Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

Aboriginal Indian Remains in Jamaica by J. E. Duerden / 219
The Shell- Mounds of Guiana
Mr. im Thurn in “Among the Indians of Guiana,” refers (1883, p. 410, et seq.) to
shell- mounds “very similar in structure and contents to the well- known kitchenmiddens
of Europe. . . . all such heaps found in Guiana occur within a certain
small and comparatively little- known district, north of the Pom eroon. . . .
At least eight are at present known. . . . all are in strong defensive positions, and
near running water. . . . All the mounds— so far as they have been examined—
are alike in character and contents. They consist chiefly of great accumulations
of a small snail- like black and white shell (Neritina lineolata). . . .
Among the shells which constitute the bulk of the mounds, have been found
various objects deserving attention. In the Cabacaboori mound, among the vast
accumulation of one species of shells, but in far less abundance, were some bivalve
shells (Lucina), a few oyster- shells and fragments of a fresh- water shell . . .
together with pieces of crab- shells, bones of fish and of mammals, and lastly—
and most important— human bones. These bones are invariably found scattered,
and not as entire skeletons, and have been split, so as to allow the extraction
of the marrow. There were also some broken, and a few entire, stone
implements, hammers probably and axe- heads, pieces of charcoal, and lumps
of the red pigment called faroah, with which the Indians paint their bodies.
Great quantities of sharp- edged fragments of white semi- transparent quartz
were also present. The shape of these and the fact that they do not occur naturally
in the immediate neighbourhood, seems to suggest that they were used
as implements, probably as knives, for which purpose they must have been
brought from a distance. . . . In one place there were a few fragments of pottery,
evidently all belonging to one vessel; these are noticeable as the only examples
of pottery ever recorded as discovered in a Guiana shell- mound.”
From a consideration of all the facts concerned Mr. im Thurn comes to the
following conclusions with regard to the shell- mounds: “(1) that they were
made not by the resident inhabitants of the country, but by strangers; (2) that
these strangers came from the sea and not from further inland; and (3) that
these strangers were certain Island Caribs, who afterwards took tribal form in
Guiana as the so- called Caribisi, or, as I have called them, True Caribs.”
Shell- Heaps or Kitchen- Middens in Other Parts of America
After referring to the kitchen- middens of Europe, Nadaillac (1885, p. 47, et
seq.) thus summarizes those of America: “No less numerous are the kichenmiddens
or shell- heaps in America, and wherever excavations have been made
they have been most fruitful in results. Immense heaps of shells, the gradual accumulations
of man, stretch along the coasts of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,