Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

10 / Burials and Human Remains
Burial Caves
As noted in Chapter 2, it was in the last years of the nineteenth century that
the Pre- Columbian past of the island began to be seriously studied, and “burial
caves” in particular attracted considerable interest. As Duerden (1897) convincingly
explained, such caves had served as “natural ossuaries” and not as
places of refuge. He listed six of them immediately east of Kingston, four on the
south coast, and four in the west of the island. The group east of Kingston included
Halberstadt (KC1), Dallas Castle (KC2), Cambridge Hill (OC1), Bloxburgh,
Richmond Hill, and Botany Bay. Halberstadt was the most remark able
because of the large number of human remains found within it, a minimum
of 34 individuals according to Duerden (1895), some of which W. H. Flower
(1895) and A. C. Haddon (1897) studied. All these writers commented on
the practice of cranial deformation. Of the six complete adult skulls described
by Flower (three male and three female) five showed evidence of this practice.
He emphasized that among the bones in general all ages were represented,
from children as young as 4 or 5 years to the very old. The mean cranial capacity
of seven skulls examined by Haddon was 1,282 c.c., all being brachycephalic.
At the Cambridge Hill site described by Duerden, “seven practically
perfect crania were secured and fragments of many others.” At Richmond Hill,
he noted that one “flattened skull” was “laid on its side” in a complete pottery
vessel (Duerden 1897:Plate VI, Figure 1). At Botany Bay, five “nearly complete
skulls” were found, as well as fragments of others. Duerden’s sites on the
south coast included Pedro Bluff (EC4) and a cave on Great Goat Island. Pedro