Necklace

This necklace consists of a large number of short beads made of a hard whitish stone with flashes of color. It exhibits precise cuts that must have been made by a specialized artist and, as is widely known, lapidary art is outstanding in Mesoamerica. The work requires great skill and dexterity, hence this trade was often handed down from father to son from childhood.

In the process of creating this necklace, it was essential to make holes in its tiny components so that they could be strung together. According to Lorena Mirambel, to make the small holes in the hard stones they must have used rods of wood, bone, or tubular or solid stems of certain plants, such as reed or bamboo, to press some kind of sand or silt abrasive into the material to be drilled, using a rotary motion, while adding water to the small hole that was being made, since water would expel the material already milled together with the abrasive material.

Knowledge of ancient Mexico’s lithic industry is limited by the scarcity of workshops or production areas and because the evidence of production, such as pieces in-process and waste have generally been recovered from dumps and constructive landfills. Experimental archaeology workshops have recently been set up to study lapidary techniques and technologies. The working of these pieces has been recreated based on the original objects and materials, as well as indirect references, such as plastic and textual ethnohistorical sources.

The results have made it possible to identify different regional traditions. From the necklace in question, it is not possible to identify its cultural origins, although we can point out that the fine hard stone used and the excellent workmanship indicate that it was worn by a high-ranking individual, who might have worn it while alive and also as a corpse, since adornments often formed part of burial artifacts.