BACKGROUND FOR
THE TEACHING OF CARIBBEAN PREHISTORY
By Emily R. Lundberg, March 1997
Introductory Remarks
The teaching of Caribbean prehistory is vital to development of appreciation for West Indian culture. Educators will create opportunities for pride in that culture by demonstrating its origins in the blending of multiple traditions.
To accomplish such goals, educators continually must incorporate new material and present fresh perspectives. Our knowledge about the first peoples of the Caribbean is ever improving, based on new archaeological finds and new syntheses of older writings. It is important that the teacher seek out current information to supplement texts and class materials that may be somewhat dated. This background will provide a brief synopsis of current information, but it should not be taken as the last word on any of these subjects, especially as the years pass. In the Virgin Islands there are a number of professionals working in government offices, museums, libraries, and the V.I. Humanities Council who can guide inquirers to sources for additional or newer information.
It also is important that the teacher reveal to students the gaps in knowledge, the differences of interpretations, and the open questions still under research. While helping students to build skills in evaluating the bases of others' conclusions, this more importantly will draw their attention to the ongoing research that connects their society to those of the past, and perhaps will attract their interest to the ways in which they and their generation might contribute.
The teacher who is fairly new to this subject will gain much by looking to contemporary traditional societies of Amazonian South America for a general appreciation of a way of life that had similarities throughout the tropical Americas prior to modern impacts. At least some of the Pre-Ceramic Age island populations and all of the Ceramic Age island populations (the ancestors of the Tainos and Island Caribs) came out of the South American tropical forest tradition. Although no single people of Amazonia is an exact model for any Antillean culture, there are generalized elements of similarity in appearance, subsistence economy, tools, house-building, travel, warfare, shamanism, and so forth. Students might benefit from pictures and videos of Amazonian native cultures, within a framework of comparisons with known cultural traits of the Antillean peoples.
Finally, a word about labels applied to peoples may be in order. The terms "indigenous" and "native" are used in these lesson plans in an admittedly casual sense, rather than a strict dictionary sense. No group of people is "indigenous" to the islands in the sense of having originated here. All peoples entering the Antilles were immigrants from somewhere else, and some islands were populated by multiple pre-Columbian waves of immigrants. All are here lumped into the terms "indigenous" peoples or "first" peoples simply because they belong to a general racial and cultural group regarded as natives of the Americas (although their ancestors had migrated from Asia) in comparison to later immigrants from other continents. Various other terms are carefully applied in particular contexts of these lesson plans, but suffice it to say that every effort has been made to avoid terminology that is offensive or incorrect in reference to social groups. Teachers should be aware, however, that acceptability does vary with the political climate, academic context, and individual sensibilities, and usage may be adjusted accordingly. Equally as damaging as improper labels are the stereotypes of behavior that have become attached to indigenous people of prehistory. Fresh approaches will alleviate those problems.
Processes of Cultural
Change 
One of the most difficult aspects of writing about or teaching about prehistory is avoiding static portrayals. In any attempt to describe a people or a culture it usually is necessary to summarize a "snapshot" from a selected point in time or even to collapse information from a longer period of time to create a hypothetical "snapshot" that never actually existed at any one point. Cultures cannot be well understood as "snapshots", however, because they are constantly changing. At certain times of intense interactions with others, they may change profoundly. This is one of the most important points about prehistory, as well as modern society.
If encouraged to look, students can recognize the processes of cultural change in their local modern world or in recent history with which they are familiar. Do influences on dress or music, for instance, come from outside and become accepted in Virgin Islands culture? Does trade solidify ties with some outside areas more than others? Are peoples of some small, powerless groups being absorbed by a larger culture to which they are adapting? These processes all can be identified in prehistory, as well.
Caribbean island populations date back about 7,000 years, as far as we know today. Those 7,000 years saw a changing panorama of varied cultures and different kinds of human interactions, which mostly took place before the arrival of Columbus and Western history. The challenge of teaching that panorama is to counteract the static tendencies of descriptions by deliberate emphasis on the processes behind continual changes in the peoples and cultures of the islands.
Just as today the Caribbean is a marvel of diversity of peoples, of myriad forms of interactions, and even of changing ethnic identities and boundaries, so too it was at the time of European contact and back through time in prehistory. At any time when humans have been in the Antillean islands there have been expeditions of exploration, migrations, long-distance relations with former homelands, trade between strangers, warfare between neighbors, rebellion within communities, adoption of outside innovations, and merging of cultures. These are the universal cultural processes that will excite and stretch students' creative intellect.
Classification of Peoples in Prehistory
Scholars of prehistory classify peoples by various methods, depending on their approach and the kind of information available within it. Classifications that differ from this one will be encountered. Classifications continually evolve with the addition of new information, and the one offered below will undoubtedly be outdated at some point.
Former Terminology. Some terms formerly used in reference to Caribbean peoples are best replaced by other terms that scholars currently believe are more correct or less confusing. Such growth and change within the study of prehistory is not unique to that field, and students will benefit from an explanation of the nature of on-going Caribbean research. In that way, when they encounter outdated terms in older references, they will not be inclined to dismiss the information as incorrect or useless, but will approach it as a record of its time, which their own mental processes can transform and incorporate into a current information base. Awareness of continual evolution in scholarship also allows students to consider the shortcomings of a current classification and the potential ways in which future research might address them.
Arawaks: For many years this was the principal term used to refer to a variety of groupings of non-Carib peoples in the Antilles, but it has several problems. It is ambiguous because it has been applied to several different ethnic or archaeological groupings. It is confusing because it is actually the name of a South American ethnic group which never lived in the Antilles. It is misapplied because there is no evidence that it ever was an ethnic term of self-referral for Contact Period island people. The term came into use because the Contact Period Greater Antilleans (Tainos) spoke a language classified in the Arawakan family of languages. The Taino language is not "Arawak", however (which is the language of the Arawak people of South America). For reference to pre-Columbian Antilleans, the term can be supplanted by others which better reflect cultural or social groups as they are now understood.
Ciboney: In the past this term has been inadvisably applied to variously defined groups of archaic-level, non-pottery-making peoples of the Antilles. Archaeologically known archaic cultures, however, are better referenced by archaeological terms. The name "Ciboney" originally was reported for a non-Taino ethnic group of Cuba during the Contact Period, and it should be used only in that sense.
Igneri: This is an ethnic term of the Contact Period, when it evidently was used by Island Caribs in referring to their predecessors in the Lesser Antilles (whom they said they had conquered or displaced). In that original sense, the term is fine, but it often has been used for prehistoric archaeological cultures that have no proven connection to that ethnic group. In referring to early migrations of pottery-making people in the Antilles, or to early inhabitants of the Virgin Islands, the term can be replaced by more appropriate archaeological terms.
A Simplified Classification For Students. Indigenous peoples of the Virgin Islands can be summarized in four categories. Descriptions of these four categories follow.
This classification generalizes from a situation which is much more complex and controversial in research literature. These are basic cultural units suitable for students, however.
The labels of the units in this classification derive from two origins with important differences: some are strictly archaeological labels, while others are ethnohistoric labels for peoples described in Contact Period literature.
The Pre-ceramic Age Peoples and Ceramic Age Pre-Taino Peoples coincide with major archaeological divisions for the prehistoric period--determined by the absence or presence of pottery. These general terms avoid some of the complex controversy among archaeological researchers, who subdivide them further based on artifact classifications that continually undergo revisions and challenges. These units of classification actually refer to periods of cultural similarity--we cannot easily identify social groups and ethnic boundaries during those periods. (Teachers of grades K-2 may wish to substitute terms such as "No-pottery People" and "Pottery-making People".)
'Taino' is an ethnohistoric term, but it is also applied to late pre-Columbian archaeological material that is universally identified with the direct ancestors of the Contact Period ethnic group now called the Tainos.
The term 'Island Caribs' denotes a culture known only from ethnohistoric literature. Contact Period records describe these people who must have impacted the Virgin Islands, but there is as yet no accepted association of the historic period people with an archaeological culture.
1. Pre-ceramic Age Peoples (also Archaic, or Lithic + Archaic), Approximately 1000/2000 BC - AD 200 in the V.I.
These diverse peoples began to enter the Antilles about 5000 BC. In the Virgin Islands the earliest dates for their sites are 1000-2000 BC, with the latest dates approximately AD 200. Archaeologists are still debating about their origins, which may have been in South America, Central America, North America, or all three. (See the maps following this section.)
The Pre-ceramic Age ended at various times at different places in the Caribbean, when other immigrants appeared. Some Pre-ceramic peoples may have been assimilated by the first immigrants of the Ceramic Age (peacefully adapting to their way of life), while some probably were overpowered or pushed into remote areas. When Europeans arrived after 1492, they recorded accounts that isolated Pre-ceramic people were still living in the extreme western end of Cuba.
Cultural Traits:
 | No proven agriculture, but possibly tended desirable plants. |
| Ate fish, shellfish, game, and wild plant foods. |
| Probably made canoes from tree trunks (as did all later groups). |
| No pottery, probably made use of gourds. |
| Used implements of stone, shell, coral, and bone (as did all later groups), which differ in various parts of the Caribbean. Probably also used wood, basketry, feathers, and other perishable materials. |
| Made rare
decorative beads and ornaments by grinding and carving
stone or shell. |
| Used red mineral pigment (red ocher) to color objects or their skin. |
| V.I. area settlements have been found near shorelines and mangroves. |
| V.I. finds are much like some from Puerto Rico. |
| House types are unknown. |
| Language families are uncertain and possibly diverse. |
2. Ceramic Age, Pre-Taino Peoples, AD 200 - 1200 in the V.I.
"Pre-Taino" is not any kind of ethnic name, merely a general label for a relative time period. Its usage varies: here, for simplification, it includes all the Ceramic Age prior to the Taino period, but elsewhere it might refer to only a shorter period immediately before Taino development.
Archaeologists subdivide this period further because there was change and development within it. Although the details of archaeological classifications may be unnecessary for students, the concept of cultural change through these ten centuries is important.
 |
A
distinct migration began when pottery-makers traveled
down the Orinoco River in present Venezuela and out to
the Caribbean islands, populating islands from Trinidad
to Puerto Rico between 500 BC and 200 BC. Islands were
not necessarily settled in sequential order. The earliest
Virgin Islands Ceramic Age dates so far known are close
to AD 200. The ceramic tradition that arrived in the islands with this migration is called the Saladoid Series by archaeologists. It endured for several centuries, until about AD 600-700 in the Virgin Islands. |
From approximately AD 600 to 1200, archaeological cultures of the Virgin Islands are not yet well known. There are changes in pottery, other artifacts, food remains, and settlement locations, but the causes and dates of these transitions are still largely undefined. Culture may have gradually evolved from its preceding state, or it possibly received influences from new migrants from South America, initiating cultural changes. A new pottery tradition is called Ostionoid, which persists into the Taino period.
Most prehistorians see in these later centuries the beginnings of characteristic Tainan cultural traits, at least in the Taino heartland area of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola (now occupied by the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Archaeological similarities indicate that the Virgin Islands shared a culture or ethnic identity with eastern Puerto Rico, and perhaps had connections to the Leeward Islands. It is likely that trade and other interactions brought various peoples into contact with one another across longer distances throughout the region, as well.
Cultural Traits Throughout the Period:
| Cultivated cassava (manioc), and probably other food crops as well. |
| Large pottery griddles are thought to have been used for cooking cassava bread in much the same way as it is still done today. |
| Tended small food animals they took with them as they migrated. |
| Caught fish, sea turtles, manatees, small game; collected shellfish and wild plant foods. |
| Grew cotton to make hammocks, bags, and clothing items. |
| Worked stone into polished axes and other tools. |
| Made small triangular shell or stone artifacts ("3-pointers") interpreted as early zemis (idols representing spirits of the other-world, also spelled 'cemí'). |
| Buried their dead within the village, sometimes with bowls placed in the grave. |
| Language is thought to have been in the Arawakan family (a large language family of South America). |
Cultural Traits Showing Change During the Period:
| Pottery: The initial pottery tradition (Saladoid) produced vessels in a wide variety of artistic shapes, frequently decorated with white and red painting or with sculpted clay forms; the first part of the subsequent tradition (Ostionoid) produced vessels in different shapes, left mostly undecorated. |
| Adornments: Saladoid pottery is associated with small amulets and other jewelry items made of semi-precious stones, acquired from long distances suggesting ease of sea travel and trade; these items are lacking in later sites. |
| Diet: Common food remains change through time; one example is crabs, very abundant in Saladoid sites but much less so in later sites. |
| Houses: Although construction materials may not have changed much (wooden posts, thatched roofs), the typical size of dwellings may have changed, going from buildings large enough to house several families to small houses for a single family; this suggests changing social relations. |
| Settlement Locations: Early Ceramic Age people often placed their villages in inland valleys near good soils, while later people increasingly established small village or camp sites in shoreline locations (possibly with specialized fishermen engaged in trade systems). |
| Plazas/Ball Courts: The first stone outlines of these begin to appear in later pre-Taino times (in Puerto Rico). |
| Political organization: Networks of authority probably grew from single-village to multi-village systems (perhaps early chiefdoms). |
3. Tainos, AD 1200-1500 in the Virgin Islands and Greater Antilles.
The dates for this period are widely used general estimates because V.I. sites have not been sufficiently dated to provide more specific information. Much information about the Tainos comes from Spanish accounts. Archaeologists believe it is valid to extrapolate that information back into late prehistoric times for sites that have similar artifacts.
Some archaeological sites of the Virgin Islands have typical Taino traits, such as the stone-lined ball court at Salt River on St. Croix. Artifacts from other sites also indicate that these islands were included in the Taino realm at least for some period. The Tainos may have abandoned the V.I. before 1493, however, due to the advancing Island Caribs.
During this time period in the Lesser Antilles the non-Taino peoples are not well identified. It is likely that they were diverse, with varying ties to South America, and established communities possibly struggled to hold territory against an influx of newer immigrants like the Island Caribs.
The name "Taino" was recorded by the early Spanish but did not come into use as an ethnic label until much later. (The Spanish simply used "Indios", or Indians.) Taino evidently was a Tainan word of self-reference, but its relation to a specific social grouping is undetermined.
Taino culture was characterized by advanced political organization, elaborate ceremonial life, and well developed arts. Taino contacts undoubtedly extended to a wide region beyond that which they occupied. Even the Taino heartland, however, was not ethnically homogeneous. On Hispaniola the Spanish reported that a people called the Ciguayo spoke a different language and had a distinct culture, restricted to an area of the north coast.
Cultural Traits:
| Raised staple crops of cassava and sweet potatoes, and to a lesser extent corn and other starchy plants, sometimes using extensive fields with soil heaped in mounds for planting. |
| Amassed quantities of storable meats by methods such as smoking and drying fish, iguanas, or saltwater crocodiles. |
| Wore no real clothing except a below-the-waist apron worn by married women. |
| Designed their skin with dyes, pierced their ears and noses for ornaments, flattened their foreheads by binding babies' heads. |
| Made pottery vessels decorated with lines cut into the clay or with elaborate human-like or animal-like forms built up with attached bits or strips of clay (the late Ostionoid series). |
| Sculpted stone, shell, and bone into elaborate forms representing components of the spirit world. |
| Fashioned woven articles, feather adornments, gold-alloy jewelry, and other elaborate ornaments used by high ranking people. |
| Slept in cotton hammocks. |
| Lived in individual family houses that sometimes were grouped together in huge towns (Hispaniola, Puerto Rico). |
| Constructed plazas and ball courts outlined with stones, which were sometimes decorated with petroglyphs (as at Salt River on St. Croix); played a ball game using a rubber ball (as did native peoples throughout South and Central America, with diverse kinds of courts and rules). |
| Established several "ceremonial centers" of multiple ball courts (in Puerto Rico), suggesting various chiefdoms. |
| Entrusted specialized knowledge of the sacred domain to select individuals (the shaman or behique). |
| Operated within a hierarchical system of chiefs, who were invested with power largely through their genealogical relationships and who could command labor and wealth from their "subjects". |
| May have had social groupings of varying inherited rank or status (but this has been difficult to establish from the early Spaniards' flawed perceptions of Taino society). |
| Traveled and traded extensively in huge dugout canoes. |
| Spoke a language we label "Taino", in the Arawakan language family; little of their language was ever recorded. |
4. Island Caribs (also called Caribs, Calina, or Kalina), Undetermined Pre-Columbian Date to Modern Times, Lesser Antilles
 |
"Island Caribs" is the name archaeologists have begun to apply to the ancestors of the present-day Caribs of the Lesser Antilles. The name "Carib" is not wrong, of course, since that name was used throughout the historical period and is still officially used today in Dominica and elsewhere. There is another group of people called "Caribs", however (sometimes "True Caribs"), who live on the South American mainland. It is to avoid confusion with this group that many scholars use the term "Island Caribs" in reference to people of the Lesser Antilles. |
Another confusing aspect about this terminology is that the primary languages of the historic period Island Caribs and the South American Caribs are thought to be related to two different language families. While the South American Caribs speak a language in the Cariban family, the Island Caribs' historically recorded principal language is classified in the Arawakan language family. That differentiation presents a good reason to use distinguishing labels for the two groups. (The language situation is complex, however. It was not recorded until the 1600s, after much contact and change. At that time there were two or three languages used within an Island Carib village, including a men's language apparently classifiable in the Cariban family.)
"Kalina" or "Calina" is another name sometimes used for the Island Caribs, as well as for a mainland people, and it probably was in use at the time of contact, as a close cognate of the name written as "Caribe" or "Cariba" by Europeans.
Island Caribs are known from the early reports of invading Europeans. They reported on them as adversaries, however, and recorded little information about their culture. It was not until almost a century and a half had passed that French missionaries among the Island Caribs recorded detailed aspects of their life and language. By that time, Island Carib culture had been greatly changed by interactions with Europeans and others and by incorporation of Tainos, Africans, and probably others into their communities. The culture of today's Carib people of the Antilles has naturally continued to change. Therefore it is very important, when referring to Caribs or Island Caribs, to specify the time period intended.
Archaeologists have not reached any agreement about the identification of pre-Columbian Island Carib villages. Consequently there is no agreement about the length of time they had been in the Lesser Antilles before Columbus reported them there in 1493. At that time they occupied several islands and, on Guadeloupe at least, held captives taken from Puerto Rico. Tainos reported that the Island Caribs attacked them in the Greater Antilles. The natives who fought against Columbus's crew in 1493 at the island commonly identified as St. Croix are usually interpreted as Island Caribs (although there is not universal agreement on any point related to the issue). No Virgin Islands archaeological site, however, has been identified as an Island Carib village.
Most scholars have viewed the Island Caribs as an expanding population which was gradually annexing islands in a movement from South America toward the Greater Antilles. Strong trade relations were maintained with the Guianas region. Some ethnohistorians have suggested that the biased reports of Europeans may have so exaggerated the differences between Island Caribs and Tainos as to create a false identity for the former. The widely held view, however, is that certain distinctive Island Carib traits are indicative of a distinct ethnic identity. Certainly Island Caribs were unique in their ability to repel European invaders for decades and to retain their identity in the face of rapidly changing culture.
Cultural Traits (Contact Period):
| Made meals of much the same types of foods as the Tainos. |
| Covered their skin with red oil tinted from annatto seeds, sometimes also using black paint for lines and designs; pierced their ears, nose, and lip for adornments; allowed their hair to grow long, decorating it with feather crowns for special occasions; wore bracelets, necklaces, and girdles that displayed some of their prized ornaments. |
| Bound women's legs with tight cotton bands; bound children's heads to cause flattening at front and back. |
| Built a special house for all the men in each village, with women and young children living in smaller houses. |
| Placed high value on valor and battle skills; fought with long bows and arrows, which might be poison-tipped, as well as clubs. |
| Acknowledged leadership by virtue of abilities rather than heredity, each village being generally independent except for the organization of war parties. |
| Organized long-distance raids on other communities, by means of large sea-going canoes. |
| Brought captured women into their villages as workers and wives. |
| Had a reputation for consuming roasted flesh of their male war captives. |
| Believed their world to be populated by evil spirits, who caused sickness and death through sorcery, which was severely punished. |
Contributions and Legacy
of the
Indigenous Peoples
In addition to teaching an historical account of the first populations of the Caribbean, teachers also have the vital task of embedding that information within perspectives that foster in students a sense that indigenous cultures are a part of Virgin Islands heritage.
First, students need to develop a respect and appreciation for indigenous cultures. Often the discussion of "prehistoric" people evokes images of people somehow inferior to ourselves, when in fact the individuals of Caribbean prehistory were every bit as intelligent, inventive, and artistic as the brightest among us now. Their culture, although different from ours, met the universal human needs, and the people shared all of our human inclinations, both good and bad. Students who may be unduly impressed by the absence of manufactured goods and institutions like ours can be guided to appreciate the creativity and skills evidenced by such pre-Columbian accomplishments as long canoe trips across open seas, storable food rendered from poisonous tubers, and belief systems that explained life's mysteries.
Second, students need to recognize that Virgin Islands culture today has a connection with the past. Although the European invasion decimated populations and devastated cultures, the process of re-peopling of the Antilles was not without transmission of cultural traits to the developing West Indian societies. Patterns of resource use, political boundaries, household practices, and other cultural traditions were preserved to some extent. Together with the European and African cultural traditions, the indigenous Amerindian legacy is one of the three foundations of modern West Indian culture.
Finally, students need to realize that our only sources of information about pre-Columbian peoples are the physical objects and traces they left behind. Only the preservation and future study of archaeological sites and their contents will fill any of the gaps in our knowledge of the first peoples of the Virgin Islands.
