Belmont: Ball Games in the Prehistoric Caribbean
Update on Amerindian Treasure at Belmont, April 2007. Update taken from Claudia Colli article in the BVI Welcome Mag. BVI Welcome Magazine
Dr. Peter Drewett, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sussex, will be coming to the BVI in May with a group of archaeology students to continue his ongoing work at the site.
The excavation will take place from May 7th to the 25th and if you have a bent for delving into history, Dr. Drewett says that volunteers are welcome.
Drewett first started excavating the site in 1996, and along with his varying teams, has unearthed a wealth of artifacts that has helped give the ancient village its shape and form.
On Dr. Drewett's last trip, he and his team found evidence of inhabitation during the plantation era on the same site, and he hopes this time around to determine whether the site was from the pre or post emancipation era. The stone remains of the 18th century Donovan sugar plantation are located adjacent to the excavation area.
In addition to the Belmont village, the archaeologists have identified 31 other sites on Tortola alone, and Dr. Drewett beleives that over 1000 Indians may have lived on these islands at one time. By the time Colombus sailed past these islands in 1493, there was no evidence of Indian inhabitation. No one knows if they just moved on, or succumbed to disease.
For those who want additional insight into this fascinating culture, Dr. Drewett will give a talk at the Belmont Dig on Sunday May 20th at 4 PM. The entrance to the site can be found just a few hundred yards along the lower Belmont Road that runs between Long Bay and Smugglers Cove.
This below article was taken from World Archeology as this title page here shows. The link to their website is World Archaeology This article was written by Peter Drewett.
Long Bay on the north coast of Tortola Island is often voted one of the ten best beaches in the Caribbean. At the time of prohibition, sugar cane was grown there to make rum for smuggling into the U.S.
Further back, when sugar was a leading world commodity, hundreds of African slaves worked on nearby plantations. But what of the Indigenous people? And, without the great monuments of the Central American mainland to the west, what do most tourist know of the region's prehistory?
When Columbus arrived in 1492, the Caribbean was, in fact, densely populated. The first settlers had probably reached the region before 5000BC, living as fishers and foragers-though leaving little more than scatters of flint flakes as evidence of their presence. Then sometime after 400BC, the local "agricultural revolution" began, with horticulture, permanent settlements and pottery
Peter Drewett of London's Institute of Archaeology, Brian Bates of Longwood University in Virginia, and staff and students from H. Lavitt Stoutt Community College in the British Virgin Islands have spent the last six years working on a major prehistoric dig at Belmont on Long Bay. The site has now become the first officially recognized archeological site in the British Virgin Islands. Though there is more work to be done, Peter Drewett here summarizes what has been learnt from the site so far about the Caribbean before Columbus.
Fishers and Foragers
Belmont lies in the British Virgin Islands on the northern fringe of the Caribbean. It was first settled around 2000BC. These first settlers were fishers and foragers, who had not yet learnt to make pottery. They probably came from South America, but it was not until the third year of our dig that we found the evidence. A layer of wind blown sand had sealed their settlement beneath the later village site we were excavating. Hearths made of blocks of local volcanic tuff was associated with two, apparently deliberately buried, oval multi purpose stone tools of C.600BC. All we could expect, perhaps, from what was probably only a short stay camp used by fishers and foragers moving about the islands in their canoes.
The Manioc Cultivators
The first permanent settlement began sometime after 400 BC, when horticulture and pottery making spread rapidly across the Caribbean. Who was responsible? Although some people may have moved from Florida to the Bahamas, virtually everywhere else was resettled from low land South America, perhaps mainly from the upper reaches of Orinoco Basin and coastal Venezuela. Saladoid pottery-named after the type site- Saladero, in Central Venezuela-provides the key evidence. It is painted red and white or incised with cross hatch decoration. It's spread across the Caribbean is linked with evidence for Horticulture and the construction of large communal round houses. Particularily important was the introduction of a staple starch derived from Manioc tubers which could be made into Cassava flour.
The first village
The first horticulturists to settle at Belmont were descendents of these Saladoid pottery people. About AD 600 they built their first communal round house on a level sandy area between an earlier sand bar and a degraded cliff line to the south. To the west is the distinct conical shape of Belmont Hill, and to the south of this is Belmont Pond, in prehistoric times an open marine inlet. The village would have consisted of further "as yet unexcavated" round houses built around an open courtyard used for ceremonies. The main round house excavation was some 15 M across, the evidence being two concentric circles of post holes. Later, perhaps around AD 900, this single large round house was replaced by two smaller ones of 8 M and 10 M in diameter. Manioc cultivation was the basis of the village economy, with protein coming almost entirely from the sea, as there were no land mammals on the British Virgin Islands in prehistory.
The prehistoric villages also used stone. They brought boulders, perhaps from the storm beaches at the foot of Belmont Hill onto the site and smashed them. Suitable fragments were then used for tools.
We also found many spindle-whorls in the village. They were probably for making cotton thread. One of the gifts offered to Columbus by the Indigenous people of the Caribbean was cotton. it was clearly an important exchange item in history, as it grows well on the dry islands, but poorly on some of the wetter ones. Although used in decorative ways, it was the essential raw material for making hammocks.
Predicting the hurricane season
Excavating at Belmont, we realized that the village had its own sunset earlier than the area around, for during the summer season the sun set behind Belmont Hill. the sea to the north and the hills to the south remain in bright sunlight while the village is in shade. Also, looking from the village on mid summers day, the sun appeared to set directly over the apex of the hill. The prehistoric inhabitants must have noticed such a dramatic event. It is uncertain whether or not the village was built on this exact spot because of the astronomical significance of Belmont Hill. What is certain is the phenomenon brought power and prestige to the village and its Shaman because it could be used to predict the seasons. Knowing when mid summers day was, the villagers knew when they were moving from dry to wet season, the time to plant. Perhaps even more important, they could predict the arrival of the hurricane season. A time when even today, whole villages are devastated.
Mid summers day was almost certainly marked by ceremonies within the village, the Shaman using drugs "a snuff known as Cohoba"to commune with the gods of Belmont Hill. Pairs of stones aligned on the hill seem to mark spots from which the sun appears to set directly over the apex. Besides one of these stones we found a spatula of a type used to induce vomiting prior to taking plant based drugs. An empty stomach speeds up and enhances the effects of the drugs. Close by was a triton shell modified to be blown as a trumpet. Around these objects was an arch of pots, including one with the interior heavily pitted, perhaps the effect of collecting ritual vomit over many years. The sunset over Belmont Hill was recorded on a pot and incised on a ceramic dish.
Feast at the Ball Game
If we are right, and the site became a special place of ritual, this might partly explain why, around AD 1200, the village, or perhaps part of it, was replaced by one or more ceremonial ball and dance courts. The one we have excavated so far is 10-12 M wide and perhaps 20-25 M long. It was aligned directly on Belmont Hill, and the fact that the sun was again significant was shown by a sun disc carved into one of the stones on the edge of the court. These courts are no doubt used for a variety of public rituals, including one involving dance, but there are also ethno-historical records of a ball game. This was played by teams of 10-30 players, both men and women "though always in separate games". Opposing teams occupied each end of the court and the aim was to keep the ball in motion by bouncing it off the ground using any part of the body other than hands and feet. Both intra-and inter-village games took place. The games were often associated with dances and other ceremonies, and were occasionally played before public decisions were made.
The ball games and other ceremonies probably drew people from wide areas who came together to forge alliances, exchange goods, find husbands and wives, and resolve disputes. Inidviduals and groups may have gained prestige and power by providing feasts and by destroying and discarding exotic items. Around the ball court we excavated heaps of broken pots and dumps of shell and fish bones, which certainly suggested great feasts. Complete pots and various exotic items appear to have been deliberately discarded- a whale rib, an unused polished axe head with unique pelican head carvings, a finely polished and drilled diorite beads. The success and prestige of those who controlled the site may have lasted several hundred years, but then the site was suddenly abandoned.
European Germ Carriers?
Europeans arrived inthe British Virgin Islands during Columbus's second voyage in 1493. It is unlikely that after the long Atlantic crossing the crew were a particularily healthy lot, and from the start Europeans introduced diseases to which the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean had little or no resistance. How many people died int he Caribbean of the result of European contact we will never know, but our excavations have not unearthed any European goods of the period. Was it already abandoned? Certainly, by the time the Dutch set up a small trading station on Tortola, there appear to have been no indigenous people around.
Update by Peter Drewett on the Belmont project after 5 seasons of excavations
I am not going to give you the entire article, but instead update you on the parts that have changed from the first article
The prehistoric settlement is in what is today an overgrown plantation of coconut palms with a stone beach and sea to the north, Belmont pond and hill to the west, a degraded cliff line to the southeast. In prehistoric times Belmont Pond was probably open to the sea on its western side, on what would have been a mangrove fringed marine inlet. The northern stone beach appears to have been formed in historical times, and when the site was occupied in prehistoric times there would have been a beach shelving gently from it into Belmont Bay. Dense tropical rain forest would ave grown on the highland above the degraded cliff line
By the end of the 2002 field season, we had excavated 800 M squared of the site "approx one fifth of the area occupied" and found evidence of activity dating to pre ceramic age "C.1000-200BC", the ceramic pottery age mainly, circa AD 600-1400, and the historic period circa AD 1700 to the present. This record of long term activity on the site is not only providing details of prehistoric life ways, but also evidence of changing cultural dynamics as the site shifts from its initial role of a small settlement to become a regionally significant ceremonial site where feasting accompanied the playing of the ritual ball game.
The first settlers
The first settlement at Belmont took place between about 600 and 100 BC. Although humans had settled larger islands to the west from Central America as early as 5000BC, the people who first settled most of the rest of the Caribbean, including the Virgin Islands, came from the North coast of South America and moved north from Trinidad through the lesser Antilles. These people were fisher and foragers who made multi purpose tools of shell and stone but, as at Belmont, they have left little trace other than hearths, or, on other islands, shell middens and lithich production sites- where stone tools are made.
Soon after 400 BC, permanent settlements, pottery and horticulture, appear rapidly in the archaeological records throughout the lesser and great Antilles as far west as the Dominican Republic. These innovations were introduced by new settlers who produced finely made red and white painted and cross hatched pottery known as saladoid ware, made thin pottery griddles for the cooking of cassava, constructed large communal round houses and probably introduced the symbolic system present in much of the Caribbean up to the arrival of the Europeans. Although not precisely of saladoid type, the pottery from the earliest ceramic age settlement at Belmont shows clear saladoid traits, so a date around AD 600 appears likely for the first permanent settlement of Belmont.
Animal remains recoved at Belmont by fine mesh sieving are being studied by the Elizabeth Wing of the University of Florida. They show that a wide range of fish were eaten including sting rays, needle fish, squirrel fish, coni, jack, grunt, wrasses and parrot fishes, as well as snakes, sea urchins and crabs. The dominant shell fish eaten was the West Indian Top shell known today locally as the Whelk. It is still the most common found local shellfish, we counted 146 specimens in one of the 13 by 1 by 1 meter squares recorded at the base of Belmont Hill in addition a further 64 species of shellfish were recorded from the excavation.
Columbus arrives
It is uncertain whether the Belmont Site was still occupied when Columbus blundered around the Caribbean during his 4 voyages between 1492 and 1504. Our excavations have not unearthed any European goods of the period, so it is likely that the spread of European diseases wiped out the population without any direct contact taking place. European settlement of Tortola dates back to the 1620's, when a small Dutch trading station was established, but there is little archeological or historical evidence for European use of the Belmont area until the latter half of the 18th century, when part of it was used for sugar production on a small plantation owned by Mr. Dan Donovan. This activity damaged part of the ball court, but otherwise there was little more in the area excavated then a gun flint made locally from volcanic tuff, a few 18th century pot shards and a burial of a young women apparently flung into a shallow grave, perhaps indicating that she was a cholera victim, one of several recorded as having being buried in the area.
A continuing research project
After 5 seasons of excavation, the Belmont Archaeological project is still at an early stage, with less then 1/5 of the site excavated. It is a difficult site to excavate rapidly. It is almost impossible to use machinery "as we attempted to do in the first season"because the site is very shallow and on loose sand that is regularly moved about by land crabs and washed away by tropical rain. The government of the British Virgin Islands has now recognized the importance of the site and incorporated its preservation in a Belmont Management plan- the first archeological site to be so recognized in the territory. This will enable the joint institute of Archaeology and Longwood University Project to proceed for several more years, and so for the first time in this part of the Caribbean, we expect to be able to document in detail the processes of change from a village settlement to a ritual center of regional significance.
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