Discovering Banwari Man
Burial site traced back to over 6,000 yearsBy Richard Charan richard.charan@trinidadexpress.com
Story Created: Oct 12, 2014 at 10:25 PM ECT
Express
Peter Harris, who led the Banwari site excavation
BEFORE it became world-famous, Banwari Trace was just a bull cart track that led to the sugarcane fields on which the indentured immigrants worked and, later, where their descendants settled, bought the land and continued farming.
This strip of “lagoon land” in the village of San Francique (the hometown of the President’s wife and neighbourhood of the Prime Minister) would improve to gravel and oil sand, to what’s happening now — being rehabilitated as part of Government’s unprecedented and under-reported redevelopment of South Trinidad.
Hamlet Harrypersad tells his story
Hamlet Harrypersad, 64, has lived at Banwari Trace all his life and can tell you everything there is to know about the place. He can track his ancestry back to his once-indentured grandfather, who settled there to plant rice and cane on his eight acres, and to his father, who gave his son a Shakespearean name (his father died when Hamlet was just four years old).
Hamlet Harrypersad right) who helped with the Banwari man excavation, shows the site at San Francique. At left is Express writer Richard Charan.
A portion of the Harrypersad family’s ancestral land is the path through which the Solomon Hochoy Highway extension will take, should the High Court battle and hunger strike protest of Dr Wayne Kublalsingh fail, along with the objection of UNESCO representative Dennis Ramdahin, who says that a highway passing anywhere close will jeopardise future research into what is considered the birthplace of Caribbean history.
Hamlet Harrypersad knows a whole lot about this history, too. A farmer like his forefathers, he became a construction man in life. But what happened at Banwari Trace four decades ago also made him a witness to, expert in, and custodian of a site of archaeology’s most amazing finds.
It was the dry season of 1969. Hamlet was 18 years old and trying to find his way in life.
Some people came to the family residence asking permission to look for things buried in a piece of gently sloping land behind the family house. Leading that group was Peter Harris, then employed at Texaco’s Forres Reserve operations.
Hamlet Harrypersad shows an excavation test pit dug in 2005. Photos by Dave Persad
The field had been cut and harvested. There were only stumps, Hamlet recalled. Harris and his group rooted about collecting things. Hamlet accompanied them. He was curious. They had a device, he said, that could detect anomalies underground. They dug a test pit and found something at what was the highest point of the hillock. The group marked the spot and left.
They would return two years later. This time Harris came prepared, accompanied by a team from the Dominican Republic led by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo.
Hamet, the eldest of four siblings, said he was there every day, working as something of a village scout “and because I wanted to know, everything. I knew it was something big happening”.
Said Hamlet: “This was not any fork-and-shovel operation. They marked every centimetre, sifted all the mud, finding shells and bones. It took them months to do it. Until they got to that layer, and found the skeleton. It crumbled, so they sprayed it with a chemical and dug all around. We slipped some steel sheets under and winched it out.”
Hamlet said one of the memories he will take to his grave is “me and a friend holding the front and two in the back, carrying Banwari Man down the hill away from that grave. I knew it was something historic”.
Which is why, Hamlet said, he spent considerable time with Harris, and archaeological experts over the years, learning the importance of what had been found, trying to convince the politicians that the site needed preserving, while working towards setting up a community interest group (which never materialised — Banwari site never became locally famous).
Hamlet said Harris was deeply disappointed in how the Banwari Man (or woman) site had been treated by the State, since he had hoped to have the place recognised, fully explored, and developed to the benefit of residents and tourists alike.
Harris also had an opinion about that proposed highway passing within 200 metres of the heritage site, and it was the same one held by Hamlet — that development meant to take the country forward should never be at this expense. Who knows what will be forever lost under the aggregate to be laid down across the Oropouche Lagoon to build that road?
Peter Harris died in May 2013. Hamlet honours him by watching over what remains of the site.
Hamlet Harrypersad shows the shells and bones scattered across the Banwari site
Six months before he died, Harris went on to teach archaeology and anthropology at UTT, wrote to the then-Ministry of National Diversity and Social Integration (after an appeal to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar went unanswered) asking that all further construction activity on the Banwari site be banned, until a professional development plan was approved by a management committee representing major stakeholders, scholars and government representatives.
He wrote: “As you know, the Banwari site was excavated by 1969-70 by the Trinidad and Tobago Historical Society (South Section) without a budget. With the dates 6000-4350 BC it proved to be the earliest human settlement in Trinidad and probably the Caribbean (based on evidence of shellfish hunting and fishing, and some plant food, and on the discovery of hand-stones, grinding slabs, arrows, awls, needles, a probable weaving tool, an axe, and human bones from the hilltop cemetery). The material stored by South Section is still available for analysis by lithic and zooarchealogical specialists.”
Banwari Man displayed at the University of the West Indies in St Augustine.
Harris continued: “In 1971, a complete human burial dated ca 4538 BC was retrieved by a joint group, South Section and the Museo del Hombre Dominicano. The Dominican Republic saw Banwari as ancestral to their Hoyo del Toro archaeological complex dated 2000 BC. The burial is now curated by the UWI Zoology Museum and is regarded as ancestral by many people of First Peoples descent.”
Site in a deplorable stateONLY a few countries in the world are privileged to have a heritage site of an ancient civilisation, yet the condition of the Banwari Site is deplorable, according to board member of the New York chapter of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Dennis Ramdahin, who visited the site last month.
He said the country’s reputation was at stake, since the international community had noted the State’s flippant treatment of its pre-colonial history. He said more burials could be found within the area and the proposed path of the highway will destroy any possibility of further research. There is no archaeology consultant involved in the highway project.
