Caguana petroglyphs
Caguana, in Utuado, Puerto Rico, is a Taíno ceremonial centre of plazas and ball courts (bateyes) lined with upright stones, many carved with faces and figures. The National Park Service calls it the largest site of its kind in the West Indies.
Meaning
The National Park Service’s landmark nomination dates Caguana to the Capá phase, AD 1200–1500, and describes ten earth-and-stone-lined bateys, a ceremonial dance area (areyto) with numerous petroglyphs, and a caney, the chief’s house. Limestone slabs carved with petroglyphs line the east and west sides of the main plaza. Some of the monoliths weigh more than a tonne and were most likely brought from the Tanamá River beside the site, according to Angel Rodríguez’s case study for ICOMOS and the International Astronomical Union. The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP) runs it as the Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Caguana. Its best-known carving, La Mujer de Caguana, is for many Taíno today an image of Atabey, and National Geographic describes the plazas as sacred places for ritual dance, devotion and ceremonial ball games.
Origin and history
The archaeologist J. Alden Mason, one of its first excavators, recorded the ball courts in 1915, and excavations at Caguana have turned up three-pointed stone zemís. A renovation reported in 2024 gave the ICP’s exhibition hall, led by the archaeologist Reniel Rodríguez, more than 200 objects from Indigenous Caribbean cultures, completed in time for the park’s sixtieth anniversary as an archaeological site.
Ten bateys or thirteen?
The sources count differently. The NPS nomination lists ten ball courts; Rodríguez counts approximately thirteen bateyes and plazas. He also dates the site to around AD 1270, where the NPS gives the span AD 1200–1500.
Stones that face the sky
Rodríguez reads the plan of the site as aligned to astronomical events: there are rock engravings of astronomical objects, and a row of stones aligned on the equinoxes carries reliefs of human figures. The site lies near Montaña Cemí, which the Taíno, he writes, believed to be the home of the gods.
What the carvings show
The NPS nomination suggests that the slabs along the dance plaza show characters from the Taíno creation and hero myths, the kind of stories Ramón Pané recorded. The carvings are petroglyphs, cut into the stone rather than painted.
Read next
- Next in Taíno symbolsTaíno sun (Sol de Jayuya)A petroglyph on the Zamas mural in Jayuya, Puerto Rico: a round face ringed by circles. It is known as the Sol de Jayuya (sun of Jayuya); the municipality says Jayuya’s cultural centre named it and made it its seal, and it is now seen all over the island.
- Caguana’s carved stones are petroglyphs, cut into the rock rather than paintedPetroglyphsImages pecked, carved or scratched into rock. Pictographs, by contrast, are painted onto it. In the American Southwest most petroglyphs were made by the ancestors of today’s Pueblo peoples and other tribes, who regard them as part of their living heritage; at Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico there are more than 20,000.
See also
Atabey (the Woman of Caguana), Three-pointed stone (trigonolito), Coquí (the frog), Zemí (cemí), Guabancex (the hurricane), Turtle.
Sources
- Caguana Site, National Register of Historic Places registration form (NPS), National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places registration form, Caguana Site, Utuado (reference 92001671; National Historic Landmark 1993), National Park Service, section 7, pp. 4 and 12; section 8, pp. 20 and 24
- Case Study 3.2: Caguana, Puerto Rico (Angel Rodríguez, ICOMOS–IAU), Angel Rodríguez, “Case Study 3.2: Caguana, Puerto Rico”, in Heritage Sites of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy, ICOMOS–IAU Thematic Study on Astronomical Heritage, 2010, chapter 3, ICOMOS and the International Astronomical Union, case study 3.2
- La Mujer de Caguana, photograph and caption (American Indian magazine), American Indian magazine (NMAI), photograph by Christina M. González with caption, 2018, American Indian magazine (NMAI), photograph caption
- Puerto Rico: Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Center (NASAA Notes), National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, NASAA Notes, October 2024, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, article text
- Chasing chupacabras? (Rebecca Toy, National Geographic), Rebecca Toy, “Chasing chupacabras? You may find something even more extraordinary here.”, National Geographic, 8 November 2022 (Puerto Rico’s Taína Route), National Geographic, article text
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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