Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

2 / History of Investigation
First Observations
Following the English occupation of Jamaica, occasional references were made
to the Pre- Columbian inhabitants of the island, during the eighteenth and the
early part of the nineteenth centuries. Thus, Sir Hans Sloane in 1707 recorded
that a certain Mr. Barnes “who lived on the Red Hills four miles from Guanaboa”
in what is now St. Catherine parish had found a cave with human bones
and potsherds attributed to the Indians (Duerden 1897:28). Then, in 1774
Edward Long described the discovery of an Indian burial, 11 years before, by
the side of the old road from Ocho Rios to St. Ann’s Bay in what is now Carinosa
Gardens (AJ 1973, 3:2). 1 Most remarkably, in 1799 Isaac Alves Rebello
exhibited three carved wooden “images” from Jamaica to the Society of Antiquaries
in London, which are now kept in the British Museum. They were
said to have been found in 1792, “in a natural cave near the summit of a mountain,
called Spots, in Carpenter’s Mountain,” by a surveyor (Journal of the Institute
of Jamaica 1896). There is a bird- faced figure, a male figure now supposed
to be Boinayel the Rain Giver, and a cohoba stand with a further male
figure (Appendixes 44–46). Lee thought it possible that this site might well
1. AJ refers to the newsletter “Archaeology Jamaica” that James Lee edited from 1965 to
1986. Each annual volume was known by the year. Usually there were four issues per year,
although in the early years there were more. Thus, (AJ 1966, 11), for example, is the eleventh
issue for the year 1966.