Charting the journey of Jamaica’s indigenous ceramic pottery

Any broken or fragmented ceramic material associated with an archaeological site is commonly referred to as a sherd or shard. Since humans began the art of ceramic making, it has become a fundamental feature of cultures worldwide, with pottery remains dating back to cultures as far as 24,000 BC.

Typically, as cultures and civilisations rise and fall, their ceramic sherds are among the most common artefacts left behind, with each culture having unique ceramic-making techniques and decorative styles. They are so common that archaeologists often use ceramics to differentiate and identify different cultures or civilisations, date remains, or assess changes in their socioeconomic statuses, especially when absolute dating methods are not available. This is usually done through seriation, where pottery is arranged in chronological order based on the styles and frequencies, allowing sequences of human occupation to be determined. The particular patterns of Jamaican pre-Columbian ceramic style changes demonstrate that the island was once home to two distinct indigenous cultures.

Named after the Ostiones site in Puerto Rico, Ostionoids first migrated to Jamaica around 600-650 AD from Western Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Little is known about the lives of these people, who lived on the island, with their presence in Jamaica primarily documented by the red clay ceramic pottery scattered across the island, which gave them the informal name “Red” or “Redware people.”

SIMPLE TECHNIQUES

They created pottery using simple techniques, with basic designs and a characteristic orange-red slip applied to the vessels. Many Ostionan redware ceramics feature zoomorphic shapes or carvings that may have held cultural significance or were purely decorative. For years, it has been debated whether the Redware People settled on mainland Jamaica or resided solely on the cays, only visiting the mainland to gather resources. Assessments of coastal archaeological assemblages indicate that Ostionans likely settled the mainland in small coastal villages, primarily neglecting inland resources.

By 800-950 AD, a more complex Arawakan group, the Meillacans, that had developed on Western Hispaniola, followed their Ostionan predecessors and migrated to Jamaica. The Meillacans would have assimilated the original Ostionoid inhabitants by absorbing them into their own culture, or by conquest, creating a Meillacan-Ostionan hybrid culture that further developed into the better-known Western Taíno by 1200 AD. Archaeological assemblages relating to the Jamaican Taíno culture reflect thinner, unpainted ceramics with patterned motifs, unlike the Ostionan red-glazed pottery. Ceramic pieces associated with Taíno culture have been found across the island, indicating their expansion and colonisation of more extensive regions of Jamaica, making the Taíno the first known group to have widespread control of the island.

Compiled by Romaine Thomas, assistant curator at the National Museum Jamaica, Institute of Jamaica.