Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

16 / Chapter 2.
Vanderwal provided a detailed account and defense of his methodology. In
his view, “typology” (a concept constantly invoked in archaeological writings)
could, so far as pottery is concerned, relate only to complete vessels. These are
not what are usually found on archaeological sites. It is fragmentary potsherds
that are the object of study. Each potsherd found may possess one or more attributes,
alternatively called elements, and Vanderwal listed 32 of these in his
Jamaican sample as a whole. By experiment, he found that many of these attributes
were correlated; hence, they could be combined into a smaller number of
what he termed “modes.” His final analysis was therefore conducted in terms
of nine modes (i.e., combinations of attributes) although only six of them were
present in his south coast sites. Since, as he said, the number of attributes may
be more than one on any single potsherd, and they are analyzed independently,
their number will exceed the number of potsherds present at any one site, and
the same is true of the modes derived from the attributes. This point may be illustrated
by reference to the analysis Vanderwal carried out on Howard’s pottery
from his 1964 excavations reported in Silverberg and colleagues (1972:13–
17 and Figure 5). One thousand, three hundred twenty- five potsherds from
Howard’s trenches A and B produced 2,560 elements included in six modal
classes. Only the totals for the modes are listed in Vanderwal’s thesis, hence we
do not know how many sherds from his 24 sites were at his disposal. The classes
used in Vanderwal’s study of Howard’s material differ slightly from those he
used in his thesis, but nonetheless an interesting comparison can still be made
between the results for White Marl obtained in 1964 and those Vanderwal
himself obtained in 1965 and 1966.
The nine modes finally chosen are as follows: The first three relate solely to
the form of the rim, and are mutually exclusive. They are (1) plain rims, (2) filleted
rims, and (3) beveled rims. The remaining six are decorative categories,
and are not mutually exclusive, that is, they may occur simultaneously on any
given potsherd. (4) is the form of incision on the shoulder of a vessel that Vanderwal
called open or closed “ alternate- oblique,” a classification that has been
adopted in this work. (5) refers to incisions on fillets (Vanderwal 1968b:r–u),
and (6) refers to incisions on the tops of applied clay strips (Vanderwal 1968b:
v–w). Both these characteristics occurred on the north coast only. (7) embraces
“serrated” handles, ribbons, and lugs, a style that no doubt here would be referred
to as “impressed” (Vanderwal 1968b:e–n). (8) refers to “affixed” handles,
ribbons, and lugs, which are not decorated. (9) is “other decoration,” including
punctations, crosshatch incisions, and serrations on rims. According to Vanderwal,
this miscellaneous category was also confined to the north coast.