive’ is a slogan commonly misinterpreted but can acquire many meanings, as
these objects constitute the home for many insects, are a recreational facility for humans, and
they possess varying art forms that are either of spiritual or attachment values. Their ele-
ments are exposed to the natural environment but yet their meanings are hidden; in essence,
there is so much going on in and around a rock. It is inevitable that at some point it will dete-
riorate but the rate of deterioration depends significantly on its environment and treatment
over time.
Rock art management is an international obligation, one pointed out by a UNESCO decla-
ration concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage Article VI. In 2008
UNESCO acknowledged that the WHL was impaired and made modifications to acknowledge
and designate rock art and other archaeological sites on the WHL. Rock art protection varies
globally, ranging from exemplary treatment like the caves in France to no protection at all,
simply because many heritage organizations responsible for the management of these global
treasures do not understand their significance (Bednarik 2006).
Documentation is the first step towards understanding and preserving these fragile sites.
Documentation allows for public awareness and continued research. In many instances rock
art sites are rarely ever used by surrounding communities. In this case it occupies a shared
space among the indigenous community and there is room for public engagement and
knowledge sharing within the school system and also at the community level. However, con-
servation of a complex the magnitude of Aishalton require expertise, and relevant guidance,
and support from heritage organizations and the community involved.
Conclusion
The petroglyphs of Aishalton constitute extraordinary figurative documentation and crafts-
manship of its creator’s world view and creativity. This magnificent complex is believed to be
a representation of over five thousand years of conservation techniques and cosmology,
making these human renderings absolutely invaluable. Although systematic documentation
of the site was conducted, the Aishalton Complex remains open for continued scientific re-
search and interpretations which can contribute to our understanding of prehistory and eth-
nology adding to the Outstanding Universal Value of these sites. It is recognized that the in-
herent aspects of the property are responsible for its vulnerability, including the open air
nature of the complex which exposes the boulders to atmospheric, climatic another environ-
mental factors, when coupled with human interaction has contributed to the current state of
the complex. Based on findings from this survey, the team recognizes the need for urgent
conservation interventions as this is deemed necessary in order to maintain the integrity of
the petroglyphs and further the timely development of a site management plan.
Acknowledgments
The researchers would like to express a heart-felt thank you to the Walter Roth Museum of
Anthropology for funding this exercise and to the Amerindian Research Unit for making
available their expertise materials and equipment to conduct the survey. A special thank you
to Ms. Candaes Phillips for coordinating the logistics of the trip, Mr. Rene Edwards and the
management of Conservation International for pledging their full support for the project, Dr.
Mark Plew for his guidance, and Dr. Allison Stoll for her assistance in mapping. Finally, I
would like to express gratitude to the community of Aishalton for taking the initiative to lead
the way in cultural heritage preservation of this unique archaeological site, and for hosting
the team and providing full support and dedication throughout the documentation process.
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REPORT
The Archaeology of the Piraka Shell Mound
MARK G. PLEW
Boise State University
Abstract
An early level of Piraka shell mound is radiocarbon dated at 7,000 B.P. As such, it is the earli-
est shell midden in Northwest Guyana. The site, which was investigated by Denis Williams in
1987, produced a material assemblage similar to those of other shell mounds. In contrast,
the excavation recovered the remains of 18 individuals that include four adult males, two
adult females, one of which was of advanced age (<50 years old), six sub-adult females, five
infants, and one individual of indeterminate age. Preferential treatment of the dead was sug-
gested by a number of the remains covered with vermicularite.
KEYWORDS: Piraka, Northwest Guyana, Shell Midden, Burials
Introduction
Unique within the Guianas (Rostain 2008), the coastal plain of northwestern Guyana is char-
acterized by a number of Early to Middle Holocene-age shell mounds (Figure 1). The mounds,
which are accumulations of shell refuse, served as living areas and as places for burials. Com-
mon to the archaeological assemblages recovered from mounds are chipped and ground-
stone artifacts that form the basis of Evans and Meggers’ (1960) description of the so-called
Alaka Phase which they originally dated between 1950 and 1450 B.P. Radiocarbon dates,
however, indicate pre-ceramic occupations of a number of shell midden deposits as early as
ca. 7300 B.P. (Williams 1981, 1998, 2004; Plew and Willson 2010). Sites of the Alaka include
among others Kaniaballi, Alaka Creek and Alaka Island on Warapoco Creek, Hososoro Creek,
Barabina, Akawabi, Piraka, and the Waramuri and Wyva Creek mounds. A number of mound
excavations remain unreported (see Figure 1).
In 1987, Denis Williams conducted test excavations at the Piraka shell mound. Like many
of the mounds in the northwest, Piraka had been previously visited—most notably by Im
Thurn (1888). The Piraka shell mound is located on a sandy knoll along a bend of Marabunta
PLEW 70
Fig. 1. Map showing general location of shell mound sites mentioned in text: 1. Barabina, 2. Hosororo Creek, 3.
Piraka, 4. Kabakaburi, 5. Siriki, 6. Wyva Creek.
Creek, a tributary of Tapai Creek on the left bank of the Pomeroon River approximately 4 km
upriver from Kabakaburi. The site is located some 2 km north of the river across a swamp
created by a confluence of Piraka and Tapai Creeks.
The site appears to be situated some 20 meters above high water level. It measures
approximately 17 x 15 x 1.8 meters and is generally conical in form. The north end of the
mound exhibits a large and rather deep depression (3 x 4 m) which appears to represent a
previous excavation of the mound. Williams (1987) believed that this might be Im Thurn’s
excavation though it remains possible that other non-systematic excavation of the mound
may have occurred. A more recent visit (Plew 2007) observed what appeared to be recent
excavations in the mound. It was not clear as to whether this represents vandalism or, as is
more likely, the removal of shell for commercial purposes.
The Archaeology of the Piraka Shell Mound 71
Fig. 2. Piraka mound during 2007 visit. Students are looking into excavated pit that Williams
thought might represent Im Thurn’s excavation.
Fig. 3. Plan map of Piraka mound showing location of excavation units.

PLEW 72
Methods
Williams (1987) excavated four 2 x 2 meter test pits on the south end of the mound. The
Units numbered 1-4 (see Figure 2) were excavated in arbitrary 20 cm levels. Carbon samples
were labeled as C-1 and C-2, while burials were labeled BP in order of recovery. Materials
were sorted but not screened.
Unit Descriptions
Unit I
Level 1: 0-20 cm
Netrite remains occurred at 2 cm
below surface in dark humic soil.
Materials were heavily charred
with considerable charcoal pre-
sent. Large numbers of boiling
stones were noted as was the shaft
of a ground stone axe, clam shell
fragments, and a few unidentifiable
mammal remains. Two human bur-
ials emerged at the 20 cm level. Fig. 4. A-D—hearth areas and rocks, Level 1, 0-20 cm below datum.
Fig. 5. Burial locations, Unit 1, 20-60 cm below datum.

Level 2: 20-40 cm
Burials BP 7 and BP 9 were completely excavated though heavily cemented within the con-
text. Though few tools were recovered numerous boiling stones were present.
Level 3: 40-60 cm
A few bones associated with an additional burial, BP 13 was encountered at about 60 cm be-
low surface at approximately 1.9 meters east and 70 cm north of the southeast corner of the
unit. Burial BP 13 appears at 60 cm below surface at 1.0 meters east of the west wall and 60
cm north of the south wall of the unit. It appears that the burials were partially cremated.
Burnt pebbles and boiling stones appeared in the level. The level contains netrites and clam
shells though not in abundance.
Level 4: 60-80 cm
Burial BP 13 extended to 80 cm below surface. A “gold” deposit was recovered near the cra-
nium in a matrix of white sand. Burial BP 10 was contained within the 60-75 cm level. Both
burials exhibited extensive charring and numerous post-cranial fractures. Faunal remains
included two jaguar teeth, a bird beak, and assorted fish bones. Clam shells were common
within the level.
Level 5: 80-100 cm
A burial was recovered in this level. The bones were in poor condition and appear to have
been cremated. “Gold” dust covers the bones.
Level 6: 100-120 cm
Boiling stones, clam shells, and an unidentified land mammal were recovered.
Level 7: 120-140 cm
Boiling stones and clam shells.
Level 8: 140-160 cm
This is the basal stratum of the mound. A sterile grey sand is encountered at 160 bpd. Cul-
tural and ecofactual materials are few in number. Clam shells and boiling stones are present
though no artifacts were recovered.
Table 1. Frequency Distribution of Artifact Types Recovered from Unit 1
Artifact Level Artifact Number Measurements Material
Axe 0-20 cm 1165 7 x 6.5 x 2.5 cm Unknown
Knife 0-20 cm 1164 2.5 x 1.5 x 0.5 cm Quartz
Scraper 0-20 cm 1163 7 x 4.5 x 1.5 cm Quartz
Gorge 20-40 ( 35cm) 1166 7.5 x 5.0 x 2.5 cm Quartz

PLEW 74
Unit 2
Level 1: 2-20 cm
The uppermost level of Unit 2 consists of
heavy vegetation and humus. Within the
upper 16 cm are numerous boiling stones
and quartz chips. A fragmentary adz was
recovered between 16 and 20 cm bpd
within a hearth area yielding some char-
coal. Clam shells were present suggesting
a brackish environment. Four hearth are-
as were encountered. The hearths range
in size from 30-60 cm in diameter and
consist of a core area of partially charred
shells surrounded by an area of less inten- Fig. 6. Location of burial at 60 cm below datum. A-G are
sively burned shell and grey ash around
the peripheries of the features. Within the ash were contained 1-2 cm in length pieces of
charcoal. One hearth (B) contained a very white-colored ash. Associated with the hearth
were areas of heterogeneous piles of small pebbles. One feature contained 20-30, whereas
another contained 27. A number of the pebbles appeared to be thermally altered. Williams
(1987) interprets the pebbles to be boiling stones.
Level 2: 20-40 cm
Soil remains humus-rich with extensive netrite remains. The level contained 503 boiling
stones and numerous flakes. An elongated water-worn cobble was recovered from the level.
Level 3: 40-60 cm
This level contained extensive netrite remains. At approximately 50 cm bpd the highly frag-
mented remains of an infant (BP-1) were recovered. Though badly deteriorated the remnant
of a vaulted cranium was collected. A second burial (BP-2) appeared at the 50 cm level in the
northeast corner of the unit. The burial is situated within an area that appears burned and
contains ash. A third burial (BP-3) described as the cranial vault of an infant was recovered
beneath the other two burials at a depth of about 60 cm.
Table 2. Frequency Distribution of Artifactual Materials Recovered From Unit 2
Maximum Diam-
Spall 0-20 cm 1174 Unknown
eter-4 cm
Side Scraper 0-20 cm 1173 3.5 x 1.2 cm Quartz
Axe Fragment
0-20 cm 1172 6 x 7 x 3 cm Unknown
(shaft)
Maximum Diam-
Whetstone 20-40 cm 1175 Unknown
eter-8.0 cm
Utilized Cobble 20-40 cm 1176 36 x 5 x 3.5 cm Quartz
Level 4: 60-80 cm
An extensive netrite concentration extended into the level and contained numerous charred
pebbles. Small fragments of human bone extend into this level. Williams (1987) suggests that
individuals were cremated in the surrounding forest and their remains interred within the
mound. The northeast corner of the unit contains what Williams refers to as “consolidated”
ash and an area of intrusive sand. In the southwest corner of the unit there is a light scatter-
ing of “gold dust.”
Level 5: 80-100 cm
Areas of intense burning associated with extensive remains of clam and fish (gilracker).
Agouti remains were also recovered. A carbon sample was taken from the northwest corner
of the unit.
Level 6: 100-120 cm
Sand was encountered at approximately 120 cm bpd. Material culture included boiling
stones and quartz flakes. Fauna included the remains of netrites, clams, crabs, unidentified
fish, and turtle. Part of an unidentified bird beak was recovered near the 120 cm level.
Level 7: 120-140 cm
This unit contained three burials. The first (BP-4) was encountered at 120 cm below surface
in an area of intensive burning. Williams believed that burial remains had been cremated. BP
-4 is a cranium placed in an upright position—a position not common at Piraka or in other
shell mounds of the area. Two additional burials (BP-5 and BP-6) are in the southeast corner
of the unit. Netrites were extensive. Williams reports collapsing side walls.
Level 8: 140-160 cm
This level in the unit was “narrowed” to 1.5 x 1.5 meters to create a shelf for the unexcavated
burials. The level contained “hearth stones” and boiling stones. Soil color changed to light
tan.
Level 9: 160-180 cm
This level marked the end of the shell deposit at roughly 180 cm below datum. Light tan sed-
iment with some ash continues to two meters below surface with no cultural material pre-
sent.
Unit 3
Unit 3 was opened directly south of Unit 2 without balks as burials BP-6 and BP-8 were in-
truding into the north wall of the unit.
Level 1: 0-20 cm
Extensive netrite remains in dark humus which varies in surface depth between 20 and 40
cm. A ground stone axe and two whetstones were recovered at c. 20 cm in the northwest
corner of the unit as were fragments of human long bones (BP-11). Fragments of the remains
of two infants (BP-12 and BP-17) were encountered in the level. The fragmentary remains
were badly decomposed.
Level 2: 20-40 cm
Shell concentrations remain unchanged. “Abundant” boiling stones and what Williams refers
to as “heating stones” are present. The remains of a cremated infant (BP-14) were recovered
PLEW 76
from the north wall of the unit at c. 40 cm below surface.

Level 3: 40-60 cm
“Conditions unchanged; universal charring of the food refuse with artifactual remains.”
Level 4: 60-80 cm
“Universal charring; refuse unchanged.”
Level 5: 80-100 cm
“Conditions unchanged.” Clams and fish remains were recovered. Burial BP-8 was recovered
from this level. Williams reports the burial being associated with “gold dust.”
Level 6: 100-80 cm
“Conditions unchanged; refuse includes crab remains.”
Level 7: 120-140 cm
“Conditions unchanged: food refuse the same, no artifacts.”
Level 8: 140-160 cm
“The cultural deposit ends at 160 cm, overlying a grey sand in which a burial occurred”—BP-
15.
Table 3. Frequency Distribution Artifactual Materials Recovered from Unit 3
Scraper 0-20 cm 1166 2.7 x 1.5 x 0.8 cm Quartz

Parallel-Sided
0-20 cm 1167 17.5 x 10.5 x 5 cm Unknown
Axe
Parallel-Sided
0-20 cm 1168 19 x 7.5 x 5.5 cm Unknown
Adz
Parallel-Sided
0-20 cm 1169 15 x 11 x 5 cm Unknown
Adz
Whetstone 0-20 cm 1170 8.5 x 8.0 cm Unknown
Whetstone 0-20 cm 1171 8.0-7.5 cm Unknown
Unit 4
Unit 4 was opened with the primary intent of increasing the skeletal sample from Piraka. The
unit was excavated to sterile sediment by four excavators in one day. No skeletal or other
cultural remains were encountered. Williams believed this area to have been a “living” area.
Radiocarbon Dates
Williams obtained a single radiocarbon date from the lowest levels of the Piraka mound. This
date establishes Piraka as having the earliest occupation of all mound sites in northwestern
Guyana at 7280+/-100 B.P. (Beta 27055 ,Williams 2004). Williams (2004:77) suggests that
each 20 cm level represents c. 170 years in the history of the mounds’ formation. Two addi-
tional radiocarbon dates acquired from analysis of materials collected by Williams have been
recently reported for Piraka. A conven-
tional date of 6940+/-30 B.P. (Cal B.P.
7840 to 7690, Beta 449114) has been
reported for a level of 60-80 cm bpd
while an additional sample of charred
material from the 120-140 cm bpd level
has been dated 6920+/-30 B.P. (Cal B.P.
7830-7680, Beta-449115). Though the
age of the 60-80 cm level would be ex-
pected to be more recent, the date for
the 120-140 cm level approximates the
age originally obtained by Williams for
levels near the base of the mound.
Fig. 6. Frequency distribution of artifact types.
Material Culture
The material culture of Piraka includes a range of artifacts that are not entirely or commonly
characteristic of Alaka Phase sites which often include very simple quartz tools. A total of 16
artifacts were recovered from Piraka and include axes (n=3), adzes (n=3), knives (n=1),
scrapers (n=3), gorges (n=1), spall (n=1), utilized cobbles (n=1), and whetstones (n=3). Most
items with the exception of axes and adzes are made of quartz. Williams reports quartz flakes
Table 4. Vertical Distribution of Human Remains by Unit and Level
Unit Level (below pit datum) Number of Individuals
Unit 1 0-20 cm 1 sub-adult male

20-40 cm 1 sub-adult male
40-60 cm 1 child
80-100 cm 1 adult male
Unit 2 20-40 cm 1 child, estimated age of 6
40-60 cm 1 sub-adult female
60-80 cm 1 child
80-100 cm 1 infant, 1 adult
120-140 cm 2 adult females
Unit 2/3 60-80 cm 1 adult male
80-100 cm 1 sub-adult male
Unit 3 10-20 cm 1 adult male, 1 infant
20-40 cm 1 adult male
80-100 cm 1 infant
160-180 cm 1 infant
PLEW 78
occurring throughout the deposit. Williams also reports the recovery of small “boiling”
stones throughout the deposit with 503 in the uppermost levels of Unit 2.
Burials
The skeletal population was comprised of
four adult males, two adult females, one
of which was of advanced age (<50 years
old), six sub-adult females, five infants,
and one individual of indeterminate age.
Notably, remains were recovered from all
units except Unit 4 and at levels ranging
between 20-40 cm and 140-160 cm be-
low mound surface (see Table 4). Wil-
liams suggests that the life expectancy of
Fig. 7. Frequency of burials by age.
the Piraka population was probably on
the order of 28 years (Williams 2004:77). No information was obtained relating to develop-
mental arrests that reflect dietary deficiencies.
Faunal Remains
Piraka faunas consist primarily of invertebrate remains, specifically netrites and clams. The
densities varied significantly across levels and may reflect seasonal visits to the mound.
Crabs are present and are typically seasonal. Fish remains were relatively common with the
notable presence of gilracker bones. Mammalian remains include those of agouti. Two jaguar
teeth and a bird beak were excavated. Though agouti is represented in the prehistoric diet
breadth of the area it is not clear that the remains do not represent natural mortalities or
presence by the action of non-human predators.
Discussion
Piraka is a conical-shaped mound with accumulations of what are largely netrite remains
that began to accumulate around 7,000 years ago. In this regard it is the oldest of the Guya-
nese shell middens (Williams 2004). Only Wyva Creek has produced a radiocarbon date
(Plew and Willson 2010) of relatively comparable age. What remains undetermined is the
length of time over which the mound accumulated. Williams (2004) believed that each 20
cm level within the mound represented roughly 200 years of accumulation. He appears to
have viewed the use of the mound as continuous over time—its abandonment leading to the
use of the Kabakaburi location. While this could be the case, it is also possible that depending
upon availability of resources the location may have been utilized for shorter intervals dur-
ing which significant quantities accumulated. It seems likely that the mound was visited sea-
sonally over an extended period. Activities at Piraka appear to have been substantial as Wil-
liams (1987) describes the excavation of numerous fire hearths and burned areas character-
ized by red staining. His description of the features are quite similar to those described by Im
Thurn (1883), Plew, Willson and Simon (2007) at Kabakaburi and by Plew, Willson and Dag-
gers (2012) at Siriki shell mound. These areas are typically 30-40 cm in diameter but lack
specific forms. Williams also notes the presence of piles of rock (manuports) that were
brought to the mound and often surround or are located near fire hearths. The use is unclear
though they may have served as the heating stones (Williams 1987). Williams reported no
evidence of living surfaces or structures. At Siriki and Wyva Creek there is some evidence of
sediments having been brought onto the mound. These have been interpreted as possible
living floors.
The material culture of Piraka is characteristic of typical pre-ceramic Alaka Phase assem-
blages (Evans and Meggers 1960). As noted, 16 artifacts were recovered from Piraka. They
include axes (n=3), adzes (n=3), knives (n=1), scrapers (n=3), gorges (n=1), spall (n=1), uti-
lized cobbles (n=1), and whetstones (n=3). Most items with the exception of axes and adzes
are made of quartz. Williams reports quartz flakes occurring throughout the deposit but does
not provide a tally of the actual numbers. In addition, Williams reports the recovery of large
numbers of small “boiling” stones—these occurring throughout the deposit. These appear to
have been associated fire hearths and used in boiling or steaming of shellfish. The artifactual
assemblage in quantity is quite similar to the size of assemblages from Kabakaburi, Siriki,
and Wyva Creek though the latter two sites did not produce axes and adzes. At these sites
quartz flakes dominated the assemblages.
Excavations at Piraka documented an extensive presence of netrites as the primary food
source of the mound inhabitants. This was supplemented by the periodic use of clams, crabs,
and fish. At Kabakaburi (Plew, Willson and Simon 2007) the remains of very large fish were
recovered. It is not clear whether the fish remains from Piraka are from large species. Wil-
liams notes the recovery of a gilracker. No other species were identified. The remains of
agouti are present but constitute the only mammalian remains other than two jaguar teeth.
This is in contrast to both Kabakaburi and Siriki mounds where a number of mammals are
present (Plew, Willson and Simon 2007).
Perhaps the most interesting and important discovery at Piraka were the number of buri-
als recovered during excavation. The remains of 18 individuals were recovered at Piraka and
constitute the largest assemblage of human remains from any of the shell mounds. Nine indi-
viduals have been recovered from excavations at Siriki. The remains from Piraka include
adult males (n=4), sub-adult males (n=4), adult females (n=2), sub-adult females (n=1), chil-
dren under the age of six (n=3), infants (n=3), and one individual of indeterminate age. Re-
mains were recovered from all units expect Unit 4 and at levels ranging between 20-40 cm
and 140-160 cm below mound surface (see Table 4). As noted, Williams suggests that the life
expectancy of the Piraka population was probably on the order of 28 years (Williams
2004:77). No information is available that relates to ante- or postmortem injuries, patholo-
gies or to developmental arrests that reflect dietary deficiencies. In this regard, recent radio-
graphic analysis of long bones from Siriki (Streeter, Purcell and Jumonville 2012) found no
evidence of Harris lines or other indicators of diet-related stresses or ante- and postmortem
injuries. They do note the presence of excessive dental attrition and of osteoarthritis in one
individual. Williams (1993) describes the remains of 18 individuals from the Piraka mound
as having been “gilded” with vermicularite, an altered biotite having the appearance of gold.
This is correctly observed by Boomert (2001: 83-84) to be the only reported occurrence of
this treatment of dead in the Caribbean.
Note
This paper is based on field notes of Denis Williams. Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6 were re-drafted
from his original sketches.
PLEW 80
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82
REPORT
A Note on the Forts of the Rupununi in Southern

Guyana
GERARD PEREIRA
Karanambu Ranch, North Rupununi Guyana
Abstract
Remnants of Guyana’s British and Dutch colonial past are located in several parts of the
country. One such example is found in the north savannah of Region #9 (formerly known as
the Rupununi District) in the south of the country. This is the British fort known as Fort New
Guinea which is found at Quatata, a satellite community of the Makushi village of Yupukari.
However, unknown to most people is the fact that the Brazilians were also active in the Ru-
pununi to a limited extent. Their presence is proven by the fact that there is another fort or
look-out point located within sight of Fort New Guinea.
This report takes a brief look at what is known about both forts from written records,
local informants, and four visits made to the forts between the years 2000 and 2008. The
Dutch Fort/Trading Post Arinda is also looked at due to the important role it once played in
the upper Essequibo as a trading post, and evidence of the Dutch presence in the Rupununi
and southern Guyana.
KEYWORDS: Forts, Post Arinda, Fort New Guinea, Brazilian Garrison
The Europeans in the Rupununi

In a heavily forested country such as Guyana, rivers afforded the principle means of commu-
nication and transport, and thus were important trade routes. The most important of all
these riverine trade routes was the Essequibo, the largest river in Guyana, as it extended
right to the Amazon River. As such, the potential of this prehistoric trade route was not lost
on the early Dutch colonizers, who quickly realized that they needed to have an outpost lo-
cated on it in the strategic and remote southern part of Essequibo colony.
Dutch outposts were established for many reasons. These included the collection of trop-
ical export goods such as: Annatto (Bixa orellana), letterwood (Brosimum aubletii), crab oil
(from the nut of Carapa guianensis), balsam (Myroxylon balsamum), and chili pepper
PEREIRA 84
(Capsicum), as well as bartering for local foodstuffs (the importance of which cannot be un-
derestimated as the Dutch would never have been able to survive without it), the exploration
of neighbouring territory, the buying of Amerindian (Red) slaves, the tracking down of runa-
way African slaves, extension of Dutch territorial influence, and spying on the activities and
movements of both the Amerindians and neighbouring colonial powers; which in the case of
Post Arinda in the southern part of Essequibo colony was the Portuguese, and to a lesser ex-
tent the Spanish (Baldwin 1946; Barrington-Brown 1876; Burnette 1992; Dalton 1855).
Post Arinda was of further importance to the Dutch in their hunt for the legendary golden
city of El Dorado. When they failed to locate El Dorado, Post Arinda was later used as a stag-
ing area for expeditions to the west of the Rupununi River, where the fabled 'Crystal Moun-
tain' of the Amerindians, first seen by Englebert Pipersburg, was to be found. This mountain
in particular fascinated Governor Van’s Gravesande, who personally ordered his post holders
to relocate it and bring him back samples of the crystals.
Post Arinda was founded in the 18th Century at a time of Dutch expansion into the interi-
or of Guiana by the then Governor of Essequibo Colony, Laurens Storm Van’s Gravesande.
This outpost was originally established at the junction of the Essequibo and Siparuni Rivers
sometime between 1731-1737. It was then further advanced to the confluence of the Esse-
quibo and Rupununi Rivers, close to the present community of Apoteri. Later (most likely
around 1756) it was again moved further up the Essequibo River to Primus Inlet where an
important trail to both the Demerara and Berbice Rivers was located. This location was men-
tioned by both Don Antonio Santos, who traveled through that area in 1761, and Robert
Schomburgk, in 1835. It should be noted that Post Arinda was given its name in 1748 by
Van’s Gravesande himself (Dalton 1855; Webber 1931).
Local traditions in the north Rupununi state that the Dutch also had a limited presence
there. This was primarily because of trading opportunities with the Amerindians. However,
there was also the fact that the Pirara area is located at the confluence of the Essequibo and
Amazon watersheds. This situation occurs during the main rainy season (mid-May to mid-
August) when the surrounding low-lying savannah in this area is invaded by water spilling
over from both the Rupununi and Ireng Rivers. This condition which was noticed by the pre-
historic Amerindians, and later the Dutch, meant that it was possible to travel from the Gui-
ana coast down the Essequibo River to the Rupununi River, then onto Lake Amuku (the Lake
El Dorado of Sir Walter Raleigh). From there you could make your way to the Pirara River,
then onto the Ireng River, the Takuto River, the Rio Branco, the Rio Negro, and ultimately the
Amazon River (Webber 1931).
During the early dry season when the flood waters had subsided, boats from the Rio
Branco could only go as far as the Pirara River, while boats from the Essequibo River could
only go up the Rupununi River as far as the present community of Yupukari. This meant that
goods had to be carried from the Rupununi to the Pirara Rivers. Hence, the name, ‘Pirara por-
tage,’ that was given to this part of the trade route.
At the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 the British acquired all three of the Dutch South Ameri-
can colonies: Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice, which were later all united to form the new
colony of British Guiana in 1831. As the British mainly concentrated their efforts on the sugar
plantations on the coastal strip and mostly ignored the interior ‘jungle or bush’ regions, this
meant that the Dutch trading posts were not utilized to any great extent. When Governor
Carmichael Smyth abolished the office of Post Holders and Protectors of Indians on 20th Feb-
ruary, 1838, creating Superintendents of Rivers and Creeks of British Guiana, Post Arinda,
like many of the other Dutch trading posts was finally abandoned.
Brazilian and British Presence

The Portuguese, like the Spanish, had a dislike of the Dutch and so had their eyes on the Ru-
pununi area (the southern part of Essequibo Colony). This fact is confirmed by a secret meet-
ing between the Portuguese and Spanish in 1753 to discuss and plan how to expel the Dutch
from the South American mainland, and claim their Guiana Colonies. Despite the agreement
reached it should be noted that the Portuguese, and later the Brazilians, did not actively pur-
sue their claim like the Spanish and Venezuelans.
To prevent Dutch and Spanish access to the Amazon Basin, the Portuguese first estab-
lished the settlement of Manaus (1669) at the confluence of the Amazon and Rio Negro Riv-
ers, and later in 1775 both Boa Vista on the bank of the Rio Branco, and Fort Sao Joaquim at
the confluence of the Takutu and Uraricuera Rivers to reinforce this claim. Fort Sao Joaquim
was especially important as in 1775 a detachment of Spaniards from Nueva Guayana had
tried to establish a presence in that area.
When the British took over the Dutch Guiana colonies and unified them, the Brazilians
again started to take a keen interest in the Rupununi. This was especially so since the British
had opened up negotiations with the Venezuelans. Added to this was the fact that Robert
Schomburgk was marking out boundaries and had established an Anglican mission station
(1839) at Pirara village, next to Lake Amuku, on the Brazilian frontier. Thus, the Brazilians
finally decided that the time was ripe to press their claim to the Rupununi.
Realizing that the British had abandoned Post Arinda and that there was nobody to op-
pose them, the Brazilians sent soldiers to the Rupununi in 1839. They burned down the mis-
sion station at Pirara village and chased away the villagers. The pretext for this action being
that, Reverend Thomas Youd, the Anglican missionary based there was supposedly inciting
friendly Amerindians to leave Brazil and settle in British Guiana. However, more to the point
was the fact that Brazil is a Roman Catholic country and the mission at Pirara was Anglican,
which deeply offended the Brazilians. Reverend Youd for his part was obliged to abandon
Pirara village and temporarily re-settle at Uruwa Rapids on the Rupununi River, before final-
ly withdrawing to Waraputa Rapids on the Essequibo River.
When a small British military force of the 1st West Indian Regiment arrived on 14th Feb-
ruary, 1842, along with the Robert Schomburgk boundary expedition, they took over peace-
fully from the three lightly armed Brazilian soldiers they encountered. The British also estab-
lished Fort New Guinea to the south of Pirara village. However, after several month’s occupa-
tion, and amid rumors that eight thousand Brazilian soldiers were about to advance towards
the Rupununi, the British withdrew after reaching an agreement with the Brazilian govern-
ment. This withdrawal led to the Rupununi being declared neutral territory by both govern-
ments, which meant that no soldiers were allowed to operate in the disputed area. The result
of this action was that the Rupununi sank into general lawlessness. Order was only restored
after the boundary issue between the two countries was settled. Only then could authority in
the form of District Commissioners, Lands Officers, and Stipendiary Magistrates enter the
Rupununi (Riviere 2006; Roth 1953).
The brief occupation of the Pirara village area by Brazilian soldiers resulted in the estab-
lishment of a fort or look-out point on a Brazilian fazenda (ranch) on a hill located approxi-
mately one kilometer to the north-west of Fort New Guinea, this being an ideal spot for spy-
ing on the British. However, unlike the British fort, the Brazilian garrison was sub-divided
into two sections. The name of that fort or look-out point is unknown at present and conse-
quently it is hardly known to anyone outside of the region.
PEREIRA 86
Fort New Guinea

Site No. 1
Fort New Guinea is located at N03⁰38.307’ W059⁰27.925’ on a laterite hill (Figure 1). The
area of Fort New Guinea is approximately 48 x 48 meters. This consisted of a rectangular-
shaped raised area which was a possible wall foundation that was observed to be approxi-
mately one meter above ground level and two meters wide with a ditch positioned in front of
it.
Found within its confines was extensive evidence of cultural material which included
pieces of bottles (both old and new), Rupununi Phase clay pot shards, ceramic shards, and
pieces of clay smoking pipes. Also observed were several charred palm seeds. It should be
noted that a large hole was clearly observed near the eastern wall. According to one local in-
formant this hole was dug by members of an international volunteer organization (either Op-
eration Raleigh or Youth Challenge), who were looking for buried artifacts. Extensive cultural
material was observed in the surrounding area measuring approximately 100 x 100 meters.
It should be noted that on my fourth visit to this area in 2006 it was clear that visitors were
having a serious impact on this site as the cultural material observed was considerably less
than on my previous visits (Goodall 1977).
Fig. 1. Looking toward Fort New Guinea.

Brazilian Garrison
Site No. 2
Due north-west of Site No. 1 at N03⁰38.350’ W059⁰28.524’, approximately 1 km away, is evi-

dence of a former Brazilian garrison or look-out point (name unknown at present), located
on a laterite hill. The total area of cultural remains was approximately 300 x 300 meters. Site
No. 2 was not checked on my third or fourth visits to the area, so impact by visitors could not
be assessed.
Feature No. 1
A raised oval area which was a possible wall foundation that measured 11 x 20 meters, and
was approximately 30 cm above ground level and one meter across (Figure 2). No ditch was
evident. Cultural material noted within the confines of the wall foundation included: Ceramic
shards, Rupununi Phase clay pot shards, and pieces of bottles (both old and new). Extensive
cultural remains were noted outside the wall foundation, predominantly to the north, north-
west and east. A concrete cross, which was dated 1977, was also noted on the wall founda-
tion. A local informant claimed that it marked the tomb of the community’s first school teach-
er, while a second informant claimed that it marked the spot where the community had origi-
nally wanted to site their Primary School.
Fig. 2. Part of fort and wall foundation.
Feature No. 2
Located approximately 100 meters west of Feature 1. This is a large hole in the ground, ap-
proximately 2 x 2 x 2 meters, that was mostly covered over with small trees and shrubs. Cul-
tural material was noted along the path between Features 1 and 2, which included ceramic
shards, Rupununi Phase clay pot shards, and pieces of bottles (both old and new). An inform-
ant claimed that the hole was once the garrison’s ammunition store.
PEREIRA 88
Feature No. 3
Located approximately 200 meters to the west of Feature 1 was another raised oval area
which was a possible wall foundation that was approximately 30 cm above ground level and
one meter wide. The total area of Feature 3 (which resembled Feature 1) was 11 x 20 meters.
A ditch was located outside the north-western part of the wall foundation. Cultural material
was found both within Feature 3 and in the surrounding area. This consisted of ceramic
shards, Rupununi Phase clay pot shards, and pieces of bottles (both old and new). It should
be noted that the cultural remains found were not as prolific as around Feature 1 (which
overlooked Fort New Guinea).
Unconfirmed Reports
Local informants reported that up until the early 1980s part of the wreck of a large boat that
used to ply between this area and the Rio Branco could be seen sticking out of the bed of
nearby Lake Amuku. It was stated that the wreck could have been observed at extremely low
water level at the end of the dry season (March-April).
Yet another local report stated that there was once a small canal (location unknown at
present) that linked Lake Amuku with the savannah floodwater spilling over from the Ru-
pununi River. This canal was reportedly dug by the Dutch to facilitate travel between the two
watersheds during the rainy season. It was only when the water level got too low that the
need for portage was necessary. This canal is also mentioned in several sources including
Webber (1931).
Local informants further state that after the Brazilian soldiers burned down Pirara vil-
lage the people from nearby Kaicumbay village moved out and relocated their village to
Yupukari on the banks of the Rupununi River and Awaricru Lake. It is known that there is a
historic village site (not yet visited by the National Trust) at the present village of Kaicumbay.
This historic site, which is located on the current school playing field, is possibly the original
village mentioned by informants.
Conclusion
These forts and trading posts helped play an important role in the colonial history of the Ru-
pununi in southern Guyana. In this sense Post Arinda was of particular importance, since it
was the main trading post and lookout point, as well as serving as evidence of a Dutch pres-
ence in the area. It should be noted that Post Arinda also served other purposes such as a ref-
uge for victims of local tribal wars between the Akawaio and Caribs.
Later, with the pressing need for the demarcation of territorial boundaries, Governor
Henry Light lobbied the British government to secure the services of Prussian businessman
Robert Schomburgk to conduct a boundary survey of British Guiana. This survey saw Schom-
burgk give prominence to the area near Pirara as the location of the fabled ‘Lake El Dora-
do’ (Lake Amuku). As this lake was the main landmark in that area an Anglican mission sta-
tion was established there at the Makushi village of Pirara.
Unfortunately, soon afterwards the Brazilians raided Pirara village causing its inhabit-
ants to flee. They also burned down the mission station of Reverend Thomas Youd, the Angli-
can missionary. The official excuse for this action was that Reverend Youd had been enticing
friendly Indians to leave Brazil and settle in British Guiana. However, unofficially one of the
main reasons was that Reverend Youd was Anglican which offended the Roman Catholic Bra-
zilians. After the village was abandoned Brazilian soldiers were reported to be occupying the
area. British troops of the 1st West Indian Regiment were then sent to accompany Robert
Schomburgk’s boundary team to assert British authority over the area. The British took over
from the three lightly armed Brazilian soldiers they found at Pirara village, and also estab-
lished Fort New Guinea nearby.
Fort New Guinea was not occupied for very long—in fact for less than six months—
according to Richard Schomburgk. Not only this but after they left the British never returned
to re-establish a military presence in the area, even after the boundary issue was settled. Fur-
ther, they do not seem to have utilized Post Arinda much, if at all, as Robert Schomburgk
briefly mentions its three locations, while both Richard Schomburgk and Charles Barrington-
Brown only mention Post Arinda’s original location at the mouth of the Siparuni River in
passing. It can also be seen that the Brazilian entrance into the Rupununi was very late and
did not last for very long. Although the Brazilians were indeed able to acquire land from the
British in the final boundary agreement settled in 1926, this did not include the area where
their temporary fort or look-out point was located.
Sited as they are on high hills, both forts are well above the high water mark of the rainy
season, and have commanding views of the surrounding low-lying savannah in their immedi-
ate vicinities. This area is still utilized by the present Makushi community of Quatata, many of
whose inhabitants have built their houses on high land close to the forts.
Lastly, due to the observed degradation in the amount of material artifacts at Fort New
Guinea in such a short period of time it can clearly be seen that there is a need for more to be
done locally on cultural awareness issues and heritage protection, in order to protect these
sites from the detrimental behavior of visitors and ‘souvenir collectors.’
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the Touchau and Village Council of Yupukari village (both past and present),
especially Toshao Issac Rogers and Councilor Festus Dorrick, for all their kind help and assis-
tance. Thanks should also go to the BBC and Open University who took me to this area on the
first and second occasions. Thanks also to Peter McLachlan, Samantha James, Ashley Holland,
and Karanambu Lodge for loaning me books for my research. I would like to thank the Re-
gional Democratic Council, Region #9, for taking me to this area on the third and fourth occa-
sions. Thanks to Lloyd Kandasammy for his valuable comments on this article, and the Wal-
ter Roth Museum of Anthropology for encouraging me in my endeavors. Lastly I would like to
thank Anthony Roberts and Fernando Li for assisting me with a recent visit to this area.
General References
Arthur Hudson, C.
2004 The Mataruki Trail—The Story of the British Guiana-Brazil Boundary Commission 1929-1939.
Major-General Joseph Singh, Editor. Sheik Hassan Productions, Guyana.
Baldwin, R.
1946 The Rupununi Record. British Guiana Bureau of Publicity and Information.
Boomert, A.
1981 The Taruma Phase of Southern Suriname’. Archaeology and Anthropology 4(1 and 2):105-114.
Burnette, D.G.
1992 Masters of All They Surveyed. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
Barrington-Brown, C.
1876 Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana. The Caribbean Press.
Dale, V.T.
1990 A Short History of the Guyanese People Macmillan Education Ltd, London.
Dalton, H.G.
1855 The History of British Guiana, Elibron Classics.
French Young, M.
1998 Guyana: The Lost El Dorado, My Fifty Years in the Guyanese Wilds. Peepal Tree Press, England.
Goodall, E.A.
1977 Sketches of Amerindian Tribes, 1841-1843. British Museum Publications Ltd, London.
Riviere, P. (Ed.)
2006 The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835-1844, Explorations on Behalf of the Royal Ge-
ographical Society 1835-1839, Vol. 1. The Hakluyt Society, London.
Roth, W.E. (Ed.)

1953 Richard Schomburgk Travels in British Guiana 1840-1844, Volumes 1 & 2, The Daily Chronicle,
Georgetown, British Guiana.
Webber, A.R.F.
1931 Centenary History of British Guiana. Argosy Printing Company, British Guiana.
Whitehead, N. (Ed.)
1997 Sir Walter Raleigh. The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana. University
of Oklahoma Press.

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ISSN 0256-4353

Editorial Advisory Board

Rentier States in Guyana and Suriname and the Consequent Lack of a 2

A History of Archaeology and Anthropology

LOUISA DAGGERS and MARK G. PLEW

Rentier States in Guyana and Suriname and the

KEYWORDS: Guyana, Suriname, Rentier Practices, Indigenous Land Rights, Governance,

Classic Definition of ‘Rentier Society’

Transfer Pricing and Illicit Financial Flows

Terra Nullius and Land Rationing

How Can There be a Common Vision or Narrative that Unites the

Land Rights Under the Amerindian Act

The Minister is charged with investigating Amerindian claims and is allowed

Amerindian Act and Mining Act

What’s the Evidence for a Rentier Economy in the Forestry Sector?

Enmeshing Small-Scale Loggers in the Rentier Web of Deceit

Some Consequences of the Rentier State

scrutiny, leading to a government service that is particularly inefficient. In practice ideas do

Reform of Tax Distribution

Dismantling the Rentier State and Building a Social Contract

coordination between miners and loggers.

External Support, e.g. EITI; EU-FLEGT

Beblawi, Hazem and Giacomo Luciani

Bulkan, Janette and John Palmer

EFI FLEGT TEAM

Guyana Forestry Commission

Guyana Forestry Commission, and Indufor

Kar, Dev and Joseph Spanjers

Palmer, John and Janette Bulkan

Ramsahoye, Fenton H.W.

ter Steege, Hans

United Nations Declarations

Caring/Killing, Writing/Reading, Presence and

KEYWORDS: “Death,” Writing, Doubling, Anthropology

The Plea of a Pacifist1

The Writing and the Killing

The Textual Artifact

[language] as something that is self-supporting, or independent. As the self-supporting

Grimshaw, Anna and Keith Hart

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty

Extractive Capitalism, and Amerindian Land and

KEYWORDS: Indigenous, Labour, Land, Colonization, Extractive, Capitalist

government remain to be seen.

Traditional Amerindian Economies Versus Modern Extractive

The Late British Colonial Era

The Peberdy Report

The implementation of most of the recommendations of the Peberdy Report was

committee in 1960 (Pierre 1993).

The Postcolonial Era

The Post-socialist Era

Bai Shan Lin a slave camp – workers.

Bulkan, Janette and John Palmer

Butt Colson, Audrey

Egoume-Bossogo, Phillipe, Ebrima Faal, Raj Nallari, and Ethan Wiesman

Forte, Janette, and Ian Melville, eds.

Hydropower in Guyana: Shrouded in Secrecy

International Tropical Timber Organization

Logs shipment…Indian coffee company insists it did nothing wrong

Menezes, Mary Noel, R.S.M.

Archaeological Survey of the Aishalton Complex