Pre-Colombian Jamaica: Caribbean Archeology and Ethnohistory

Frameworks for Caribbean Prehistory / 35
Figure 5. Chronology of the peoples and cultures in the Bahamian Archipelago and the
Greater Antilles (adapted from Rouse, 1992). Key as shown.
what he termed his “old single- level system of classifying peoples and cultures”
into a new “ bi- level system” (1992:127). In other words, the classification becomes
hierarchical, and the notion of subseries as well as series is introduced
(1990:59, 1991:684). “The ceramic styles, and the peoples and cultures they
define, are grouped into subseries, whose names end in the suffix -an, and series,
whose names end in the suffix -oid.” Thus the Cedrosan Saladoid subseries and
series (named after Cedros and Saladero respectively) marked the “first wave”
of Ceramic Age advance through the Caribbean. It is this system that appears
in the key to Figure 5 (and did not appear in 1964 and 1985). Such a double
system does not appear to have a parallel in archaeological usage elsewhere.
In either case, single or double, the implied meaning of the “lines of development”
is that of local evolution (with a “common ancestor”) rather than immigration
or replacement. Rouse consistently championed this interpretation