The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

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90. Long Acre Point 91. Long Mountain 92. Mahogany Hill 93. Mammee Hill 94. Marlie Mount 95. Milk River Spa 96. Molynes Mountain 97. Mona 98. Montego Bay Point 99. Montego Bay 100. Mosquito Cove 101. Mount Rosser 102. Mount Salem 103. Mountain River Cave 104. Naggo(s) Head 105. Negril 106. New Forest 107. New Ground 108. New Market 109. Newfound River 110. Newry 111. Norbrook 112. Oakes 113. Old Harbour 114. Old Harbour Hill 115. Orange Valley 116. Pantrepant East 117. Pantrepant West 118. Paradise 119. Paradise Park 120. Parchment (Parchment Cave) 121. Pedro 122. Pepper 123. Plantation Heights 124. Port Antonio 125. Port Henderson 126. Portland 127. Portland Cave 128. Portland Ridge 129. Portland Ridge Cave 130. Prospect 131. Red Bank 132. Rennock Lodge 133. Retreat (Little Nigger Ground) 134. Reynold Bent 135. Rhodes Hall 136. Rio Bueno 137. Rio Nuevo 138. Rodney’s House 139. Round Hill 140. Round Hill B New Ridge 141. Rowe’s Corner 142. Rozelle 143. Rozelle Falls 144. Runaway Bay 145. Salisbury 146. Salt River 147. Sandy Bank 148. Scarborough 149. Seven Mile Hill 150. Seville 151. Shaw 152. Sommerville Cave 153. Spot Valley 154. Spotty Hill 155. Spring 156. St Jean D’Acre 157. Stewart Castle 158. Stony Hill 159. Sugar Loaf Hill 160. Taylor’s Hut Cave # 2 161. Tobolski 162. Toby Abbot 163. Tower Hill (Dallas Castle) 164. Treasure Beach 165. Two Sister’s Cave 166. Tydenham 167. Upper Retirement 168. Upton 169. Vere 170. Wales 171. Walkerswood 172. Wallman Town 173. Wareika Hill 174. Warminister 175. Waterloo 176. White Marl 177. Williamsfield 178. Windsor 179. Windsor Great Cave 180. Worthy Park # 1 181. Worthy Park # 2 182. Yardley Chase (Lover’s Leap) 5
far inland as Ipswich, St Elizabeth, the Worthy Park sites and Mount Rosser in St Catherine (see Figure A.1, nos. 76, 180, 181 and 101). They did not, however, settle in the interior mountain range. It is the general consensus among Jamaican archaeologists that Taíno sites have the best views. As their sites are generally panoramic – located overlooking the landscape – it is not known whether the purpose was defensive or aesthetic. The present research has illustrated that the Meillacans or White Marl culture were not as dependent on marine resources as the Ostionans. Although there is evidence that the Jamaican Redware culture cultivated cassava, it seems that the White Marl group was more dependent on agrarian resources. The prehistoric culture that we call the Taíno developed about AD 1200. Samuel Wilson states that it is difficult to mark the “beginning” of the Taíno (1997b). Their society emerged as a continuation of the cultural development that had characterized Caribbean history for several thousand years. Wilson explains that the Taínos played the same ball game as their predecessors; their settlements were similar, although larger and more numerous; and their religious beliefs and rituals were related to those of their Saladoid and Archaic predecessors. In some cases, their pottery was different from Ostionoid ceramics in form, style, and decoration, but in other instances not. (ibid.) In the past, the Jamaican Taíno were described as having sub-Taíno cultural traits (Lovén 1935); however, this terminology is no longer used. The term Western Taínos is now used by Rouse and other scholars to describe the Taíno culture of Jamaica, central Cuba, and the Bahamas (Rouse 1992, 17). The term is indicative of a culture less developed than that of the Classic Taínos of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Despite being characterized as less advanced, the Jamaican Taínos displayed certain similarities to the Classic Taínos, in terms of population density, agriculture and class system (Rouse 1948, 1992). Regardless of whether it is classified as Western or Classic Taíno, Jamaican cultural development was autonomous with respect to the other islands. This could be a result of its isolated southward location within the Greater Antilles (Walker 1992). Jamaican prehistory is regarded as one of the least studied Caribbean disciplines. That is not necessarily the case; the fact is that published Jamaican archaeological research has not had sufficient international circulation. This has resulted in misconceptions about lack of scope, research activities and information on the Jamaican Taínos. These misconceptions are discussed and countered in Keegan and Atkinson’s chapter in this volume. As early as 1897, J.E. Duerden published an excellent compilation on Jamaican prehistory, which included various sites and research on the island’s Taíno artefacts. The mid-1960s saw the creation of two important forums for archaeolog- 6 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS
Page 2: The Earliest Inhabitants
Page 5 and 6: University of the West Indies Press
Page 8 and 9: Contents List of Illustrations / ix
Page 10 and 11: Illustrations A.1 Map of the sites
Page 12 and 13: 13.2 Petroglyphs from Coventry and
Page 14 and 15: Preface I HAVE ALWAYS been fascinat
Page 16 and 17: Acknowledgements I WOULD FIRST like
Page 18 and 19: Introduction IN JAMAICA, THE indige
Page 20 and 21: encounter the term Arawaks used to
Page 24 and 25: ical publication in Jamaica. Geolog
Page 26 and 27: collections. Knowledge of the prove
Page 28: Section 1 Assessment and Excavation
Page 31 and 32: objective by using a frame of refer
Page 33 and 34: 16 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS two
Page 35 and 36: 18 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS fact
Page 37 and 38: 20 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS the
Page 39 and 40: 22 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS deco
Page 41 and 42: Howard (1965) recognized that Redwa
Page 43 and 44: people making Ostionan (Redware) po
Page 45 and 46: was the recovery of the Aboukir zem
Page 47 and 48: Appendix Table 1.1 Midden Sites Rep
Page 49 and 50: Table 1.2 Cave Sites Reported by Ro
Page 51 and 52: 2 The Taíno Settlement of the King
Page 53 and 54: Henderson Hill lies to the south, o
Page 55 and 56: ivalves. Single gastropod valves we
Page 57 and 58: 40 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS Taí
Page 59 and 60: Table 2.2 Neutron Activation Analys
Page 61 and 62: Plain may have played a role in the
Page 63 and 64: Table 2.3. Taíno Sites in the King
Page 65 and 66: contractors to drill and blast for
Page 67 and 68: chipped away. It is believed that t
Page 69 and 70: Figure 3.4 JNHT excavations at Chan
Page 71 and 72: 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
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Changing Subsistence Strategies The
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Table 8.2 Faunal Comparisons: Per c
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Appendix Table 8.3 Rodney’s House
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Table 8.3 Rodney’s House Faunal L
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Section 3 Analysis of Taíno Archae
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9 Petrography and Source of Some Ar
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The results discussed here were obt
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Petaloid Axes of Arawak Origin from
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Blue Schist The story of Jamaican b
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Coleraine) but also from other majo
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from which several Jamaican artefac
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in a lack of suitable rocks, so tha
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A surprising conclusion of the pres
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Figure 10.1 Redware, White Marl and
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triangular ridges. It is thought th
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(also see Figure 10.6), loop handle
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11 Jamaican Redware J AMES W. LEE A
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only if planted at exactly the corr
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Handles Handles may be classified i
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Two more or less spheroidal pottery
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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
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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