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It should be cautioned that this is certainly not intended to be a detailed scholarly article (and is not referenced) – nor can this brief note pretend to be one. It is hoped that those visiting rock art in the Caribbean will look further than the dates given in guidebooks and the stories told by local guides.Dating of the carved rocks of the Caribbean is complex but what can be said is that the carvings are not the work of the ‘Caribs’, now referred to as ‘Island Caribs’ (or ‘Kalinago’ in the lesser Antilles), that is, the people who populated the Caribbean at the time of the European ‘discovery’, invasion, extermination. In the literature of this ‘Contact period’ there is reference to rock carvings but no record of these being executed by Island Carib/Kalinago peoples.
First, we must dismiss the old tales, still taught in many Caribbean schools and repeated in guidebooks, that the ‘warlike savage and cannibal Caribs’ decimated the ‘peaceful Arawaks’ who had inhabited these island previously.
The possible migration routes into the Caribbean suggest that pre-ceramic peoples gradually occupied the Lesser Antilles from around 2000BC from the North of Venezuela; peoples from central America occupied the Greater Antilles from an unknown date, and peoples from the Southern USA spread down to Cuba again from an unknown date. In the Virgin islands, pre-ceramic age peoples are thought to date from 2000/1000BC to 200AD.
The Pre-ceramic age ended at various times in different parts of the Caribbean, assimilated or overpowered by immigrants of the Ceramic Age. There were successive waves of immigration of Ceramic Age peoples from the Orinico basin region of Venezuela somewhere around 500BC into the southernmost islands of the Lesser Antilles, spreading further north around 300BC and 200BC. From around 900-1200AD, the Greater Antilles were occupied by Later Pre-Tainos peoples. The Island Caribs or Kalinagos spread up from the North of Venezuela somewhere around 1200AD. The Tainos peoples occupied the Greater Antilles at the time of the Contact Period. The Island Caribs/Kalinago referred to their predecessors as Igneri. These people have generally been referred to as Arawaks in most literature. The term Arawak is misleading since none of the peoples were known to be of Arawakan descent – rather they spoke a language that loosely fell into the large family of Arawakan type languages.
Of course this is a huge simplification of the complex patterns of migration and occupation and it should be said here that when Europeans arrived in 1492, there were still Pre-Ceramic Age peoples living in the extreme West of Cuba.
Archaeologists have, more recently, classified the ceramic age peoples according to styles of pottery finds and ceramic classifications such as Saladoid, Troumassoid, Suazoid etc. And these are in general use. More recently, and because of the uncertainty surrounding pottery classification styles as the measure of archaeological age, the following are beginning to be used: Lithic - 4000BC-2000BC; Archaic - 2500BC-500BC; Early 500BC-AD650; Intermediate AD650-AD1000; Late - AD1000-1492; Contact AD1492.
So, when were the petroglyphs of the Caribbean carved? Dating is the subject of much debate but it has recently been concluded by some that they correspond to the Late Troumassoid / Suazoid period (ceramaic dating periods) approximately 900-1100AD. This is despite the fact that imagery on ceramics of those periods significantly differ from imagery on rock art but the theory has recently been advanced by Henry Petitjean Roget that ceramic art was executed by women and rock art by men. However, the possibility must exist that the rock art throughout the Lesser Antilles is older than this and, possibly, multi-period. The truth is that there is very little convincing work published on the dating of these carvings but that there is much speculation. What can be said is that they are of much earlier date than Island Carib/Kalinago.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road