Helping to unearth pre-historic Guyana

Feb 20, 2011 News

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–    Jennifer Wishart is a ‘Special Person’

“If you know where you come from, it is only then that you can chart your future.”

By Neil Marks
When fellow anthropologists in the Caribbean get excited about having unearthed fossils 400 years old or thereabouts, Jennifer Wishart bursts out in laughter.
She is not being dismissive, of course, of finds in other parts of the region. But she is justly proud of what she has been able to uncover here in Guyana – like the skeletal remains of an 18-year-old woman and her unborn fetus she dug out of a shell mound in Barabina in the North West District. The woman, most likely an Amerindian of the Warrau nation, is thought to have lived thousands of years ago.
But there are yet still more exciting archeological finds that Wishart says could redefine the way we look at our history as Guyanese.

Why, she talks of having been part of a group that unearthed what is believed to be elephant bones! The discovery was made back in 2009 when she took a group of University students to Wyva in the Barama River. The confirmation is yet to come, but there is a strong suspicion that it could be just what is imagined.
It is not too far-fetched considering that we would not have thought giant sloths of the Dinosaur age walked these parts until fossil remains and footprints were discovered here. A replica of what that sloth might have looked like, standing some 15 feet tall and weighing approximately three tons, is now the showpiece at the National Museum.
Wishart has had a longstanding interest in Guyana’s first peoples, but it was a chance opportunity to work with the famed Guyanese archaeologist, novelist and artist, Dennis Williams, that sent her into the fields to discover a Guyana that was untold and fascinating.
Early life
Wishart was born in 1945, the year the Great Fire destroyed most of the commercial heart of Georgetown, eating up a number of historical and architectural buildings that shaped the city.
Her mother, Ethel Grimshaw, was a result of the union of the descendants of Black slaves and the White plantation owners, while her father, D’Arcy Wishart, was a descendant of the Wisharts who came to these shores from Scotland to help administer the plantations. D’Arcy Wishart was proud of his Scottish background, and although he never went there, he regaled the young Jennifer, her brother and four sisters with many a Scottish tale.
In fact, whatever it counts for, Wishart reveals that one of her relatives, Alexander Wishart, died in the first railroad accident in British Guiana. Her mother was actually from Meten-Meer-Zorg, a village on the West Coast Demerara, named by the Dutch.  Her father later worked as an overseer with the drainage and irrigation authority.
Jennifer Wishart was born at Beterverwagting, a village on the East Coast of Demerara. She went to the St Mary Virgin Anglican School in the village, where she completed her primary education.
Her parents could not afford to send all the children to high school. Jennifer and her other sister, Ann, ended up in that bracket. But as time would tell, that did not prevent them from having fruitful and rewarding lives. In fact, Ann, who now lives in St Lucia, once served as Guyana’s Honorary Consul to Dominica.
As a child, Jennifer Wishart enjoyed life in the country, and the values instilled in her would later prove to be an asset in her later life.
“When you grow up in the country, everyone in the community live like one family,” she says, looking back at the time when neighbours “controlled” you when you parents were way. If discipline was administered by the neighbours, you dare not complain to your parents, or there would be an additional dose of licks, she added.
When her older sisters found work in the city, the entire family moved to Georgetown. While she could not attend high school, Wishart undertook a course with the International Correspondence School.
Part of the course involved British Geography, but Wishart was not inclined.

“I wasn’t interested; I live here,” she reasoned. Getting a 98% pass in English Language was good enough for a young Wishart. She did other courses including tying and shorthand, which she hated.
In time, she found work as a teaching assistant at St Gabriel’s Nursery School, taking home a salary of $12.
Later, she was offered a job at St Margaret’s Primary, which was owned by her cousin, Winifred Hunter.  She was given a teaching position and trained on the job.
“From 1:30-3:00 in the afternoon, we got sound teacher training,” Wishart recalls. She would go on to teach for 14 years, and then moved on.
She next worked at GuyFesta, the Festival that was a precursor to the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta). From there, she was offered a job as Secretary to Dennis Williams, and her life would thereafter be immersed in realising her early interest in Guyana’s first peoples, and one excavation after the other, she would help to unearth pre-historic Guyana.
Excavations
From the time she was made Dennis Williams’s secretary, Wishart became interested in his work, as archaeology was completely new to her. She started to work with Williams when he was the Director of Art in the Department of Culture.  And she, perhaps, is among those who could retrace Williams’ steps accurately.
Williams first shone as an artist, winning a British Council Scholarship to the Camberwell School of Art in London and put out one-man shows of his work in London. He then went on to teach in Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda and Nigeria.
While in Africa, Wishart informs, Williams served as a draughtsman to an archaeologist and so when he returned to Guyana in the late 1960s, he took up archeology, setting up base at Issano on the Mazaruni River.
The location was ideal, and he started to study artifacts of the indigenous people who lived on the foothills of the Pakaraima Mountains.
He later moved to Georgetown and founded the Burrowes School of Art and the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, which Wishart now directs.
After Williams’s death in 1998, it was Wishart who was instrumental in getting his last literary work “Prehistoric Guiana” published.
Wishart’s association with Williams spanned 20 years, and they had a daughter together, Kibileri Williams, who is now a medical doctor. Wishart named her daughter after the Arawak village of Kibileri, where she excavated.
Over those years, Williams was also part of the planning committee for the 1763 Monument and the Enmore Martyrs monument, she informs.
And so, much of what Wishart has done over the years is bound up in this close working relationship with Williams.
In 1986, Williams and Wishart started a programme for junior archaeologists and that programme continues today. Wishart also serves as co-editor of Archaeology and Anthropology, a journal produced by the Walter Roth Museum, now in collaboration with Boise State University, Idaho, which helped the journal to go online.
When Wishart started visiting Amerindian communities, she became amazed, and is still, about the knowledge of the people.
“If we can just spend some time with them, they would teach us coastlanders so much,” she says.
Among her more memorable excavations was at Barabina, mentioned at the outset.
The village dates back to the Mesoindigenous period or 7,230-3,550 years ago. This period is known as the shell fish period when the Warraus are thought to have lived along the coast in the North West district, near to the extensive mangrove swamps. The excavations done by Wishart and others, confirms this.
Barabina is made up of various shell mounds, and the Warrau people evidently lived there thousands of years ago. They lived on shell fish and would place the shells all in one place, developing shell hills over the years. Some of the mounds were one metre high, while the highest she encountered was 25 metres.
She proudly recalls having personally excavated what came to be called B45 – the discovery of the young lady with the fetus.
“Physical anthropologists looking at that now say that’s the reason she died because the baby was coming in breech,” relates Wishart. Four bodies were buried together, she revealed. The way they were buried suggested that they were Warrau people.
Further suggestion that it was the Warraus who inhabited Barabina thousands of years ago came because no evidence was found of cassava.
The excavation revealed that they obtained flour from the etay palm, and Wishart says the Warraus who now live there can demonstrate how it is that their ancestors would have done that.

At Kibileri, Wishart was with a team that discovered the Dutch interaction with the Arawak people. The pottery and Dutch beads which were found suggested the trading methods used by the Dutch in their interaction with the people.
“We found some very beautiful beads that they made,” she said, referring to those made of precious stones such as amethyst and quartz. At Orealla, excavations revealed different types of clay pots.
“Finds like these are like words to an archaeologist. It would tell the archaeologist who these people were,” says Wishart.
Apart from her excavations, Wishart worked with the Amerindian Research Unit as a researcher and also served as a lecturer for the University of Guyana for the Amerindian Studies Course.
It was during this time that she would help to advance a programme to spur interest in anthropology.
She recalls that it started when Guyanese cultural anthropologist, George Mentore, visited Guyana with a group of American students. In time, the University of Guyana began hosting more foreign students who would go into the interior.
Mark Plew, an archeologist from Boise State University, started to come to Guyana when Dennis Williams died ( in 1998) as there were no arcaheologists in the country.
As a result of his visits, the idea came to set up the Dennis Williams Summer School of Anthropology to train students in archaeology and cultural anthropology. And that programme continues to date.
It was as a result of that programme that the excavation at Wyva was done, unearthing what is believed to be elephant bones and skeletal remains of a whale.
Jennifer Wishart envisages that this could further revolutionise what we know about the history of this country. Over the years, she has taken students on various projects across Guyana, more importantly to the interior, where much of the country’s history is buried.
She has been on countless other projects and wants to see more interest in archaeology and anthropology in Guyana.
“If you know where you come from, it is only then that you can chart your future.”

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