The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

Section 3
Analysis of Taíno
Archaeological Data
IN JAMAICA, THE most abundant artefacts recovered from Taíno sites are ceramics
and, second, stone tools. This section analyses and highlights the importance
of the data recovered from these sites, in particular the stone and
ceramic artefacts.
Jamaican Taíno stone artefacts include celts, flint scrapers, zemís and pendants.
Celts – petal-shaped axe blades made of either stone or shell, formally
known as polished petaloid celts – are thought to be the most common stone
tool. Celts, which Afro-Jamaicans call “thunderbolts”, are said to have fallen
from the sky, and are traditionally placed in yabba pots to cool water (Senior
1985). Thomas A. Joyce wrote that
the petaloid celts of Jamaica, both for symmetry and polish, are unsurpassed by
those of any locality in the world, and considering the fact that they are in
most cases fashioned from a very hard variety of stone, the amount of patient
labour involved in their preparation must been enormous. (1907, 234)
M.J. Roobol and J.W. Lee’s paper, “Petrography and Source of Some
Arawak Rock Artefacts from Jamaica” (1976, reprinted in this volume),
reports on the first technical attempt since the nineteenth century to study
these stone artefacts. The authors were able to identify and subdivide the artefacts
into major rock types. Roobol and Lee analysed the artefacts according
to colour, size and texture and were able to identify the source of the stones
used to make them, thus providing evidence of intra- and inter-island trade.
The pottery of the Jamaican Taíno has been frequently described as
“unique” or “simple”. Lovén suggests that the pottery indicates “an endemic
ceramic development” and adds that compared with the ceramics of other
Taíno people, those of the Jamaican Taíno are much plainer. Many influences
that affected the Taíno in Puerto Rico, Española and Cuba never reached
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