Lucayan Stone Celts: A Preliminary Overview of Style and Typology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Exotic hard stone materials (e.g., jadeites, cherts, basalts) and artefacts were imported into the entirely limestone Lucayan archipelago (The Bahamas/Turks and Caicos Islands) post-AD 700, to fulfil both functional and ceremonial needs. Many of these pieces were removed from their original contexts during the 19th/early 20th centuries, when commercial guano mining and early amateur and archaeological investigations brought artefacts to light; some of these eventually entered museum collections. Project SIBA (Stone Interchanges in the Bahama Archipelago) provides a comprehensive overview of Lucayan materials in international museum collections, spanning both seemingly functional artefacts (celts) to stone pendants and carvings that defy simple classification. This paper highlights some of the stylistically unique artefacts to emerge as part of this research, alongside a preliminary overview of the range of celts, adzes and chisels, charting their shape and size, and exploring their varied purposes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23676