A PROVENANCE STUDY OF LUCAYAN PRE-COLONIAL JADEITITE CELTS: UNRAVELING MOBILITY NETWORKS
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-02-06

Project SIBA (Stone Interchanges in the Bahamas Archipelago) brings together the largest corpus of Bahamian/TCI lithic artefacts ever assembled - over 300 jadeitite artefacts from eight international museums, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museums at Yale and Harvard. In an entirely limestone environment like the Bahamas/TCI, all hard rocks had to be imported: our objective is to determine the source of these exotics. The selected artefacts have well-documented collection histories, forming an exceptionally rich corpus for investigating materials and meanings. This information together with the provenance allow us to explore the extensive social, political and economic connections between the archipelago and its wider Caribbean setting. A “non-invasive” laser ablation sampling system enables us to sample museum artefacts on location in a macroscopically non-invasive mode leaving ablation pits the diameter of a hair, essentially invisible to the human eye. Subsequent geochemical analyses of the artefacts by ultra-low blank trace element and Sr-Nd isotope analyses is perfomed on microgram amounts of material. The three jadeitite sources in the region (Cuba, Guatemala and Dominican Republic) have been characterized and a discrimination model established as part of the ERC-Synergy NEXUS 1492 Project. These data provide the required back ground information to determine the provenance of jadeitite artefacts across the Bahamas and hence better understand trading networks in the region.


Author(s): Knaf, Alice (Geology and Geochemistry Research Cluster, Free University Amsterdam) - Ostapkowicz, Joanna (School of Archaeology, University of Oxford) - Davies, Gareth (Geology and Geochemistry Research Cluster, Free University Amsterdam)