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- Shine on you crazy diamond: symbolism and social use of fluorite ornaments in Iberia’s late prehistoryPublication . Garrido-Cordero, José Ángel; Odriozola, Carlos; Sousa, Ana Catarina; Gonçalves, Victor S.; Cardoso, João LuísFluorite ornaments have been recorded in different sites of Europe since Upper Paleolithic. Due to its visual appearance and physical properties, some translucent or transparent mineralogies like fluorite were searched for or casually acquired by late prehistory’s human communities. After intensive research on archaeological contexts from the Iberian Peninsula with personal ornaments from 4th to 2nd millennia BCE, we have recently identified and characterized for the first time an important number of fluorite ornaments, confronting a previous background where little attention was paid. Our work has been carried out in different archaeological collections and museums from the whole Iberian Peninsula by non-destructive techniques (Raman spectroscopy, portable X-ray fluorescence (p-XRF) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD), that revealed the nature of fluorite ornaments and points to its consideration as scarce and highly symbolic items during late prehistory. A total of 36 fluorite beads from 23 sites are here recorded and studied, many of them inedits or wrong catalogued as other mineralogies. These adornments could have important roles in trade and use among the communities of Iberia from the 4th millennium BCE onwards, because of their scarcity and its recurrent association with important funerary complex and exotic materials. Fluorite ornaments could have been significant and special symbols in the development of new and exclusive raw materials in the context of increasing social complexity and inequality.
- Translucent beads, shinier worlds: a preliminary approach to fluorite beads from the Iberian PeninsulaPublication . Lloret, C. P. Odriozola; Cordero, J. A. Garrido; Sousa, Ana Catarina; Gonçalves, V. S.; Cardoso, João LuísPrehistoric ornaments are considered as aesthetic categories that show, emphasize and materialize codes, metaphors and narratives socially shared (Bar-Yosef Mayer and Porat 2008; DeMarrais et al. 1996; Hodder 1982; Tilley 1999; Wright and Garrard, 2003). Some values and properties as colour (Jones and MacGregor, 2002; Sahlins, 1976), but also brightness (Gaydarska y Chapman, 2008), have been highlighted as determinant of cultural/symbolic and technological choices in Prehistoric materiality, conditionating the raw material selection. Transparent and translucent minerals are considered for the Neolithic onwards as rare and highly symbolic elements. This paper shows that translucent beads accounts for an ample variety of raw material (i.e., calcite, muscovite, quartz varieties…). Fluorite (CaF2) occurs worldwide, and it´s relatively frequent in western Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula. Its properties (4 hardness in Mohs´ Scale) made it easy to worked out and cleavage for making ornaments. Some Belgium´s Upper Palaeolithic sites gave important evidences of its use (Goemaere et al., 2013; Jungels and Goemaere, 2007) and French and Belgian Neolithic and Copper Age communities used fluorite as a rare raw material for personal ornaments.