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SCAN way far DOWN to read my JADE research!

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Tenaya Rocks Volcanoes!
Vulcan Pacaya, Guatemala

Vesuvius, in the Naples gulf of Italy

California random Volcanic ROCK


Tenaya Rocks Sicily!

All the Minerals in one table!

   MY JADE RESEARCH

Jade Photos

     1.      Jade and properties, actual material

     2.      Associated and substitute minerals     

     3.      How its formed, plate tectonics             

     4.      One source of Jade in Central America, Motagua/Copan Honduras

     5.      Using technology to connect artifacts to source jade


                              

     The term "Jade" is of Spanish origin and was referring to the American material before the Chinese nephrite was even known to the western world.

       We know little about the daily lives of jade producing cultures of the new world.

       I wish we were able to tell if one Maya city took over another city and they stole some of their jade and kept it, or cut it up to make new stuff.

          QUALITIES:

          -high and lustrous polish

          -toughness: crystal growth habit, not hardness.

          -hardness: resistance to being scratched.

          -green because of iron, 8%+ iron content is black jade.

          -no crystals, massive, so if you hammer on it, it will not fracture.

          -single chains are intertwined prisms which make jade tougher.

          -jadeite is denser than other sodium silicates by 0.6

          -jade is not perishable, so artifacts are intact.  If it is broken, its probably not
           jadeite.

          -when sampling, you need lots of because jadeite from one source is so
            heterogeneous throughout the outcrop.

          -prismatic crystal morphology that does not form as tightly an interleaved crystal
           matt as nephrite

           GENERAL FINDS:

          -unworked or partially worked water-worn pebbles.  Even worked pieces show evidence of having an original pebble or cobble shape.  The shape and size of the original piece often influenced the design into which it was carved.  Because it's hard to carve jade, you don't want to waste jade!  They used the extra scraps to make beads and small beads and pendants and mosaics

          -Transport polishes the jade pebbles.  Mayas etc used abrasives and waxes

          -blocks of jadeite were sometimes broken up at the source, the river.

          -non-jadeite materials (that Mayans/Olmecs/Aztecs/etc could identify, did not receive as much labor or attention as the material recognized as jade, so those beads and such are sometimes cruder.

          -carved using water and bow string (drills), abrasives (Quartz sand), cord fibers like a saw, need something harder than jade.

          -Jade used to mean something, but now its just something to dig up and sell, especially in Burma where half the Jade is smuggled to Thailand to get to China and the other half is purchased.

          OLMEC:

          -they cant find any "bad" or "learning" jade figurines in Olmec territory, so they
           have concluded that the Chinese must have showed them how, Lost Chinese
           ships

          -they used leather to polish

          -Olmec used a lot of serpentine, not too much jade found

          -Olmec carved jade before the Maya

          -Olmec solid, one piece masks, Maya mosaic masks

          -Olmec more anthropomorphous statues

          -there are about 25 known masks, large one piece masks, serpentine mostly

          -Jadeite was so precious to the Olmec because it was hard to obtain, far from
            the source

          -Axes, Masks, Human figurines, Personal adornments/utensils

          COSTA RICA:

          -Costa Rican 3D carvings, Maya 2D carvings, generally

          -Las Guacas Costa Rica very LONG bar pectorals and banded tubular beads.  Average: 28cm, Maya ones are usually around 10-15cm.  Archaeologists have found several long ones at Copan.  Trading?  Stealing?  Copying of style?

          MAYA:

          -Maya didn't use metal tools to carve the jade.

          -carving jade is a remarkable technical achievement

          -drills-wooden stick with sand and abrasive makes small holes in beads

          -cylindrical drill (bird bone) carved a big hole and the core was used for a bead!

             -cords as saws, bone, hardwood, water and finely crushed stone

          -Maya used jade for jewelry and special carvings

          -ceremony adornment

          -celts and similar artifacts

          -beads, ear flares,

          -mostly found in funerary contexts

          -traded all over the Maya world, economic power,

          -owners of jade in Yucatan were very rich because it doesn't exist in the ground
            there.

          -Kaminaljuyu, Copan, Quirigua, and other sites close to provenance, jade is
            more abundant.  At Kaminaljuyu, there was a lot of carving happening.
            There are lots of unfinished pieces, carving tools, and small fragments
            (broken off)

          -Sharer pg. 712-718

          -Largest water-worn boulder found: 100kg, under a stairway of a platform in
            Kaminaljuyu; many pieces have been sawed off of it, so it used to be even
            bigger

          -Largest known/found carved piece: 4.42kg Kinich Ahau (Sun god) head from
           Altun Ha  14.9cm, 600 A.D., found in 1968 in a burial below a staircase in

          structure B-4

          -Even when archaeologists find out of place Jade (in location, date, or style) that
           is still a clue.  Was it an antique, hand me down, tourist treasure, stolen from a
           burial?

          Mayas had antiques of Olmec

          OCCURENCES:

          Low temperatures (eg. 250 C) High pressures (9 kilobars) = subduction zones

          Rare conditions means rare occurrences

          Found in glacophane schists, metagraywacke, inclusions in serpentine bodies
          along major

          fault zones, associated with Albite.

          Alpine metamorphic belts

          Metasomatism of ultramafic rocks

          Many S.S. faults have jade bearing rocks present, but no jade yet, takes more
          time for high grade metamorphism to occur at suture/deep fault zones

          Jade even reaching the surface & being stable is risky because it is ultramafic,
           high grade

          New Zealand

          Burma

          Bahia Brazil

          Alaska

          California: "Nephrite was evidently derived from portions of the cataclastic rocks
          by chemical reconstitution under the stress of differential movement.  Intrusions
          of periodotite now are serpentine caused by epizonal temperature and pressure"

          Japan: Subduction zone!

          Switzerland: African plate subducting under Eurasian plate, Alps, volcanoes,
          and jade!

          Central America: Guanajuato Mexico to Panam

          Guatemala: Cocos plate subducting under NA plate, volcanoes, jade, and
          granite!
                              

           Motagua River Valley suggests this area as a source of some, if not all, of the Mesoamerican jade.  The beds of the streams draining from these serpentine areas should be carefully examined for pebbles and cobbles of jade.

         - North Chixoy-Polochic fault and South Jocotan-Chamelecon fault worth
              checking San Augustin Acasaguastlan Quadrangle (Jadeite source map)

            - 13km stretch of Jade, no jade found south of the river yet; just north.

            - Foshag and Leslie 1955 discovered the Motagua source

            - Harlow: The single source hypothesis is based upon mineralogical 
              observation and plate tectonic theory

            - Hauff: Observed differences among composition and structure groups of
              jadeite source materials and artifacts are sufficient to reject the notion that a
              single source supplied the procurement needs of the precolumbian inhabitants.

            - Mineralogical heterogeneity within the Motagua source materials or with the
               jadeitic artifacts reflects the diverse suite of rock that can make up the
               jadeites.

            - One jade source means that there had to be a market of trading raw jade
               because Olmecs, Maya, Aztec etc all have different styles and animals
               they preferred to carve.

            - If there was only one source in Maya times too, did one site have a monopoly
              over the jade trade, or was it a free for all?

         JADE...FOUND WITH WHAT?: 

          Serpentine rocks, veins in the rock.

          Jadeite vein, albitic jadeite, jaditic albite, cholorite schist & black amphibolite,
           serpentine.

          Associated with other metamorphic minerals: quartzite, mica schist, &
          hornblende schist.

          Serpentine is a family of hydrated magnesium silicates.  Serpentine commonly
          forms with the interaction of water and olivine rocks called ultramafic rocks, that
          are typical of the Earths upper mantle.

                                           

         VISUAL AIDS: 

          Smithsonian pg. 13 map (draw country borders)

          Smithsonian pg 32 to 34 (cut and paste so it fits on one overhead?)

          National Geographic: pg. 309 pics overhead of jadeite and nephrite in
          microscope.

          National Geographic: pg. 310 to 311 Jade mask

          X-ray diffraction print out from Mineralogy class????

          World Map- plate boundaries (to explain tectonics and where jade is found)

          Central American map: with marked zones of serpentine, like first aid

          TESTING METHODS (for scientists):

          Geologists can test specific artifacts and match their compositions up to rocks insitu and other artifacts.  Testing also proves what exact mineral the artifact is.

          Many museums, sites, collectors, etc do not wish to test their objects in fear that their objects are not actually jade.

          X-Ray diffraction: the characteristic pattern of lines that each crystalline mineral yields by the diffraction of a narrow beam of X-rays upon a photographic film.

          Requires a bit of powder from the rock one wishes to identify.  The easiest method for identification is to compare the photographed diffraction lines with a standard pattern of jadeite, diopside-jadeite, or chloromelanite.

          One can prepare methylene iodide to desired specific gravity, then place the object you wish to test in the solution.  If it floats, it has less s.g. and if it sinks, it has a higher s.g.  Harmless testing.  Jadeite is 3.32, Nephrite 2.98

Microscope, indices of refraction (those different lenses/slides that change the colors)

          PIDAS

          SIMILAR MINERALS

          -differences in workability (crystal structure) and color (impurities)

          -pure pure jade is VERY uncommon, there is always a little bit of something in
           there.

Jadeite: pyroxene NaAlSi2O6, monoclinic XY(Si,Al)2(O,OH,F)6

            X=Na,Ca,K,Mn,Li,Fe2+,Mg

            Y=Al,Mg,Fe3+,Ti4+,Mn,Li,Cr3+,Fe2+

            Considerable chemical substitution

            Apple green Chromium sub

            Green in general Fe2+ Fe3+

            Blue jadeite Fe2+ considerable amounts

            Plaioclase + water = jadeite + lawsonite + quartz

           2Na.5 Ca.5 Al1.5 Si2.5 O8 + H20 = NaAlSi2O6 + CaAl2Si207(OH)2 x H2O +
           Si02

Nephrite: amphibole Ca2(Mg,Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2 tremolite (Mg) and actinolite (Fe) Not found in central america

Acmite: NaFeSi2O6

Amazonstone: green variety of Microcline

Emerald: early Spanish chroniclers frequently referred to the fine green stone from Mexico as this.

Glaucophane:

Lawsonite: CaAl2Si2O7(OH)2 x H2O

Chloromelanite: pyroxene Na,Ca,Mg,Fe,Al between jadeite and acmite NaFeSi2O6, black jades

Omphacite, "Jaguar" Diopside-Jadeite: pyroxene CaMgSi2O6  Na,Ca,Mg,Al  between jadeite and diopside, diopside has 90 degree cleavage.

            The formation in a melting pot of omphacite is like running between Homebase
             and 3^rd by the time it reaches the surface, composition is fixed and is
             somewhere between the two, Diopside and Jadeite.

Albite: common as cultural jade, found with Jadeite  NaAlSi3O8

Chlorite: H=2-3, sheet silicate, dull and waxy, common, takes believable polish  (Fe,Mg,Al)6 (Si,Al)4 O10 (OH)8

Jasper

Garnet

Metadiorite

Prehnite: H=6-6.5, orthorhombic, South Africa

Zoisite

Serpentine: H=2.5-3.5, easier to work, dull, darker green, polishes badly, sometimes laminated

Soapstone

Chert/Chalcedony: H=7, fractures easily, no cleavage, has crystals (cryptocrystalline Q) replacement feature

Kosmochlor: NaCrSi206Chromite replaces the Aluminum.

GUATEMALAN JADES:

1)      Jade with a limited content of diopside (about 10%)

2)      Diopside-Jadeite (about 50%-50%) = Omphacite

3)      Chloromelanite or acmitic jadeite

      OTHER SITES TO CHECK OUT:

Uaxactun: reusing of carved pieces in the mosaics; small amount of jade recovered and it was poor quality.

San Agustin Acasaguastln: the large proportion of workshop material suggests that this site was a center of a jade-working industry

Kaminaljuy: serpentine is exposed only a short distance to the north.  Large numbers of objects found here.

Acasaguastln:

Quirigu:

El Cajon: in Honduras is the largest assemblage of contextually recovered jade from any single project.

     WHY ANAL GEOLOGIC RESEARCH HELPS:

     - "prehistoric" trade and social patterns can be reconstructed when artifacts are analyzed.  From a Geo-archaeology point of view, it can be determined which varieties were more valued by Mesoamericans.  All samples should match up with the source in the Motagua Valley or elsewhere along the fault.

     - knowing that there is just one source allows us to begin to understand how each Mesoamerican culture obtained the jade, traded it and carved it differently.  Some societies used the jade to make beads, some used it to make extravagant knives, and others left it in more of a boulder form and carved heads!  It's fascinating how one material can be important in so many ways to a whole region of communities. 

          QUESTIONS:

          -Was a war ever fought over this jade source?  Did someone besides the locals
            ever try to control it?

          -Why are some artifacts made of jade and others of others?

          -Did certain people get buried with jade and others with greenstones on
           purpose?  Only with children, men, women, people who were wealthy?

          -object is being made for a poor / wealthy person specifically

          -carver had a deadline to make

          -it was made for a middle class person, but they wanted to spoil themselves
           jade; they needed to pinch pennies chlorite

          -jade for adults, others for children

          -shameful death gets no jade

          -market price was high or low one week, so someone couldn't afford it, or all of
            a sudden could!

          -can we assume sites adjacent to jade sources, everyone has some, and sites
            very far away, only rich people do

          -having jade went in and out of fashion

          -reward for good grades / other completed activity

          -were there people who sold serpentine as jade and that's why that purchasers
            object is made of serpentine, was there cheating back then?

          -did carvers just go get it?  Did they take a pilgrimage?  Free territory to
           everyone like Yellowstone (state park), or tourism industry?

          -was the jade equally distributed/allotted?