I

n a marshy clearing on the island of Trinidad, Pitch

Lake could be mistaken for a derelict parking lot. But

this vaguely industrial landscape is nowhere you’d

want to leave your car. Stand in the wrong spot for too

long and the ground will begin to sink beneath your

feet. The wrinkled surface conceals 10 million tons

of slowly churning natural asphalt, 250 feet deep, spreading

across 115 acres.

One of the world’s biggest natural tar pits, Pitch Lake

has always loomed large in the lives of Trinidadians. To the

46 ARCHAEOLOGY • March/April 2018

Arawak people who lived here before the arrival of the Span-

ish, it was the site of a mythical punishment. They believed

that after hunters from another tribe upset the Good Spirit

by killing hummingbirds, considered to be the incarnations of

ancestors, the hunters’ village sank into the earth and created

the lake. That myth may have some basis in reality. The lake’s

tar preserves wood, and over the last century, intact canoe

paddles, bowls, weaving tools, seats, and other wooden artifacts

from Trinidad’s indigenous past have emerged from the pit.

Eleven such artifacts are known from Pitch Lake, a remarkable

A natural tar pit in Trinidad is a time

capsule of some of the oldest wooden

objects in the Caribbean

by Megan Gannon

ENTOMBED

IN ASPHALT