Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

92 / Chapter 7.
Port Morant
The creation of a separate cultural variant of this name was suggested by Lt.
Comm. J. S. Tyndale- Biscoe, following his investigations at Bowden (O9),
which he described as “an Arawak kitchen midden with an individuality all
its own,” on account of its style of pottery decoration ( Tyndale- Biscoe 1960a,
1960b, 1962). The decoration was apparently made with “a square- pointed
stick, which was poked into the clay at an angle,” and this decoration was confined
to the shoulder of the pot rather than the rim.
There were “two styles, one a single line of punctations, and the other a zigzag.”
The Lee Collection unfortunately does not include any material from
Bowden, but the two styles do occur at other sites on St. Thomas, and they
are illustrated in Figure 24. The zigzag design on the left comes from Braham
(O17) and the line of punctations on the right comes from Belvedere #4 (O18).
An examination of the material from St. Thomas in the Lee Collection suggests
that apart from Bowden seven other sites in the parish may tentatively be compared
with it. These sites are as follows: Spanish Wood (Duckenfield) (O2),
Creighton Hall (O8), Orange Park (O10), Hillside (O13), Braham (O17),
Belvedere #4 (O18), and Green Wall (O12). Vanderwal conducted excavations
at Bowden and Spanish Wood, but nothing is known of the results. The material
from these sites in the Lee Collection is not very abundant, the most important
being Spanish Wood (O2) and Hillside (O13), with 324 and 196 artifacts
respectively.
With due caution, Spanish Wood may be taken as an example of this material
in terms of total statistics and in terms of the attributes recorded in the
Decorative Techniques Table. Altogether the collection includes 297 ceramic
pieces; 10 stone celts; 13 chert flakes, tools, and cores; and four other lithics. Included
in the ceramic pieces, there are 215 rim sherds, 59 body sherds, 31 lugs
(both independent and otherwise), four handles, four fragments of griddles,
and one other item. The individuality of the site (and others like it) is shown
not so much in the characteristics to which Tyndale- Biscoe drew attention, but
in three other very noticeable traits: the comparatively frequent use of impression
rather than incision, the relatively common practice of decorating the tops
of the rims (rather than the fillets), and the frequent appearance of beveled rims
(decorated and plain) on unrestricted simple vessels. These characteristics were
reflected in the analysis. The decorated rim sherds include 53 with plain fillets,
none with decorated fillets, and 10 with decorated tops. Impression as a proportion
of decorated shoulders and lugs accounts for 18 out of 57 at this site,