Local production and long-distance procurement of beads and pendants with high mineralogical diversity in an early Saladoid settlement of Guadeloupe (French West Indies)

Abstract

The preventive excavation of an archaeological site located at the Gare Maritime of Basse-Terre (Guadeloupe, French West Indies) revealed a series of stone artifacts including finished beads and pendants, as well as pieces representing several stages of the chaîne opératoire. This work is an integrated study of the mineralogy and typo-technology of these objects. The artifacts have been recovered from layers interpreted as midden deposits of an early Saladoid coastal settlement dated to 250-400 A.D. Non-invasive analyses by Raman spectroscopy have shown that the 50 artifacts belong to 13 different gemstones which are, in decreasing order of frequency: serpentine, amethyst, turquoise, sudoite, rock crystal, calcite, feldspar, diorite, jasper, aventurine, chlorite, paragonite and nephrite. All these materials' mineralogy, and in particular the great diversity of the so called "green rocks", could only be reliably determined through an analytical characterization. The diversity of lithic materials used and abandoned in the Gare Maritime site dump is the largest known to date in the Caribbean archipelago. The presence of seven objects in turquoise is particularly noteworthy in view of its rarity in the other known sites in the region. The chaîne opératoire for each of these raw materials could be approached for the first time in the Caribbean area by emancipating ourselves from the "greenstone" category, which has been too often used in the past because of the lack of reliable mineralogical identification. These results make it possible to integrate the Gare Maritime site into the group of Saladoid sites which have delivered a large set of ornamental elements. On the one hand, the various shapes of artifacts fit the regional cultural pattern, both for beads and pendants shapes, the latter being mainly stylized frogs. On the other hand, the use of 13 semi-precious stones in the lapidary production is exceptional for the region and confirms the use at this period of many exotic raw materials. The provenance of these materials, although difficult to pinpoint properly due to the incomplete mapping of regional resources, documents a mixture of regional and even distant (continental) origins, thus strengthening the idea of a pan-Caribbean network for the exchange of raw materials for lapidary art.

Lapidary production in the eastern Caribbean: a typo-technological and microwear study of ornaments from the site of Pearls, Grenada

“…Overviews of Early Ceramic Age lapidary circulation are continually revised as new data comes to light (Cody 1990(Cody , 1993Hofman et al 2007Hofman et al , 2014aKnippenberg 2007;Rodríguez López 1993). Lithic identification has involved the use of macroscopic examination, refractive index and specific gravity tests, petrography, SEM-EDS, XRD and Raman spectroscopy (Cody 1990, 46;Cody 1993;Hardy 2008, 223-226;Murphy et al 2000;Queffelec et al 2018;Watters and Scaglion 1994). However, the sources of most raw materials remain uncertain.…”

“…Amethyst sources have been identified in Martinique and southeastern Amazonia (Cody 1993;Epstein 1988;Watters 1997). However, it is not clear whether the Antillean amethyst and turquoise sources were exploited, due to the small size of their products and the lack of evidence for local exploitation (Cody 1993;Knippenberg 2007, 168;Queffelec et al 2018). Jadeitite sources are known in the Motagua Fault Zone on Guatemala (Foshag and Leslie 1955;Harlow et al 2011), eastern Cuba (García-Casco et al 2009), and northern Dominican Republic (Schertl et al 2012).…”

A database of lapidary artifacts in the Caribbean for the Ceramic Age

“…This project consisted in three workpackages, including chaînes opératoires studies, gemmology, and the creation of a regional database and GIS. More information on the other results obtained during this project can be found in (Queffelec et al 2018), (Queffelec et al 2020) and (Queffelec et al, n.d.).…”

“…Data about lapidary artifacts in the French islands of the Antillean (from south to north: Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Barthelemy and St. Martin) have been registered thanks to missions in the museums, the storage of the Ministry of Culture, and by extracting some collections to study them in continental France. The detailed methodology is described in the case studies articles (Queffelec et al 2018(Queffelec et al , 2020 and includes mainly photography, classic measurements with digital caliper, technological study, and mineralogical determination by eye and systematically confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. The literature review, which accounts for the most part of the dataset, has been conducted as a longterm job.…”

On the reconstruction of prehistoric social territories: The La Désirade lithic workshops and the distribution of La Désirade chert (French West Indies)

“…The study of raw material acquisition, lithic reduction and the distribution and exchange of stone materials and artefacts has received an increasing attention during the past two decades in Caribbean archaeology (Bérard 2004: 159-179;García-Casco et al 2013;Harlow et al 2006;Knippenberg 2006;2011a;Rodríguez Ramos 2001;2010: 88-144;Queffelec et al 2018;Schertl et al 2018). The region's island setting and the inter-island variation in Journal of Lithic Studies (2020) vol.…”