MATERIAL CULTURE (p 3)
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Personal Ornamentation
The creation and use of jewelry and other forms of personal ornamentation
extends back to the Middle Pleistocene in Africa, or ca. 75,000
years ago. Researchers cite this earliest body ornamentation as
evidence of modern human behavior. Thus it is not surprising that
the local inhabitants of El Macayo had personal jewelry in a number
of different forms and materials.
Various types of beads, pendants, and bracelets made of shell and
stone were found at the site. The shell was obtained from the Gulf
of California, southwest of the Nogales area, where it was probably
collected by residents of the Gulf coast and exchanged for other
goods. Because there is no evidence of local production in the form
of debris or unfinished artifacts, it seems likely that the residents
of El Macayo acquired their shell ornaments as finished pieces.
Shell jewelry included beads, pendants and bracelets.
Most of the stone ornaments were made of argillite—a maroon
red shale-like stone composed of microscopically fine grains of
silt. The finest grades of argillite are often termed pipestone
because Native Americans living on the plains used it to make carved
stone pipes. In the American Southwest, it was generally used to
make beads and pendants, but some argillite bowls and other larger
items have been found. At El Macayo, it was used to make 510 disk
beads.
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of crystal pendant. »Enlarge
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Other stone ornaments were made from turquoise and quartz crystal.
The turquoise was used to make tabular pendants and a disk bead,
whereas the crystal was fashioned into a small pendant.
Most of the ornaments were recovered from burials where they had
been placed with the deceased as part of funerary rites. One burial
was particularly rich in this regard: the young child was interred
with at least 1037 shell and stone beads wrapped around the lower
right leg probably as an anklet. An infant burial contained two
shell bracelets made of Glycymeris, a large bivalve that
lives in the Gulf waters, and a turquoise pendant. The infant had
one bracelet on each arm and the pendant next to its head, suggesting
that the latter was an earring.
The remaining ornaments were fragments found across the settlement
in houses and trash deposits. One example of a pendant in the process
of being shaped and perforated was recovered from the fill of a
pit, but this is the only indication that the local inhabitants
created or reshaped their own ornaments. It appears that they obtained
finished jewelry through exchange with other groups.
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