Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

88 / Chapter 7.
Figure 21. Great Pedro Bay (E4): Pottery characteristics.
1956, 1965). In the light of Howard’s remarks, Marian de Wolf reexamined
the material she had excavated from Windsor (A19) in 1933, and she decided
that this too belonged to the newly defined style (de Wolf 1953). The potsherds
were thick, coarse, and heavy. Howard suggested that they came from relatively
large vessels, although he had no complete specimen to prove the point. According
to him, “the massiveness of the Montego Bay ware allows sufficient space on
the rim surfaces to permit decoration” (Howard 1950:145), which was usually
in the form of deep, bold incisions. By rim surfaces, Howard evidently meant
fillets, or what de Wolf referred to as “reinforced rims” (de Wolf 1953:Figure
85n–o). “Application is often combined with incision to produce zoomorphic
forms” (Howard 1965:Figure 1b). As mentioned in Chapter 2, Howard’s work
was carried on by Vanderwal, his excavations at Fairfield and Hartfield (J1) being
particularly important in this context. His “modes” 5 and 6 (incisions on fillets
and incisions on the tops of applied clay strips) were determined to be characteristic
of the Montego Bay style, or as he termed it, the “Fairfield complex.”
Both authors suggested, though they were not able to prove it, that the Montego
Bay style was relatively late, and that it had probably evolved out of the