TY - GEN
T1 - The earliest bead manufacture in the Americas at the Paleo-Indian Jones-Miller site, Wray, Colorado
AU - Vandiver, Pamela
AU - Gruhl, Amy Vandiver
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Dennis Stanford of the National Museum of Natural History for suggesting this problem, the Museum Conservation Institute for funding analysis and the Smithsonian Research Initiative program for funding the travel expenses. We thank Sylvia Madsen, Janice Jones, Marvin Southaros and the members of the East Yuma Historical Society and staff at three local oil exploration firms for their help in locating comparative materials in the area around Wray and for many helpful discussions about local environmental constraints on past lifeways. We appreciate the help of Jeff Post and Robert Isaac of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, for help with X-ray diffraction. We are grateful to Barry Wilkens of the Arizona State University Center for Solid State Chemistry for help with the PIXE analyses and to the University of Arizona College of Engineering for funding this analysis.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - Analysis of the composition and microstructure of a Paleo-Indian micro-bead fragment from the Jones-Miller bison-kill site in Wray, Colorado, USE, and dated by radiocarbon testing to 10,200 years ago, showed that fine-motor movements were used to execute a sequence of manufacture on a singular bead. The process involved cleaving a soft, bedded oil shale, diagonally scraping a tubular surface and double-drilling a hole. The last operation caused the bead to fracture, after which it was deposited in a hearth. The raw material consists of bedded clay, silt, opal and quartz particles cemented with carbonaceous material. The presence of similar locally available oil shale with opal inclusions indicates that the raw material was acquired near the Jones-Miller site. Because of high cultural value and small size, only non-destructive analytical techniques were used to characterize the bead, including optical microscopy, UV-VIS, PIXE and XRD. Some 50-micron, previously detached particles were tested by SEM-EDS and compared to local clayey materials, both heat-treated and non-heat-treated, to show that no heat treatment sufficient to cause sintering had occurred. A resource survey in the area around the site and 50 miles to the south produced several comparative materials that were tested by the same methods given above as well as the added methods of DTA and refiring tests.
AB - Analysis of the composition and microstructure of a Paleo-Indian micro-bead fragment from the Jones-Miller bison-kill site in Wray, Colorado, USE, and dated by radiocarbon testing to 10,200 years ago, showed that fine-motor movements were used to execute a sequence of manufacture on a singular bead. The process involved cleaving a soft, bedded oil shale, diagonally scraping a tubular surface and double-drilling a hole. The last operation caused the bead to fracture, after which it was deposited in a hearth. The raw material consists of bedded clay, silt, opal and quartz particles cemented with carbonaceous material. The presence of similar locally available oil shale with opal inclusions indicates that the raw material was acquired near the Jones-Miller site. Because of high cultural value and small size, only non-destructive analytical techniques were used to characterize the bead, including optical microscopy, UV-VIS, PIXE and XRD. Some 50-micron, previously detached particles were tested by SEM-EDS and compared to local clayey materials, both heat-treated and non-heat-treated, to show that no heat treatment sufficient to cause sintering had occurred. A resource survey in the area around the site and 50 miles to the south produced several comparative materials that were tested by the same methods given above as well as the added methods of DTA and refiring tests.
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U2 - 10.1557/opl.2011.925
DO - 10.1557/opl.2011.925
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84455190109
SN - 9781605112961
T3 - Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings
SP - 67
EP - 80
BT - Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology IX
T2 - 2010 MRS Fall Meeting
Y2 - 29 November 2010 through 3 December 2010
ER -