Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

110 / Chapter 8.
Warminster Cave
A visit to this site in April 2003 revealed that it certainly merited James Lee’s description
as “the largest and best remaining group of petroglyphs in Jamaica,”
but also that it had been damaged through the daubing of red paint upon
some of the images. With the cooperation of Alumina Partners of Jamaica
(ALPART), work was undertaken to remove the paint and restore and record
the images in July 2005. This work was done with the expert advice and guidance
of Johannes Loubser, and the results were presented to the SAA (Society
for American Archaeology) meeting in San Juan in April 2006 (Loubser and
Allsworth- Jones, in press). The cave, formed by the collapse of a large boulder
in front of a limestone outcrop, measures about 10 x 6 m. Ten rock art panels
have been identified here and in an immediately adjacent shelter. It is noticeable
that they are largely concentrated on flowstone surfaces rather than the
parent limestone. There are 62 images in all. While the majority of these images
recall human faces, with or without stylized concentric ring eyes, there is
certainly more to it than that. Owl imagery, reflecting probably both the Jamaican
brown owl (Pseudoscops grammicus) and the white barn owl (Tyto alba),
is much in evidence, and their sentinel- like positions at the outer portals of the
cave are reminiscent of the Cueva de La Mora. The apparent combination of
human and animal motifs in one image, and the conjunction of life and death
as shown in skull- like representations, among other things, show clear links to
the Taíno cosmology manifested elsewhere at similar sites in the Greater Antilles.
Once again, Jamaica certainly does not stand by itself, but forms part of
a larger whole.