The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

from which several Jamaican artefacts were made. In every instance, there
were four or more Jamaican specimens corresponding to the Haitian celt.
Although lacking absolute certainty of comparison, this evidence points
strongly to an origin in one or the other island and to the existence of pre-
Columbian inter-island trade. Another celt from Lee’s collection (no. 197)
compares exactly in shape and rock colour, type and texture with a specimen
in the museum at Roseau, Dominica, which was found in that island. Because
the rock is a flow-textured young volcanic type, it appears that the Jamaican
specimen is an import from the Lesser Antilles.
Discussion
The percentages of rock types for the celts, together with the artefacts
described above, indicate that by far the greater part of the Jamaican Arawak
rock and mineral artefacts are composed of metamorphic rocks similar to
those occurring either in the southern part of the Blue Mountain Inlier or at
Green Bay, Port Henderson. Their presence across the entire island suggests
that they were transported there. Some of this transportation occurred naturally
by rivers and longshore drift along the coast. A check was made on all
rivers draining the Blue Mountains to assess their content of greenstone pebbles
and boulders. The Wagwater River, Rio Nuevo and Rio Grande lack
them. There are a few pebbles of greenstone in the Swift River, more in the
Yallahs River, but it is only in the lower reaches of the Morant River on the
south flanks of the Blue Mountains that such pebbles are abundant.
Greenstone pebbles are therefore being added to the beaches in some quantity
only along the south shore of the Blue Mountains. Here the longshore
drift is from east to west, and it is surprising how sparse the content of pebbles
has become on the Palisadoes beach bar, south of Kingston. It must therefore
be concluded that greenstone pebbles can be collected, with patience,
from the beaches south of the Blue Mountains, and readily only from the
Morant River.
In 1972, blue schist – an extremely rare rock in the Caribbean – was discovered
for the first time in Jamaica on Union Hill, separating the east and
west arms of the Morant River. Three celts were found to be composed of this
rock, which can be traced to Union Hill or – as extremely sparse pebbles – in
the Morant River. The five pendants of keratophyre lava, together with the
garnetiferous boulder mentioned previously, can be matched only with rocks
outcropping between the Stony River and Cedar Valley on the south flanks
of the Blue Mountains Inlier, immediately west of the Morant River. It is
therefore concluded that the Arawak Indians of Jamaica did not make many
of their rock tools and decorations from rock and pebbles in the vicinity of the
P ETROGRAPHY AND S OURCE OF S OME A RAWAK R OCK A RTEFACTS FROM J AMAICA
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