The Earliest Inhabitants: The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

40 T HE E ARLIEST I NHABITANTS
Taíno occupation these species were dominant elements of the Kingston
Harbour shellfish assemblage. Over-collection of these species by the Taíno
people may have been responsible for the demise of the natural populations.
In this context, it is interesting to note that the species favoured by the Taíno
were replaced by species of smaller size (judging from modern populations)
and therefore less nutritional value (more need to be collected for the same
food quantity).
One notable rarity on the Chancery Hall site is the Strombus gigas Linné
(queen conch), only a single fragment having been found on a subsequent
visit. This gastropod species is an important part of the modern shellfish diet
in the Caribbean and was almost certainly collected for food by the Taíno people.
S. gigas is a very large marine gastropod with an impressive shell. Its
absence at Chancery Hall might be due to the fact that the shell is very heavy.
(Why carry animal and shell up to the site when the muscle can be cut and
only the meat transported?) Modern Jamaican beaches are littered with piles
of S. gigas shells which have been culled for food; the antiquity of some piles
may not even be guessed.
The terrestrial gastropod P. lucerna is abundant on the Chancery Hall site.
However, there are many places in Jamaica where extensive accumulations of
terrestrial gastropods (often P. lucerna – Mitchell, personal observation) are
concentrated in soil profiles with no evidence of archaeological occupation.
Furthermore, a Taíno rubbish tip may have been a highly desirable habitat
for such omnivorous terrestrial gastropods. It is therefore premature, without
further investigation, to assume that the Taíno people ate these terrestrial
molluscs, and they may be present on Taíno sites simply because they lived
there. We therefore suggest that the presence of land snails on Jamaican
archaeological sites should not necessarily be taken as evidence that they
formed part of the diet of the Taíno people.
Excavations at the Bellevue site (Wing and Medhurst 1977; Medhurst
1977a, 1977b) recorded abundant marine and terrestrial shells. The most
abundant marine taxa recorded by these authors were species of Neritina, Arca
zebra Swainson, Chione granulata Gmelin and Anadara brasiliana Lamarck.
This is clearly a similar assemblage to that recorded from Chancery Hall,
which is only about 1.5 km from Bellevue.
The assemblages of shells from Chancery Hall and Bellevue contrast
markedly with those collected at Rodney’s House. Wilman (1978) recorded
abundant marine (3,394) and terrestrial (371) shells from Rodney’s House
with the marine assemblages dominated by A. zebra, A. imbricata Bruguière,
Chama macerophylla Gmelin and Donax denticulatus Linné. The first three
species are either cemented or attached by a byssus to hard substrates such as
rocks, while the fourth is a shallow infaunal (living within the sediment)