Much available now:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1/181-2919281-8788737?url=search-alias%3D aps&field-keywords=taino&sprefix=taino%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ataino

A good place for visuals:

http://www.amazon.com/Taino-Pre-Columbian-Art-Culture-Caribbean/dp/1885254822/re f=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1379249438&sr=8-8&keywords=taino

Best.

The History & Culture section of TB.Net has a little teaser about some of the Taino artifacts, which Commander Ted Tatham collected and displayed at his villas (Blue Marlin & Coquina) in Great Bay for his guests to ponder & enjoy. His daughter, Sandy, has lovingly taken a custodial respect towards so many of these shards found above ground, especially after heavy rains.
We were wandering how much academic scrutiny (Institute of Jamaica/UWI) has been paid to these items in "imagining" daily life & worship in Taino villages which dotted the Treasure Beach area.

In this description of the Tainos, can we detect their lingering spirit of place & culture & ambiente?:

The first residents of Treasure Beach were the Tainos Indians, who came to Jamaica around 700 AD. The Tainos were small in stature averaging five feet in height, with light brown skin and broad faces.
One interesting fact about the Tainos was that they felt a pointed skull was something to be proud of and, therefore, used to bind up a baby’s head using two wooden boards on either side ensuring the desired results. Tainos were peaceful and non-materialistic.

They believed in community living where women gather the food and men fish and hunt. They were skilled potters, carvers, weavers, boat builders, fishermen, and farmers. As a result of the large population of Tainos which settled in the Treasure Beach area around 1494

Taino artifacts found in Treasure Beach AD it is possible to go for a walk through a meadow and find bits and pieces of Taino pottery lying on the ground (especially after a hard rainfall). Unfortunately, when the Spanish "discovered" Jamaica they captured and enslaved the Tainos who perished due to their deplorable treatment. It is said that some were able to escape in boats and made it to parts of the Americas (including south Florida) where small Taino communities are still found today.
Some Taino words you may be familiar with are canoe, hammock, hurricane and tobacco.
(TB.Net)

Curiously, many of the references linked by turey, especially the Exhibition of Taino Art & Culture at El Museo del Barrio in New York barely mention a Jamaican contribution in "showcasing over 100 rare and beautiful ceremonial and domestic artworks and individual masterpieces of this ancient culture – produced in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas between A.D. 1200 and 1500 – Taino includes examples of finely detailed and polished sculptures carved in wood, precious ornaments of shell and bone, and ceramics decorated with animals, birds, and intricate geometric motifs.

The contributors include ten of the foremost scholars of pre-Columbian culture and art, and an appendix featuring writings from Spanish explorers who had contact with the Taino."

The Jamaican wooden Zemis in the British Museum were considered to be masterpieces Z. One:

http://tinyurl.com/mth48ua

We are the only large island in the Greater Antilles that has disconnected from our ancient history to such an extent.

As I said, stones cannot be burnt. The wooden things that have survived are extremely rare.

turey...regarding the Extinction of a people, my short, "red" surfer buddies in Sosúa, Dominican Republic, and a Puerto Rican family inter-marriage strongly demonstrate physical traits of an Indio-Taino nature. Their presence exhibits a kind of an assimilated "living history" in those countries, from which oral & mythological memories might be drawn out.

Besides your Taino avatar (turey: Taino for sky), how much of the Jamaican population do you know or have observed resembling that early "native" population?...The Tainos seem like museum "pieces" suitable for a coat-of-arms entombing their extinction!

As I recall, it was the Puerto Ricans who celebrated the exploits of Turey el Taino, his wife Yari, and a symbolic cast in educational comic books.

Aye Z, some of my Native American friends were on vacation in PR and got lost.

Local 'cousins' recognized them and welcomed them into their community.

I've heard references to "Arawak Eyes' from young. Seems not all with an epicanthal fold have Chinese ancestors.

Cuba: http://www.cubaheritage.org/articles.asp?artID=14

http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?topic=7478.45

turey...the handling of "toxic" cassava root to make bammy, and dry-farming (with guinea grass mulch/natural fertilizers & eco-insecticides) would seem like direct remnants from the Tainos extending into our present.

What was that ALL about in the Cuba link: Try-Raciality?

And Try-Remembering our forgotten Northern neighbor. More interested in culture/technique/design/intent than race.

If I got your drift.