Archaeology without Borders: Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico

19. Turquoise: Formal Economic Interrelationships between Mesoamerica and the North American Southwest

No society in the history of humankind has valued the mineral turquoise more than the ancient Mesoamericans. Massive use of turquoise eventually supplanted jade as the most common and widespread gemstone within that ecumene. As a mineral with such a high profile, its acquisition and procurement, from initial mining to eventual use for prestigious artifacts, deserve much more systematic study and documentation than has been the case to date. What follows is a summary from the perspective of procurement and distribution between the southwestern United States and the rest of Mesoamerica farther south. TURQUOISE IN THE ANCIENT MESOAMERICAN WORLD As mentioned, no other mineral was valued as highly by the ancient Mesoamericans as turquoise. By the Postclassic period (beginning about a.d. 850–900), it was in common use throughout the entire macroregion. Previously, we estimated that between one and two million individual pieces of turquoise have been found in the southwestern United States and Mexico, including poorly provenienced materials extant in many museum and private collections (Weigand and Harbottle 1993; Phil C. Weigand Turquoise Formal Economic Interrelationships between Mesoamerica and the North American Southwest 19 343 Phil C. Weigand 344 Harbottle and Weigand 1992; Weigand 1993). Several hundred thousand pieces of turquoise were found at Chaco Canyon alone. With new finds in Guerrero and Oaxaca (Sue Scott, personal communication, 2007), this estimate is probably conservative but nonetheless in the general ballpark. Since the classic study by Pogue (1972), researchers have recognized a crucial fact: whereas the major centers of turquoise procurement were in the southwestern United States and the northernmost reaches of Mexico, the major centers of consumption were in western, central, and southern Mexico. Undeniably, this can mean only one thing: turquoise was an export item from the former areas to the latter ones. To examine this assertion and gain a better understanding of the role of turquoise in the economies of these two large regions, I consider three topics: (1) the demand for and high value of the mineral, (2) a geographic plot of the areas of demand and highest value versus the natural distribution of the mineral, and (3) the social structures that facilitated the flow of turquoise from its sources to the final points of major consumption. Demand and Value The first occurrences of turquoise in Mesoamerica are indeed quite early, although the mineral appears neither frequently nor in large quantities. During the Formative and Classic periods (ca. 2000 b.c. to a.d. 100, and a.d. 100 to 650/700, respectively), jade and malachite were far more popular and widespread. The bestattested early occurrences of turquoise come from the Mezcala region of Guerrero (Rosa María Reyna, personal communication, 2007) and Chalcatzingo in Morelos (Grove 1987). Both sites date to around 600 b.c. Vaillant (1930) reported a small number of turquoise pieces from Zacatenco in the central Valley of Mexico, dating to about 1800 b.c., although this material has never been sufficiently analyzed. At our ongoing excavations at Guachimontones, Jalisco,1 we have found five pieces of turquoise, although offerings from looted tombs sometimes number in the hundreds of pieces. All this material from western Mexico appears to date from the first century a.d. or slightly earlier. During the Classic period the distribution of turquoise broadens considerably, although it is still relatively rare. Reyna reports more material from Mezcala, dating about a.d. 600; Felipe Rodríguez (personal communication, 2007) reports turquoise from Quintana Roo in the Mayan area at about the same time. Our work in central Jalisco has located other small amounts from this period as well. For the period a.d. 500–900, Hers (1989) and Kelley (2002) report larger amounts of turquoise from sites of the Chalchihuites Tradition of northernmost Jalisco and southern and western Zacatecas. In this area, thousands of pieces of turquoise have been recovered through excavations at a number of different sites over the past three decades. By far, most of this material came from the status burials encountered at Alta Vista (Zacatecas). Aside from turquoise debris, most of the artifacts are tesserae. Interestingly , many of these mosaic blanks were cut into standardized sizes and display bev- Turquoise 345 eled edges, apparently the earliest appearance of turquoise with such characteristics in North America. It is important to note that turquoise was imported into these regions largely as uncut raw material. During the Epi- and Postclassic periods (a.d. 650/700–900...