Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

266 / Appendix D.
British Guiana
Of the pottery now manufactured by the Indians of British Guiana we learn
from Mr. im Thurn (1883, p. 274) that the clay vessels are all of a few very
simple and unvaried forms, and are formed by hand alone. After the vessel has
been shaped, it is smoothed and polished by much rubbing with a waterworn
pebble— or, if it can be had, an old Indian stone axe- head. After the polishing,
it is dried in the sun, and finally slowly baked over a fire. The four types
figured— the buck- pot casiri- jar, goglets, and sappoora— examples of which
were also lent by the Demerara Museum to the Anthropological Exhibition—
have no resemblance to any of the known Jamaican aboriginal forms.
Fragments of ancient pottery, discovered some time ago from a deposit in
British Guiana, containing also fish and human bones, are described by Mr. im
Thurn (“Timehri,” Vol. III, 1884, p. 123), who mentions “artistically wrought
grotesque figures, heads, faces and whole bodies of men and other animals,
which have evidently been, in some few cases still are, luted on to the vessel by
way of ornament and handle combined.”
Mr. J. J. Quelch (“Argosy,” Demerara, April, 1894) has, from another locality,
Mon Repos, obtained similar pottery with remnants of fish bones and
human skeletons. These were lent to the Museum Exhibition, and are considered
to belong to a class of people whose pottery was characterized by an artistic
finish quite unlike, and indeed superior to, anything of which the modern
Indians give evidence.
It would thus appear that this method of fashioning ornamental handles on
pottery, in the shape of faces and often the whole body of man and other animals,
was very general amongst the aborigines of the West Indies and British
Guiana, but that these yet discovered in Jamaica indicate that the native artist
had not attained to the elaboration of the complex designs found elsewhere.
[42]
CHAPTER V
IMAGES AND AMULETS
The two specimens shown in Figures 3 and 4, Plate IV, belonging to the Hon.
D. Campbell, Linstead, were brought to notice by the Hon. Wm. Fawcett, and
were lent by the former gentleman for exhibition. They were obtained while
digging a yam hill on the property of Riverhead, near Ewarton, in St. Thomas
ye Vale, and when found were enclosed in an earthenware vessel, which, unfortunately,
fell to pieces upon being struck by the hoe. Both specimens are per-