ARIZONA'S PREHISTORIC JEWELRY

Arizona's Treasure of Prehistoric Jewelry

Great skills produced amazing products from shell and other non-metal materials.

The southwestern Indians today are perhaps best known for the beauty and variety of their jewelry. Not only is it prized by the collector, but also by the Indian himself. Both the Navajo and Pueblo consider jewelry as wealth and any ceremonial occasion is used to display it. One of the most striking features of a Pueblo dance is the quantity and variety of jewelry worn by the dancers.

This love of adornment is a trait which reaches far back into their prehistory. The earliest Spanish explorers entering Arizona reported being met by people wearing feather headdresses, strings of beads, bracelets and ear pendants. Fray Marcos de Niza, in 1539, wrote of "the number of turquoises worn as ornaments by the people. Some had as many as three or four strings of green stones around their neck; others carried them as ear-pendants and in their noses." Excavations of prehistoric sites have uncovered such jewelry in both quantity and quality.

But perhaps most striking is the continuity of materials, techniques and forms from prehistoric into modern jewelry. Excepting silver, the working of which was introduced by the Spanish, most materials utilized currently were also incorporated into prehistoric jewelry. Many of the techniques employed with silver, such as carving, incising, inlay and overlay, were used in prehistoric shell work. Today's craftsmen cut and shape turquoise and other stones by much the same methods as their ancestors used.

The two materials most highly prized by the early inhabitants of the southwest were shell and turquoise. To obtain these raw materials, far reaching trade connections were established. Historically, in the 18th and 19th centuries, inhabitants Of the Rio Grande pueblos rode to the west coast and Sonora to trade turquoise and other goods for shells and parrot feathers.

Shell, from the Gulf of California and the Pacific coast, was popular and widespread over the southwest from very early times. Cardium shells were discovered in the early levels of Ventana Cave in southern Arizona. While these were probably utilized as containers rather than for adornment, they indicate contact with the Gulf of California as early as 10,000 years ago. Very early Puebloan Anasazi caves in southern Colorado have yielded Olivella and Conus shell beads, worked shell disk beads, and pendants. A Glycymeris shell bracelet fragment and shell beads were found at Shabik'eschee Village, another early Anasazi site in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

The distribution of shell, either raw or manufactured to these distant points from its origins in the Gulf of California was through the prehistoric Hohokam centered in the Gila and Salt River valleys of Arizona. The Gila River is a direct link between the gulf and the Hohokam centers. The Hohokam could have easily traveled to the direct source of the shell or bartered with more southern tribes for it. In any event, they worked it skillfully and profusely and distributed it to the northern Pueblo areas by way of the Verde and Salt rivers. It is most likely that the shell was distributed in its final worked, rather than raw, form, as the shell jewelry found in northern ruins is definitely Hohokam in character.

Turquoise was also a widely traded material in the southwest. A principal prehistoric mine was Cerillos, southeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Cerillos turquoise (noted for its color). has been found in Mexican sites and was probably traded Prehistoric shell and inlay adorn-ments, below, were the forerunners of modern Zuni shell inlays and carvings. Left, by Walter Nahktewa. From the Don and Nita Hoel Collection, Sedona, Arizona PETER BLOOMER Glycymeris shell bracelets and pendant with turquoise overlay comes from central Arizona, circa 1300-1400 A.D. JERRY D. JACKA Below: Classic inlayed shell specimens from the C. G. Wallace collection. Shell conchas across the top are by master Lambert Homer. RAY MANLEY Through Zuni Pueblo to more southern tribes. The Hohokam had access to many turquoise mines in southern Arizona, such as Bisbee and Kingman.

Many other materials were utilized by the early people in their jewelry. Lignite or jet from bituminous coal beds, local pipestone or argillite, green steatite, graphite and red shale, schist are among the various types of stone incorporated into their jewelry. Bones, particularly the hollow ones of birds, were manufactured into beads and rings. Beads were also molded of clay. In dry caves, necklaces of juniper berries, walnut shells, and other vegetal materials were well preserved. Even broken fragments of pottery were worked into pendants.

The techniques used to work these materials testify to the great skill and ingenuity of the prehistoric artisans. The Hohokams used an amazing variety of methods to manufacture their shell jewelry. Preliminary work was done by grinding, cutting, and drilling. Then the piece might be embellished by carving or engraving, inlay, overlay (mosaic), painting, or etching. As the tools for this work were limited to native sandstones and schists, the time required to manufacture some of the more delicate and intricate pieces must have been extensive.

Bracelets, from the circular outside edge of Glycymeris shells, were the most abundant shell ornament produced by the Hohokam. The band portion was incised (the grooves frequently filled with paint) with geometric or snake designs and the umbo, or thick valve portion, often carved into a three dimensional figure, commonly a frog or bird.

Shell was also utilized in rings, beads, pendants and mosaic work. Beads were either whole Olivella or Conus shells or ground disc types. Shells became pendants in a variety of forms. There were whole shell pendants, ground shell pendants, and cut shell pendants in geometric and life styles. Finely cut pieces of shell were used with other materials such as jet, turquoise and red claystone to make intricate and fine mosaics. These mosaics are seldom found in their original form, as both the gum adhesive and backing materials disintegrate through time. It is believed that many mosaics were mounted on basketry or wood, which are extremely perishable.

The process of etching shell, developed by the Hohokam, is unique in both the new and old worlds among prehistoric peoples, and represents the culmination of shell working. Laboratory experiments, using materials available to the Hohokam, have reproduced the technique. Portions of large Cardium shells, usually the interior or concave side, were coated with a gum or pitch. These areas would be the raised or unetched design elements of the final product. Then the shell was dipped into, or filled with, fermented saguaro fruit juice, an impure acetic acid. The exposed portion of shell was eaten away by the acid, the amount of relief obtained depending upon the length of time the shell was exposed to the acid. After the etching was completed, the piece was often further embellished by painting the raised portions of the design. Evidence of painting on shell is very elusive, as the paints were composed of ground minerals which rub or wash off through time.

Perhaps the most amazing products of prehistoric jewelry technology are the millions of shell and stone disc beads which are omnipresent throughout the southwest. Some are so tiny that they will fall through the mesh of a window screen, and their hole is so fine that they cannot be strung with the thinnest household needle. The process of making these beads has been well illustrated by a cache of bead-making apparatus buried with a male skeleton found in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico. Thin fragments of stone were ground to the desired thickness, with sandstone, then scored and broken into squares for each individual bead. The edges were broken into a rough discoidal blank, then each one was drilled. Larger beads were perforated by stone-tipped drills, smaller ones with a cactus spine. A pump drill, similar to those used today, may have been used. The beads were then tightly strung and worked back and forth on a sandstone slab to produce a uniform roundness. To give some indication of the time involved in this process, it has been estimated that a particular necklace from a ruin in northern Arizona, 32 feet long, containing 17,000 red and black stone beads, would have taken one man, working eight hours a day, six years to make.

The only evidence of prehistoric metallurgy found in the southwest is in the copper bells which date from 1000 to 1400 A.D. Since these have never been discovered in any particular ceremonial context, it can be assumed that they were used for personal adornment or as anklets in dances, as is done today. Analysis has revealed that the origin of the metal is local to the southwest or northern Mexico, but the exact location of the bells manufacturing is unknown. There is no question that they were cast by the cire perdu, or lost wax, method. This consisted of making an exact model in wax of the object desired, then surrounding the wax with clay. As molten metal was poured into the top of the mold, the wax melted and was replaced by the metal. When the metal had cooled, the clay shell was broken away, leaving the metal in its final form. From the above descriptions it can be seen that the prehistoric peoples of the southwest lavished much time and energy upon their personal adornment. Whether this effort was prompted purely by vanity or whether there were religious reasons involved, we can only guess.

From the first, jewelry has been included as grave offerings with both burials and cremations. Desiccated remains of Early Anasazi from southern Colorado caves were dressed with strings of beads, bracelets, earrings and pendants. By late Pueblo periods burials were richly adorned with jewelry. Hohokam cremations usually contained at least a few burned beads and often many more objects of worked shell. Saladoan burials were extremely rich, containing particularly intricate inlaid items of turquoise and shell. Thus it appears that jewelry was considered to be essential to a good life in the afterworld, along with tools, food, and clothing. That jewelry had great religious significance is evidenced at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, one of the great prehistoric ceremonial centers of the southwest. Here, in the great kiva of Casa Rinconada, turquoise necklaces were deposited in niches around the walls. Many other ceremonial structures appear to have been consecrated by deposits of turquoise. Modern Pueblo Indians consider turquoise to be sacred and scatter chips of it liberally about their shrines. Its blue is one of the sacred colors. And probably the most striking feature of the costumes at a dance is the turquoise jewelry. Little imagination is needed to conjure an earlier dance, the figures laden with shell, stone and turquoise beads, earrings, shell bracelets, opper bells around the ankles.

Thus the modern Indian jeweler, whether consciously or subconsciously, continues in the spirit of his ancestors. The delicate geometric or curvilinear designs in Hopi silver overlay resemble those carved into Hohokam shell bracelets years ago. Zuni inlay of turquoise, shell, and jet can be matched by Saladoan craftsmanship. And modern beadmakers would find it difficult to equal the thinness and delicacy of the earlier ground shell and stone disc beads. By still utilizing so many of the local materials of his environment, the modern Indian craftsman evidences his closeness to-nature, a concern apparent in the many naturalistic elements incorporated into prehistoric jewelry. Thus a continuity of tradition between the old and new is one of the outstanding features of Indian jewelry.