Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

34 / Chapter 3.
Figure 4. Advance of the Ceramic/ Archaic–age frontier through the Caribbean (adapted
from Rouse, 1992). Frontier 1: 2000–1000 b.c., Frontier 2: 1000–200 b.c., Frontier 3:
200 b.c.–a.d. 600, Frontier 4: a.d. 600–1000, Frontier 5: a.d. 1000–1500.
that extent Rouse’s approach may be regarded as unexceptional or even inevitable,
since in the Caribbean the pottery does tend to be quite complex.
Once “styles or complexes” have been defined, how does the system go on
from there? The next step, according to Rouse, is the formation of “series.”
These he consistently defined as “lines of development” (1964:503; 1992:31)
“that are known to have descended from a common ancestor” (1992:183–
184). Originally, as he put it, each complex or style was named after a type
site. “Each series is similarly named after a typical complex or style, by addition
of the suffix -oid to the name of the complex or style.” Thus the style
found at Barrancas, on the South American mainland, took the name of that
locality, “and this style is assigned to the Barrancoid series, so called because
the Barrancas style is the type member of the series” (1964:503). Again, except
for the use of -oid, this procedure might not seem so unusual in the context
of archaeology as a whole, where eponymous sites commonly give their
names to “cultures” or “technocomplexes,” even in the Paleolithic, where, for
example, Aurignac gave its name to the Aurignacian, a name that has endured
for over a hundred years. But in his later writings, following the lead of the late
Gary Vescelius, Rouse complicated his scheme further by transforming it from