Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

Principal Excavated Sites in Jamaica / 143
pieces of a broken bowl, which had clearly been damaged by the construction
of the roadway, and inside it was a small bowl which was complete except that
the handle had been broken off.” He subsequently reconstructed both vessels,
the height, diameter, and thickness of which are as follows: (1) 12.7 x 31 x
5 cm, (2) 5 x 13/13.5 x 8 cm. Inside the bowls “mixed with the earth and other
midden material” were bone fragments and 20 human teeth. Some of the fragments
were from a skull, but they were all broken into small pieces and were
very friable. There were no beads, tools, ornaments, or other kinds of “grave
goods” in the bowls. The teeth were submitted to Ian Jones, a dental surgeon,
who reported that 15 were deciduous and five permanent; the latter were partially
developed with no evidence of root formation (AJ 1984, 2:10). The teeth
(from both the upper and the lower jaw) were regarded as belonging to a single
individual between 3 and 4 years old.
In 1986 Wilman excavated a 1.5 x 1.5 m square in the undeveloped lot, to
a maximum depth of 40 cm, taken down in four 10-cm levels. He found a total
of 2,618 potsherds, including fragments of griddles. Both plain and filleted
rims were present, and there were a few typical water jar fragments. Other finds
included 20 flint cores and 138 blades, 20 other worked stones, four pieces of
coral, and nine shell tools. Two adult human remains were also found: an incisor
in level 2, and a right proximal femur of a large individual in level 3. Using
the figures for the individual species [rather than the overall totals, which appear
to be erroneous: AJ (n.s.) 1992, 6:26–27] Wilman recovered a total of
3,264 terrestrial and 421 marine mollusks. Two thousand, six hundred of the
terrestrials consist of Pleurodonts. The remainder includes two freshwater species,
Hemisinus lineolatus and Pila fasciata, which could have been collected
from a freshwater source within walking distance of the site. The marine shells
are strikingly dominated by six species of Neritina, which make up 303 of
the total, other common species being Tectarius muricatus and Cittarium pica.
Sylvia Scudder studied the remaining vertebrate faunal remains from Wilman’s
dig (1994).
In 1990 a further 1 x 1 m square was excavated by Judith Fandrich (1991)
in the same lot. Her excavation reached a maximum depth of 50 cm, taken
down in 5-cm levels. She gave no details of the mollusks, except to say that they
were primarily land snails, but she presented a quantified analysis of the vertebrate
remains found by her. This can be used to supplement the results produced
by Scudder, which, with a few exceptions, took the form of a species list
only. Fandrich calculated her results in terms of minimum numbers of individuals
(MNI), as Wing did for other sites on the north coast such as Bengal