The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

Art
Art can be religious, functional, aesthetic or documentary (Atkinson 2002).
Taíno art forms include idols, figurines, duhos, cave art and other items
(Moure and Rivero de la Calle 1996). Prehistoric art can be useful in illustrating
the importance of plants and how they were utilized by various societies.
Jamaica has a number of examples of Taíno art; however, the motifs of
Jamaican petroglyphs and pictographs are primarily zoomorphic and anthropomorphic
(Atkinson 2002).
Texts
Most of our information on Taíno exploitation of plants and agricultural practices
is derived from Hispanic ethnographic data. Gonzalo Fernández de
Oviedo’s The Natural History of the West Indies highlights some of the uses of
plants by the Taínos of Hispaniola – and invites the reader to assume that similar
techniques were used by the Jamaican Taínos: “All that I have said of the
people and other things of Hispaniola applies in part to Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and Jamaica” (1959, 19).
Because so little work has been done on macro- and microbotanical
remains in the island, the arguments in this chapter rely on other evidence:
associated artefacts, art and ethnographic texts.
Taíno Impact on the Natural Vegetation
The Jamaican Taínos and their predecessors, the Ostionoids (Ostionan and
Meillacan), were the first to have an impact on the island’s vegetation.
According to Rashford, humans assist, directly or indirectly, in the transformation
of natural environments. The intentional and unintentional selection
of plants in the environment produces distinctive settlement vegetation that is
an expression of the historical development of their way of life (1998, 37).
When the Ostionoids arrived in Jamaica around AD 650, they must have
found incredibly rich natural resources:
The West Indian forests contained an abundance of wild fruits and vegetables,
including palms, guava berries, and guáyiga, a cycad with edible roots. Saltwater
fish, shellfish, and waterfowl were available along the shores, especially in estuaries,
mangrove swamps, and reefs, which provided shelter from the open sea.
Manatees and turtles could also be hunted there. The food resources varied
from island to island, making it possible for the natives to develop extensive
trading networks. (Watters and Rouse 1989)
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