Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

162 / Appendix A.
at the foot of this hill,” until it was diverted by a storm in 1722. Apart from pottery
and shells, he found also “portions of human skeletons.” Robert Howard
(1950:85–87) visited the site in 1947 and 1948 and its potential became obvious
to him. He noted that, thanks to the work of local collectors, “a surprisingly
large number of complete or nearly complete pots have been recovered
which is decidedly unusual for Jamaica, where middens as a rule only rarely
yield whole specimens.” The site had in fact already been extensively damaged
in 1944, when a road was cut through, isolating (as it still does today) the
southern portion of it from the remainder. Howard expressed the opinion that
the road cut took out precisely what had been “the area of heaviest occupation”
(Howard and Lewis 1961–1962:59). Nonetheless, a great deal remained. Lee
mapped the site in 1965, and according to Vanderwal (1968a:84) it may originally
have occupied an area of up to 33 acres.
Following Tyndale- Biscoe’s work in 1952–1954, Howard carried out excavations
in the portion of the site north of the road in 1958, 1961, 1963, and
1964 (Howard 1961–1962, 1965; Howard and Lewis 1961–1962; Tyndale-
Biscoe 1954). He had intended to carry on the work on a larger scale, but this
was prevented by his sudden death in 1965 (du Quesnay 1965a). Silverberg
and colleagues (1972) subsequently prepared a report on the 1964 excavations.
Vanderwal resumed work at the site, and carried out excavations there in 1965,
1966, 1967, and 1968 (Vanderwal 1967, 1968a, 1968d). It was thought that
the Public Works Department intended to level the entire southern portion of
the site in order to construct a single four- lane highway from Kingston to Spanish
Town on the line of the 1944 road cut, hence intensive “salvage operations”
took place here in 1967 and 1968 (AJ 1967, 6:1; 1967, 8:1–3; 1968, 4:1). The
“blitz attack” in 1967 occasioned a lively correspondence in the Daily Gleaner
(Jury, October 31, 1967; Daily Gleaner, Editorial, November 1, 1967; du Quesnay,
November 3, 1967). In fact the threatened widening of the road did not
take place, and it was decided that the western- bound highway should follow
the line of the old road skirting the southern end of the site, while the 1944
road cut became the eastern- bound highway (which is the position today).
During the operations in the southern portion of the site in 1967, Vanderwal
confirmed that White Marl had been occupied during the historic as well
as the prehistoric period. In the northern portion, Howard had already noticed
some artifacts indicative of English occupation in the top 12 to 15 inches of
deposit (Howard and Lewis 1961–1962:61). In the southern portion, Vanderwal
unearthed cut stone foundation walls of a structure 35 x 50 ft in dimension,
which he believed must have been constructed in about 1745. He sug-