Green Stone Pendants of the Florida Middle Archaic: Trade and Lithic Ornament Construction as Evidence for Early Social Difference

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Little Salt Spring mortuary pond is located in south central Sarasota County, Florida. It has been the subject of numerous significant discoveries that have challenged our understanding of the earliest occupations of the Americas. Two green stone pendants recovered from the basin, and dated to the Middle Archaic period (700-500 BP) also test current models of trade and lithic use for the time period. Provenance analysis conducted previously have sourced the stones to the southern Appalachian Piedmont of the United States nearly 650km away from the Little Salt Spring sinkhole. This paper will review evidence of trade routes and lithic ornament construction to argue that these two pendants may represent the earliest form of jewelry associated with emergent social stratification in the Middle Archaic period. New trade and crafting practices signal cultural innovation in this region and suggest that the reification of individuals could now be expressed through trade items and technological complexity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25426