Jamaican Caving Notes

We accompanied Dr. Jones to Kempshot, where we met a person whose residence is very close to the cave. This person had us escorted to the cave by their laborers. As we started following them along a path down a hill I realized that they were leading us to Cundallii cave, definitely the wrong cave. Dr. Jones himself had been in the cave some time ago and found nothing. Having a clear recollection of the location of the cave from the June 2004 expedition, I lead us back to the road and through an adjoining field that allowed more easy access to the Kempshot cave.

Mike Loftin followed behind me with the video camera running, as I led the way to the cave. We got inside and pointed out the petroglyphs while Mike captured them on video. We saw a petroglyph that we’d not noticed during the June 2004 expedition. It was covered with ivy root type vegetation and Mike captured the unveiling of the petroglyph on video.

Mike and I got video of the lower chamber, which turned out splendidly, thanks to the 10W HID lamp that we’d brought. Ivor joined us in the lower chamber and proclaimed it to have been picked clean, as far as artifacts go. We went back up to the front of the cave and engaged in more documentation of petroglyphs.

Even with the light conditions as good as they are at the front of this fairly well lit shelter cave, it was hard for Mike to put the camera precisely on the spot that the petroglyphs were. This made the final product of the video less than perfect. There are several reasons for such difficulties on the part of a Videographer. Quite often headlamps aren’t pointed precisely enough for someone looking through the lens of a camera with one eye to figure out exactly what is of interest. Things can also be confusing because there are often several people talking and pointing at different things around the caves at the same time. By nature, a lot of this rock art is pretty abstract, and a bit tricky to pick out.

Lesson learned:
A plan for future video projects at caves of archaeological significance is to bring a laser pointer, in order to clearly outline points of interest. Such a tool would also allow an expert like Dr. Jones to explain what he sees within a piece of rock art, things such as enclosing lines within circles, etc.