RECENTLY discovered pre-historic mounds in the Intermediate Savannahs of Upper Berbice have generated a great deal of interest at the international level, and the Ministry of Culture will this year take steps to protect those archaeological sites even while allowing international scientists access to them for purposes of research.This was disclosed by Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, while discussing last week some of the work the Culture Department has done in 2013.

The Intermediate Savannahs are located some sixty miles from the mouth of the Berbice River, and cover over 2,000 square miles of territory. Several man-made structures which appear as mounds that have apparently been made centuries ago have been found in these savannahs. Dr. Anthony said these mounds have been the most exciting archaeological findings made locally to date.

He disclosed that Government has since received a number of requests from foreign universities to partner with locals to do archaeological research in these Intermediate Savannahs, and he added that Government and the Culture Ministry regard the area as so sensitive that the ministry had started working on demarcating the area.

”We have done some preliminary maps, and we want to work to put some rules in place so that not just anybody came come willy-nilly and go in there,” Dr Anthony has said. He said that anyone intending to do archaeological research in the Intermediate Savannahs would first have to get permission from the Culture Ministry to enter the area. Additionally, any team going in the area would have to include Guyanese among its numbers, and any artifact found would have to be handed over to the Government of Guyana.

“We want to be custodians of these artifacts rather than foreigners,” he stressed, even as he informed that the archaeological site is a part of the Guyanese heritage that will help Guyanese to better understand their past and to learn from that past.
Those who would be allowed access into the Intermediate Savannahs to do archaeological research would be expected to do their work with the preservation of Guyana’s heritage foremost in mind, Dr Anthony advised.

With respect to the mounds, Dr Anthony said, preliminary carbon dating had indicated that some may be over three thousand years old; apparently pre-dating the birth of Christ, and also indicating the existence of a civilization that is as old as those of the Egyptian and Indus valley civilizations.

He said, too, that the kinds of settlement patterns observed in the area have been discovered not only in Guyana, but also in Suriname, French Guiana and northern Brazil; and that preliminary evidence suggests the epicentre of that civilization to have been located in Upper Berbice.

He added: “But we have to allow the research to proceed before we pronounce definitively on these hypotheses.”

He said the Culture Ministry will this year be signing memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with a number of foreign universities, allowing them to excavate, recover and analyse data collected to learn more about Guyana’s past.
Written By Clifford Stanley