Green Stones in Central Jalisco

Lorenza Lopez Mestas Camberos' Green Stones in Central Jalisco is a report on a large number of green lithic artifacts made from a fairly diverse array of raw materials in funerary contexts in Western Mexico, with a particular focus on a comparison between the Late Formative site of Huitzilapa and the Late Classic site of La Higuerita, both in Jalisco. Camberos provides a general background of the known use of green stones, starting in the Early Formative period before the first known ritual use in 1500 B.C., and ending around 800 B.C. Green stone prevalence in interments appears to start around 1150 B.C. throughout Oaxaca and later in other areas of Mexico. From the earliest times, the archaeological record shows a very uneven distribution of green stones and other grave goods, which may be an indication of status differentiation in the earliest data, although Camberos appears much more certain about later indications of status. Camberos argues for the possibility of early status from the standpoint of interregional contact evidence in figurine and pottery styles, which would have been a sort of conduit for the spread of ideas from other cultures that may have had a higher degree of complexity.

Huitzilapa

With this background, Camberos describes Huitzilapa as a major Late Formative ruling center which peaked in the first century A.D. Here, a vertical shaft 7.6 m deep leads from a large patio structure (one of four surrounding an alter) to a pair of tombs. Each tomb contains three skeletons which "appear to have been close relatives". Each person is surrounded by rich grave goods, which include fine ceramics, shell and stone jewelry, a variety of food, fine cloth and obsidian awls. One skeleton is associated with noticeably more expensive and/or exotic goods than any of the others. This individual is identified as a 45 to 50 year old male. Overall, exotic materials in particular are restricted to individuals who bear markers of high status, identified by Camberos as "ruling elite". Green stones appear to be even further restricted. All 79 green stone items from the site are found only in the described pair of tombs, with a very uneven distribution between tombs (11 plain beads, all from local source materials, in the north tomb; and 68 items of varying complexity in the south tomb), and further differentiation between individuals within the same tomb.

Here, Camberos suggests the same pattern of long-distance trade creating an exchange of both objects and the ideas behind those objects, as noted above for the Early Formative period. Yet compositional analyses via mass spectrometry show that over 91% of the interred green stones are from local sources; only seven pieces are made from an imported material (Jadeite), in the form of small, plain beads.

The source distribution is curious, and leads to more questions: If distantly traded, exotic materials are acquired at all, why were only a handful of small, plain beads rather than more elaborate items interred? Far more elaborate green stone objects of local origin were included, amd most of them were also quite small, ranging from approximately 2 cm to 7 cm in height, the one primary exception being an atlatl hook over 20 cm tall, which appears to be ceremonial in nature due to a lack of use wear and the presence of a stylized two-headed snake, typically associated with fertility in Huitzilapa. (One might also add the impracticality of using decorative stone for an actual hunting weapon, due to factors of weight, durability and relative expense in raw material and manufacture over wooden items.) Yet, green stones in general do appear to correlate well with elite status in an apparently complex hierarchy. Camberos suggests that the stone carving tradition has a more local, Western Mexico origin, although no production evidence exists in Huitzilapa. Further, since one of the Jadeite beads is in a zoomorphic form of a shell, and Camberos suggests that the Jadeite items may have been imported as finished products, since the shell bead does not match any local style, and beads would be easier to transport than raw material.

It would appear that our perceptions of the association of elaborate artifacts with hierarchical rank need independent evaluation against the relative importance of raw material availability, without an assumption of any positive correlation between the two. We need to keep in mind that, while general trends may be apparent, there is no necessary link between artifact complexity or production effort, and the perceived symbolic importance to a hierarchy. Likewise, other factors not included in Camberos evaluation should also be independantly considered and weighed as factors in behavior, such as the workability of the raw material, visual distinctiveness of different raw materials, and expenses involved in known methods of creating different types of products.


La Higurarita



The Late Classic site of La Higuerita underwent a significant transformation in settlement patterns, natural resource exploitation, ceremonial center locations and architectural form. Most of the site has been destroyed by modern urban expansion, although significant burials have been located. These burials contain "massive scale" offerings in box shaped tombs, with many ceramic vessels, spindle whorls, obsidian points and knives, and green stone beads. Camberos also reports stones laying on top of broken vessels, which appear to have been thrown at them to intentionally break them. The tombs were filled with layers of different colored clays. Two groups of tombs contain 336 green stones, while no green stones have been found in another chamber, which was not completely excavated. Compositional analysis of these stones reveals primarily amazonite with a significant amount of turquoise (about 10%). Only one item was made from jadeite. All beads at this site are "plain" in that they are completely undecorated and unembelished, although the amazonite objects are irregular due to taphonomic effects on a material that is relatively susceptible to environmental degradation. The turquoise beads are described as "better made", although there is no explanation of this assessment or how product quality might be shown to differ for reasons other than long-term taphonomy, given the disparity in the current physical states of these objects. This confusion may be due more to translation issues from an original article in Spanish, considering that the wording at several points in this paper has required some additional effort in interpretation.
The one Jadeite bead was a "half-moon" shape with a perforation in one end, much like some objects found in the Huitzilapa site, and Camberos suggests that the bead's context may be due to heirloom effect (i.e., the object was passed down through a number of generations), or perhaps taphonomic displacement from an earlier period. No source distance information is given for this site, although given the source pattern information from Huitzilapa, it appears likely that all sources here are also local (for which the evidence may have been destroyed by modern urban encroachment), with the exception of the Jadeite from Central Mexico. Camberos concludes from this site that green stones were still status markers in funerary contexts, although the types of raw materials had changed.
Camberos further states that funerals were most likely not the original contexts for most or all of these objects, even though none have been found outside funerary contexts to date. While we may never know the original purposes of these stones, it is suggested that these objects separated human groups, both symbolically and materially. Camberos further speculates that ancestral connections helped to solidify the hierarchical structure, and states the need for "more data" to confirm or reject these ideas.
Camberos also suggests that the diversity in lithic sources reflects "great diversification and a complex set of religious beliefs" (p. 2), but what stands out in the data thus far is consistancy in only three attributes, a decorative or symbolic form (most likely, none of these items serve as tools), diminuative size (which could be due to source size limitations) and the color green. Composition does not appear to matter, and some of these objects likely have very different consistancies affecting workability, durability, etc., which could be confirmed with additional study. The color in lithic material must therefore have some powerfully symbolic or perceived supernatural attribute, which may only be approachable through ethnographic research and cross-culture comparisons.
Also, with so few foreign items in both lithic inventories, Aoyama's idea that intra-regional trade may be far more important than long-distance trade in some locations (Aoyama 2001) may be relevent here. Exotic items may have been relevent to kings and other nobility, but may have had little bearing on the society as a whole. Such items could have been completely re-interpreted within the local ideology with little or no actual transfer of ideas during the exchange.
However, foreign objects must have born some significance in order to have been interred with elite individuals. "More data" is indeed required to investigate these ideas, but data of what type? We may strengthen or weaken arguements of symbolic hierarchy, both in death and in life, but it seems that some more interesting questions raised by this study will require entirely different forms of data to bring us closer to any answers.


Source article:

Camberos, Lorenza Lopez Mestas. 2008. Green Stones in Central Jalisco. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement in Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Translated by Eduardo Williams. Electronic document, http://www.famsi.org/reports/03083/index.html, accessed April 11, 2010.

Additional reference:

Ayoyama, Kazuo. 2001. Classic Maya State, Urbanism, and Exchange: Chipped Stone Evidence of the Copan Valley and Its Hinterland. American Anthropologist 103(2):346-360.