Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

Fig. V. Modern
glass phial, from
Norbrook.
216 / Appendix D.
length, partially devitrified with age, and presenting a series
of iridescent colours. Its unique occurrence may be regarded
as accidental, or perhaps as indicating that European influence
had reached the island while the accumulations were in
progress.
Age of the Shell- Mounds
From the remarkable uniformity of the remains met with
throughout the whole island, from the character of these remains,
and the practical absence of all objects of a European
nature, there can be no doubt that the accumulations represent
the domestic refuse- heaps of the people inhabiting the
island previous to, and at the time of, its discovery by Columbus.
Though the species of shells met with vary with the
neighbourhood, the forms and position of the perforations
previously mentioned are the same in all. The fish and coney
bones are alike throughout, and the broken implements are of
the same type. Of greater importance is the fact that the pottery
is uniform in ornamentation, handles, shape, surface, and
texture, and similar to that found in the numerous caves of
the island associated with skulls, bones, and other undoubted
aboriginal objects. The thickness of the deposits, extending in some cases to a
depth of six feet, and the extent of the area occupied, often several acres, demonstrate
that the localities must have been occupied by numbers of people and
for lengthened periods. When the quantity of pottery met with in any deposit,
especially in such as that at Norbrook, is considered, and how very slowly under
ordinary circumstances such fragments would accumulate, one may perhaps
realize how very long the particular spot must have been occupied. The remains
furnish every evidence to supplement the historical accounts that Jamaica was
thickly populated by the Indians at the time [10] of its discovery by Columbus;
but, as is well known, the natives rapidly perished under the exactions of the
Spaniards. Most competent authorities estimate the number at about 60,000
when the first Spanish settlement was commenced in 1509, and that probably
few were left alive at the time of the first English invasion in 1596.
Distribution of the Aborigines
The refuse- heaps are the best indications left us of the distribution of the former
inhabitants of the island, and this may most fitly be referred to here. Ow-