The manufacturing traces of the turquoise objects and the lapidary technology from Chaco Canyon: an experimental archaeology approach

Summary

There are thousands of turquoise objects found in different sites of the American Southwest, and Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, is known as one of the principal areas that concentrated most of them. Unfortunately, most of the researches about these stones had been focused on their symbolic meaning, morphology, provenance, trade and use, but very few study their manufacturing traces and the organization of their production. In this paper, we will present a technological/traceological approach to analyze and characterize their manufacturing techniques through the employment of Experimental Archaeology and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The comparison of the turquoise assemblages from different contexts and sites located at Chaco Canyon shows relationships with the lapidary tradition of the American Southwest, but with a particular technological pattern that differs with other turquoise objects from New Mexico. With these new data of the geography of the manufacturing techniques, it is possible to appreciate new nodes of interactions and trends of circulation of the turquoise pieces (raw materials, blanks, and finished objects) among the sourcing areas, the workshops, and the final consumers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• A Taste for Green: An American/European Perspective on Ancient Jade, Turquoise and Variscite Exchange

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15304