The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

8 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS
Development and the National Works Agency. Better interaction and collaboration
between the JNHT and these government agencies would bring about
an improvement in both the circulation of information and the facilities and
resources available.
More collaboration is essential given the island’s increased pace of development.
The threat of development on Taíno sites is a matter of concern that
Andrea Richards addresses in this volume. Two examples are Seville, St Ann,
and Rio Nuevo, St Mary (see Figure A.1, nos. 150 and 137), both important
Taíno centres mentioned in the Spanish chronicles. These sites face destruction
despite archaeologists’ efforts, demonstrating the need for more controlled
development and for the implementation of an archaeological policy.
In Jamaica, more attention needs to be paid to Taíno artefacts – their recovery,
treatment, storage and research. Despite the presence of qualified archaeological
conservators in the island, the importance of conservation is not
completely appreciated. This is a problem not only for Taíno research but for
Jamaican archaeology in general. At present, the focus is mainly on interventive
conservation – treating artefacts chemically. But conservation, which is
required for an artefact’s physical welfare, should begin with the environment
from which the artefact is recovered – meaning that conservators should frequently
be present in the field. Conservation does not begin in the lab but on
the first day the project is considered, so that danger to artefacts is minimized.
Pottery, for example – the most abundant type of Taíno artefact recovered in
Jamaica – is sometimes found to have been incompletely fired and thus
requires special handling, particularly in the field. Because of the absence of
conservators in the field, by the time an artefact enters the lab, the conservators
can sometimes do nothing more than damage control. At the other end
of the spectrum is storage of artefacts, which is also crucial to conservation.
These are matters that preventive conservation addresses. Unfortunately, the
preventive approach has not been widely implemented. Jamaican conservators
are concerned that the focus on interventive methods results in a loss of information
that can be gained from an artefact, because the interventive methods
essentially constitute tampering with the artefact.
Another matter of concern is the monitoring of the material culture in the
island. Over the years many people have acquired private collections of Taíno
artefacts. In the absence of effective legislation prohibiting the collection of
artefacts by private individuals, what is needed is an inventory of these private
collections, so at least researchers can get a clear idea of what cultural
material has been recovered from what areas across the island. Unfortunately,
in Jamaica a substantial portion of the island’s archaeological collections has
been obtained from surface collections rather than controlled excavations,
which means that provenance is not known for many artefacts in these