Analysis of the Oldest Worked Gold Found in the Americas

Analysis of the Oldest Worked Gold Found in the Americas

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Keywords: native gold, jewelry, signaling, social stratification, spectrometry
What appears to have been a necklace of gold and stone beads has been found in the Peruvian Andes. It is the oldest example of worked gold in the Americas, dating to roughly 4000 years ago. Archaeologists widely believe that hunter-gatherers lived in this region at that time, so the necklace came as a surprise -- the researchers state that such decoration would have worn by an elite to signal his or her status. Consequently, they suggest that the necklace is evidence that its owner's society was beginning to stratify socially. The type of stone is not identified, just that it is green and coarse. Analyses indicated that the gold originated as quartz-vein nuggets, so they were likely hammered into flat sheets using a stone tool and then bent into cylinders.
Above: A reconstruction of the gold necklace discovered in Peru. Credit: AP/National Academy of Sciences.
Excerpts from The Money Times:
Archaeologists Discover Americas' Oldest Gold Necklace
By Poonam Wadhwani
US archaeologists claim to have found a 4000-year-old nine-bead necklace in a burial pit near Peru's Lake Titicaca, the oldest known gold object made in the Americas. The discovery of the golden necklace suggests that gold was being used as a status symbol in the Americas much earlier than previously thought.
On a rainy day in the Peruvian Andes, Mark Aldenderfer of the University of Arizona and colleagues were examining a pit at Jiskairumoko in the Lake Titicaca basin when they found nine cylindrical gold beads interspersed with small green stones at the base of an adult skull.
Writing in this week’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the archaeologists said the necklace is the continent's oldest, and radiocarbon dating puts its origin at about 4,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers occupied the area. . .
The discovered gold artifact, made with nine tube-shaped gold beads that varied in length from 11.5 to 29 millimeters and weight from 1.5 to 5.2 grams interspersed with 11 circular beads of a coarse green stone, suggested this could have been a necklace.
Spectrometry data suggest the gold was quartz-vein nuggets, and marks on the necklace suggest that gold nuggets had been flattened with a stone hammer and then carefully bent or hammered around a hard cylindrical object to create a tubular shape. . .

To read the rest of the article, visit the Money Times website:
http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20080401/archaeologists_discover_americas_oldest_gold_necklace-id-1019751.html
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Excerpts from BBC News:
Necklace Is 'Oldest In America'
By Helen Briggs
A necklace found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru is the oldest known gold object made in the Americas, archaeologists say.
Radiocarbon dating puts its origin at about 4,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers occupied the area.
The researchers say it appears to have been fashioned from gold nuggets.
The discovery suggests that the use of gold jewellery to signify status began before the appearance of more complex societies in the Andes, they report.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), they say the artefact is the earliest worked gold found not only in the Andes, but the Americas as well.
Study leader Dr Mark Aldenderfer of the department of anthropology at the University of Arizona, Tucson, said it demonstrated an emerging social role for gold beyond simple decoration.
He told BBC News: "The gold reflects a universal tendency for human beings to strive for prestige and status.
"The gold reflects that process in people living in a simple society which is in the process of becoming more complex. . ."
The gold would have signalled the prestige of its wearer, "not at all different to today," said Dr Aldenderfer. . .

To read the rest of the article, visit the BBC News website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7323351.stm
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Excerpts from The New York Times:
From a Burial Pit in Southern Peru, a Golden Oldie
By Henry Fountain
Archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a gold necklace from a 4,000-year-old burial pit in southern Peru. It is the oldest example of worked gold ever found in the Americas.
Mark Aldenderfer of the University of Arizona and colleagues found nine cylindrical gold beads interspersed with small green stones at the base of an adult skull in the pit at Jiskairumoko in the Lake Titicaca basin. . .
Spectrometry data suggest the gold was quartz-vein nuggets hammered and rolled into cylinders. In describing the find in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers say the gold and stones were probably strung as a necklace, the stringing material having disintegrated over the centuries.
Gold objects are normally considered signs of a well-developed society, one with affluent elites who can support craft workers producing items of high status. . . The researchers point out, though, that the people in the region were changing from life as hunter-gatherers to a more sedentary existence, so perhaps the society was beginning to stratify, as the presence of the gold would suggest.

To read the rest of the article, visit the New York Times website:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01obgold.html?_r=1&ref=science

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