The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

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Figure 12.11 New Seville ware: jug Figure 12.12 New Seville pedestal cup are clearly visible on the interior of this 6-mm-thick vessel. The handle is not completely round but is similar in shape and thickness to the other handle fragments of New Seville ware mentioned above. The base of the jug has a flat outer rim and a slightly concave centre. Both these vessels were found in Room 1 of the fortress and were obviously used as Spanish tableware (Cotter n.d., 39). The other two New Seville ware vessels in this collection were a small cup decorated with parallel, incised lines around the rim (Figure 12.10a), and a spout from an unknown type of vessel (Figure 12.10b). The decoration of both these vessels is consistent with the decorated rims of White Marl style bowls; their European forms, however, indicate that they were locally crafted copies of Spanish wares. Faunal Remains Faunal evidence from the fortress at Sevilla la Nueva indicates that European domestic animals account for 95 per cent of the biomass. Pig was the most commonly occurring species, accounting for 33 per cent of the total biomass, while local marine fish and molluscs accounted for just 3 per cent. Nearly half of the mammalian bones from the site belonged to medium- to largesized animals that were unidentifiable but are believed to be pig (McEwan 1982). As was first observed at St Augustine, Florida, and subsequently at many other sixteenth-century Spanish-contact sites in the Caribbean, Spanish settlers preferred and attempted to maintain Iberian lifeways, especially in the more visible areas such as tableware, diet, ornamentation and architecture TAÍNO C ERAMICS FROM P OST-CONTACT J AMAICA 171
(Deagan 1983; Ewan 1991; McEwan 1995). Those households with the highest socioeconomic status were expected to have greater access to scarce imported goods. The reliance of the inhabitants of the fortress at Sevilla la Nueva on imported domestic mammals would therefore be expected. The faunal assemblage is highly fragmented, and very few bones exhibit any sign of being charred, suggesting that the meat was boiled rather than roasted. Traditional Iberian food-preparation techniques emphasized boiling versus roasting (McEwan 1982, 6), and pork dishes were preferred by the upper classes (ibid.). The faunal assemblage of the Cotter collection conforms to the pattern of upper-class Iberian food preferences. The almost total absence of fish in the diet of the fortress inhabitants could also be predicted, as fish was the common food of the lower-status Spanish peasants and the indigenous peoples of the region. Discussion The Spanish settlers at Sevilla la Nueva, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, held the dominant political position over the local Indian inhabitants and controlled them through the auspices of the hierarchical structure of the local Amerindian societies. Within the Spanish contingent there were also social distinctions: the conquistadors and high government officials of the Crown formed the upper social class and held the economic power, while the rest of the settlers, who were tradesmen and commoners, tended to be less exclusivist and were normally in more direct contact with the non-Hispanic people. These commoners tended toward more exchange and racial mixing with the local Amerindian population and also were the social class most influenced by the process of acculturation with the Indians (Esteva-Fabregat 1995, 19). Acculturation: is a phenomenon resulting from the addition to an already existent cultural system of one or various elements of another, or other systems. These additions appear in the form of isolated traits or of complexes that, upon joining the system, modify the ingredients of social action and thus the cultural system without necessarily transforming its political or social structure. (ibid., 5) In the early decades of the sixteenth century, the majority of Spanish immigrants were young, unmarried men from the lower ranks of the nobility or from the working class, seeking fortunes to better their social positions at home (Pérez-Mallaína 1998, 35). As only 6 per cent of the Spanish immigrants were women, unions between Spanish men and Indian women were common (Hennessy 1993, 17). The church naturally encouraged formal marriages, especially unions with either female caciques (local chiefs) or the daugh- 172 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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of slim, more or less parallel shap
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Table 3.5 Fish Bone Anatomical Part
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66 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS Surv
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Acknowledgements Thanks are due to
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SOUTH NEGRIL POINT Savannala-Mar Mo
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sudden event. Occupation 3 can be c
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dle, a ground stone artefact that m
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- infrastructural development throu
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emoval. Sometimes what is required
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Figure 5.1 Road cutting through the
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Later on the Spanish settled in the
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Figure 5.4 Long Mountain prior to d
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86 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS amon
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6 Notes on the Natural History of J
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Soils Several different soil types
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Shoreline On the north coast, there
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well established, especially in dis
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7 The Exploitation and Transformati
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Art Art can be religious, functiona
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of Long Mountain”, Andreas Oberli
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Figure 7.3 William Keegan explainin
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cedar (Cedrela odorata), santa mari
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According to Rouse, the density of
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17), grows abundantly on the island
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Incidental Dispersal The plant comp
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8 Early Arawak Subsistence Strategi
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and bagged by level. In April of 19
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Table 8.1 Significant Vertebrate an
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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
Page 180 and 181: and distribution of native labour w
Page 182 and 183: Figure 12.2 Distribution of New Sev
Page 184 and 185: hatching (Figure 12.5c), and closel
Page 186 and 187: were fired at a low temperature, th
Page 190 and 191: ters of the caciques. These politic
Page 192 and 193: Section 4 Taíno Art Forms ART IS A
Page 194 and 195: 13 The Petroglyphs of Jamaica J AME
Page 196 and 197: previously described petroglyphs ex
Page 198 and 199: glyphs in that belt, as the geologi
Page 200 and 201: Another carving that is unique is t
Page 202 and 203: Appendix Table 13.2 Jamaican Petrog
Page 204 and 205: 14 Zemís, Trees and Symbolic Lands
Page 206 and 207: According to Arrom and Rouse (1992)
Page 208 and 209: The Context of Sacredness Taíno wo
Page 210 and 211: Kept in niches or on tables within
Page 212 and 213: Another important correspondence be
Page 214 and 215: eliefs in the spiritual and life-gi
Page 216 and 217: References Aarons, G.A. 1983a. Arch
Page 218 and 219: Smithsonian Biological Survey of Do
Page 220 and 221: ———. 1988. Ulysses’ Sail: A
Page 222 and 223: ———. 1983b. Adornos, Jamaica
Page 224 and 225: Porro, A. 1994. Social organization
Page 226 and 227: Scudder, S. 1992. Early Arawak subs
Page 228 and 229: Wing, E.S., and A.B. Brown. 1979. P
Page 230 and 231: Rouse, I. 1982. Ceramic and religio
Page 232: M. John Roobol, is a consultant geo
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The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

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