The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

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8 Early Arawak Subsistence Strategies: The Rodney’s House Site of Jamaica S YLVIA S CUDDER ONE OF THE clearest links to past environments is the faunal material excavated from archaeological sites. Identification and analysis of vertebrate and invertebrate species sought as food by aboriginal peoples shed light on animal community structure, population dynamics, zoogeography, habitat use, food procurement techniques and food preferences. A careful scrutiny of faunal and botanical materials, taking into account losses due to taphonomy and other factors of deposition, sampling error and the bias of human choice, can eliminate subjective interpretations and provide a more complete picture of past settlement subsistence activity. The Rodney’s House site is designated S-5 and is located in the parish of St Catherine, Jamaica, in the limestone hills behind Port Henderson, at an elevation of 133 m above sea level. Four 1.5-m 2 units were excavated during two field seasons; the fauna material from those squares was analysed at the Environmental Archaeology Laboratory, Florida Museum of Natural History (FMNH). This report presents the results of that analysis, and then compares the Rodney’s House fauna with analyses of faunal remains recovered at the sites Bellevue, St Andrew, and White Marl, St Catherine, also on Jamaica’s south coast. The Site and Its Environment St Catherine is situated on the southeast coast of Jamaica at 17E 56' N latitude and 76E 53' W longitude. The southeastern portion of the parish, including Originally published in Archaeology Jamaica, new ser., 6 (1992): 28–43. 113
the Hellshire Hills and Great Salt Pond area southwest of Kingston, is dry thorn scrub, receiving the least amount of rainfall of any area in Jamaica, approximately 508 mm per year (Collins and Longman 1978). Soils in the immediate vicinity of S-5 are predominantly shallow, somewhat excessively drained loams and clays formed on limestone, with numerous limestone outcroppings (Ministry of Agriculture 1987). South, towards Great Salt Pond, as the hill slope flattens to less than 1 per cent, the soils become very poorly drained, mottled, with weakly defined horizonation and high salt content. Within a few kilometres to the west a large area of deep alluvial soils is found. Within approximately 5 km of S-5 and encompassing the entire broad south coast of St Catherine parish, including the Hellshire Hills, is another area of shallow cambisols similar to those at the site (ibid.). Vegetation supported by these cambisols takes the form of dry limestone scrub forest (thorn woodland, according to the Holdridge system) and includes cactus, trees such as Bursera, Acacia, Haematoxylon and Leucanea, and a number of xerophytic climbing plants and epiphytes (Asprey and Robbins 1953). The coastal fringe of this dry forest is dominated by sclerophyllous dry limestone shrubs, cacti, halophytes and salt-tolerant trees such as Chrysobalanus and Hippomane. Sheltered bays may support a mangrove community. Seifriz (1943) aptly described this region: “The heat is intensive, the light blinding, every plant armed, no water, no shade, and no trail leading anywhere, as awe-inspiring, as fearful, as superb a picture of the eternal persistence of life under the most adverse conditions that nature can produce.” The site itself occupies about one-half a hectare of gently sloping land on the limestone hill behind Port Henderson. It is within 1 km of the coast at Green Bay and within 1.5 km of the mangrove swamps of Dawkins Pond and Great Salt Pond (Medhurst 1980). Six middens were identified, along with a flat area of cultivable land to the west. There is at present no permanent source of fresh water on the site. Medhurst and Clarke (1976a), in their report on the Bellevue site in the Manning Hills area of St Andrew Parish (approximately 18 km from S-5), mentions the presence of a recently dried-up pond and several springs within a 2-km radius of the site. He speculates that a possible cause of abandonment of S-5, with its ready access to food sources, may be that its water source dried up. Excavation Between February and July 1978, J.C. Wilman, in association with Colin Medhurst, excavated two 1.5-m 2 units ( J1 and K2) in the centre of an apparent midden (Midden 2). Seven 20 cm levels were removed, the last reaching bedrock at 1.4 m. All material was screened (screen size was not indicated) 114 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS
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The Earliest Inhabitants
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University of the West Indies Press
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Contents List of Illustrations / ix
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Illustrations A.1 Map of the sites
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13.2 Petroglyphs from Coventry and
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Preface I HAVE ALWAYS been fascinat
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Acknowledgements I WOULD FIRST like
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Introduction IN JAMAICA, THE indige
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encounter the term Arawaks used to
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90. Long Acre Point 91. Long Mounta
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ical publication in Jamaica. Geolog
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collections. Knowledge of the prove
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Section 1 Assessment and Excavation
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objective by using a frame of refer
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16 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS two
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18 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS fact
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20 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS the
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22 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS deco
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Howard (1965) recognized that Redwa
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people making Ostionan (Redware) po
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was the recovery of the Aboukir zem
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Appendix Table 1.1 Midden Sites Rep
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Table 1.2 Cave Sites Reported by Ro
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2 The Taíno Settlement of the King
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Henderson Hill lies to the south, o
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ivalves. Single gastropod valves we
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40 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS Taí
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Table 2.2 Neutron Activation Analys
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Plain may have played a role in the
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Table 2.3. Taíno Sites in the King
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contractors to drill and blast for
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chipped away. It is believed that t
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Figure 3.4 JNHT excavations at Chan
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Test Pit 6 Depth 40 cm. This is a s
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19.375 19.275 1 CHANCERY HALL, JAMA
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Appendix A Laboratory Study of the
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Table 3.1 All Recovered Organic Mat
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Page 81 and 82: Table 3.5 Fish Bone Anatomical Part
Page 83 and 84: 66 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS Surv
Page 85 and 86: Acknowledgements Thanks are due to
Page 87 and 88: SOUTH NEGRIL POINT Savannala-Mar Mo
Page 89 and 90: sudden event. Occupation 3 can be c
Page 91 and 92: dle, a ground stone artefact that m
Page 93 and 94: - infrastructural development throu
Page 95 and 96: emoval. Sometimes what is required
Page 97 and 98: Figure 5.1 Road cutting through the
Page 99 and 100: Later on the Spanish settled in the
Page 101 and 102: Figure 5.4 Long Mountain prior to d
Page 103 and 104: 86 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS amon
Page 106 and 107: 6 Notes on the Natural History of J
Page 108 and 109: Soils Several different soil types
Page 110 and 111: Shoreline On the north coast, there
Page 112 and 113: well established, especially in dis
Page 114 and 115: 7 The Exploitation and Transformati
Page 116 and 117: Art Art can be religious, functiona
Page 118 and 119: of Long Mountain”, Andreas Oberli
Page 120 and 121: Figure 7.3 William Keegan explainin
Page 122 and 123: cedar (Cedrela odorata), santa mari
Page 124 and 125: According to Rouse, the density of
Page 126 and 127: 17), grows abundantly on the island
Page 128 and 129: Incidental Dispersal The plant comp
Page 132 and 133: and bagged by level. In April of 19
Page 134 and 135: Table 8.1 Significant Vertebrate an
Page 136 and 137: tory and habitat preferences. Follo
Page 138 and 139: Changing Subsistence Strategies The
Page 140 and 141: Table 8.2 Faunal Comparisons: Per c
Page 142 and 143: Appendix Table 8.3 Rodney’s House
Page 144 and 145: Table 8.3 Rodney’s House Faunal L
Page 146 and 147: Section 3 Analysis of Taíno Archae
Page 148 and 149: 9 Petrography and Source of Some Ar
Page 150 and 151: The results discussed here were obt
Page 152 and 153: Petaloid Axes of Arawak Origin from
Page 154 and 155: Blue Schist The story of Jamaican b
Page 156 and 157: Coleraine) but also from other majo
Page 158 and 159: from which several Jamaican artefac
Page 160 and 161: in a lack of suitable rocks, so tha
Page 162 and 163: A surprising conclusion of the pres
Page 164 and 165: Figure 10.1 Redware, White Marl and
Page 166 and 167: triangular ridges. It is thought th
Page 168 and 169: (also see Figure 10.6), loop handle
Page 170 and 171: 11 Jamaican Redware J AMES W. LEE A
Page 172 and 173: only if planted at exactly the corr
Page 174 and 175: Handles Handles may be classified i
Page 176 and 177: Two more or less spheroidal pottery
Page 178 and 179: 12 Taíno Ceramics from Post-Contac
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and distribution of native labour w
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Figure 12.2 Distribution of New Sev
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hatching (Figure 12.5c), and closel
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were fired at a low temperature, th
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Figure 12.11 New Seville ware: jug
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ters of the caciques. These politic
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Section 4 Taíno Art Forms ART IS A
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13 The Petroglyphs of Jamaica J AME
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previously described petroglyphs ex
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glyphs in that belt, as the geologi
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Another carving that is unique is t
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Appendix Table 13.2 Jamaican Petrog
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14 Zemís, Trees and Symbolic Lands
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According to Arrom and Rouse (1992)
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The Context of Sacredness Taíno wo
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Kept in niches or on tables within
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Another important correspondence be
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eliefs in the spiritual and life-gi
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References Aarons, G.A. 1983a. Arch
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Smithsonian Biological Survey of Do
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———. 1988. Ulysses’ Sail: A
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———. 1983b. Adornos, Jamaica
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Porro, A. 1994. Social organization
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Scudder, S. 1992. Early Arawak subs
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Wing, E.S., and A.B. Brown. 1979. P
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Rouse, I. 1982. Ceramic and religio
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M. John Roobol, is a consultant geo
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