Sacred Colors and Materials: The Life Histories of Ancestral Pueblo Jewelry

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The inextricable combination of color and raw material was the most fundamental characteristic of Ancestral Pueblo jewelry. For white and shell, blue-green and turquoise, and black and various types of stone, the color and the material each had diverse sets of sacred meanings that gave ornaments their value. Together, this symbolic content was abundant, repetitive, and more than representational. At the most profound level, a piece of jewelry was spiritually alive, whether it was worn or deposited intact, broken, or as production debris in ritual offerings. This paper examines the conjunction of Ancestral Pueblo jewelry colors, raw materials, symbolism, and animism from the perspective of artifact life history. Our purpose is to demonstrate that the sacred meanings and embodied spirits of different color/raw material combinations strengthened and expanded during each successive stage in an ornament’s life cycle. Recognizing that not all jewelry passed through all stages, we begin with raw materials, then continue through craft production and bodily adornment, and end with ritual deposition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23333