The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

only if planted at exactly the correct time in relation to the infrequent rains.
When considering the relatively brief sojourn of these people in Jamaica,
one wonders what made them leave their former homeland in the first place?
Were they lured away by curiosity to explore new islands? Or did they flee
from some danger? Were they chased? Then, having reached Jamaica, why
were they here for such a short time? Did they, perhaps, send scouts ahead to
some other location and then pack up to go off to a new and better area?
There is no evidence to show that this happened, so perhaps our Redware
people were themselves an exploratory group checking out Jamaica on behalf
of others who decided not to follow. Or is the answer simply that a severe hurricane
demolished their coastal villages and crippled the colony so badly it
never recovered? This could be the reason for the halos of potsherds scattered
inland from the seaside middens, but such scattering could as easily have
occurred at any time since the sites were last occupied.
Ceramics
De Wolf ’s description of the Redware pottery is still the most concise:
. . . curvatures of the surface; simplicity of decoration; ware, medium fine
grained but poorly fired; colour, reds, tans and greys; average thickness 0.5 cm;
shape, open bowls with some flat bottoms; shoulder, straight or incurving; rim,
tapered to the lip; lip, rounded or flat; D-shaped handles, amorphous and tab
lugs; some painting and rubbing of restricted area. (1953, 233)
The graceful, sleek appearance and other characteristics as detailed above by
De Wolf and by Howard (1956) compare most closely to late Cuevas and to
earliest Ostiones of Puerto Rico. Paradoxically, the handsome, artistic
Redware pre-dates the rough but sturdy White Marl pottery. The first
impression, when viewing the two types, is that the more crudely worked
White Marl ought to be the older, with the smooth, shapely, red-painted vessels
following as a final stage of evolution, but this is a wrong conception. In
all probability, the two peoples did not co-exist in Jamaica, as the 250-year difference
in the radiocarbon dates of their artefacts seems far longer than the
time span necessary to produce the very shallow midden deposits.
Painting
Judging from the relative numbers of sherds with and without the diagnostic
red slip, probably fewer than 20 per cent of all pottery objects had this type of
finish, which was restricted to the exterior of the bowl above the line where
the line turns under to form the bottom. Handles are always included in the
J AMAICAN R EDWARE
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