Earliest Inhabitants, The Dynamics of the Jamaican Taino

ISBN: 978-976-640-149-8

Price: US$37 (s)

MY THIRD edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Onions, 1983, p. 99) will help me to explain my interest in The Earliest Inhabitants. Archaeology is a subject that some scientists leave solely for historians - “Ancient history generally; systematic description or study of antiquities.” Yet the definition extends beyond history into science - “The scientific study of the remains and monuments of the prehistoric period.” So, science meets ancient history in archaeology, just as it does in Atkinson‟s book. It is a pity that some scientists have a poor opinion of archaeology, offering as it does insights into topical subjects such as environmental change and human response (see Caribbean examples in Wilson, 2007). Archaeology is strongly interdisciplinary, and in consequence catches the eye of administrators, grant awarding bodies and the general public. It also appeals directly to the core audience of CJES, that is, to Earth scientists.

The Earliest Inhabitants is an attractive, well produced volume that consists of a general introduction followed by 14 chapters collected into four unequal sections. The introduction explains the historic distinction of the terms Taíno and Arawak, but finishes with a plea for more support for archaeology in Jamaica. Half of the chapters had been published hitherto, but most were in conference transactions or journals that are not readily available internationally. For example, „Petrography and source of some Arawak [=Taíno] rock artifacts from Jamaica‟ by Roobol and Lee (Chapter 9) was a paper that I have now enjoyed reading. Despite studying the geology of Jamaica for over 20 years, I had never come across it before, probably because it originally appeared in the proceedings of an archaeological conference in Guadeloupe in 1976. I thank Lesley-Gail Atkinson for making these papers more readily available.

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