Catarina Guzzo Falci | Universiteit Leiden (original) (raw)

Papers by Catarina Guzzo Falci

Latin American Antiquity, 2020

In this study, we generate novel insights regarding bodily ornaments from indigenous societies of... more In this study, we generate novel insights regarding bodily ornaments from indigenous societies of late precolonial Greater Antilles. Previous research has highlighted the sociopolitical role of valuable, exotic, and figurative ornaments, yet there are many gaps in our current understanding of these artifacts. Here, we focus on ornaments from five recently excavated sites in the Dominican Republic (AD 800-1600). We used microwear analysis to investigate each ornament and assess its production sequence and use life. These data permitted the definition of morpho-technical groups, which we then compared to depositional contexts and the regional availability of raw materials. We demonstrate that (1) there was small-scale production of ornaments at the sites, (2) the most recurrent morpho-technical groups were likely imported from production centers, and (3) ornaments of the same group could lead different use lives and be deposited through varied processes. We conclude that bodily ornaments had highly diverse biographies involving local and regional interaction networks.

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2020

The present paper examines bodily ornaments made of semiprecious lithic materials from the site o... more The present paper examines bodily ornaments made of semiprecious lithic materials from the site of Pearls on the island of Grenada. The site was an important node in long-distance interaction networks at play between circum-Caribbean communities during the first centuries of the Common Era. Pearls was an amethyst bead-making workshop and a gateway to South America, from where certain lapidary raw materials likely originated. The importance of the site for regional archaeology and local stakeholders cannot be overstated. However, it has undergone severe destruction and looting over the decades. Here, we present a study of a private collection of ornaments from Pearls, which combines raw material identification, typo-technological analysis and microwear analysis. We identify great diversity in lithologies and in techniques adapted to their working properties. Multiple abrasive techniques for sawing, grinding, polishing and carving are identified. Furthermore, the use of ornaments is examined for the first time. Finally, we contrast our dataset to other Antillean sites and propose management patterns for each raw material. Our approach ultimately provides new insights on ornament making at Pearls and on its role in regional networks.

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2018

The use of microwear analysis has made substantial contributions to the study of archaeological b... more The use of microwear analysis has made substantial contributions to the study of archaeological bodily ornaments. However, limitations persist with regard to the interpretation of use and the reconstruction of systems of attachment, hampering a holistic understanding of the diversity of past bodily adornment. This is because the complexities of ornament biographies and the resulting wear traces cannot be grasped exclusively from the study of experimental reference collections. In this paper, we propose to bridge this gap in interpretation by systematically researching ethnographic collections. We conducted a microscopic study of 38 composite ornaments from lowland South America housed at the Musée du quai Branly (Paris). These objects involve organic, biomineral, and inorganic components, attached through different string configurations. The combined use of optical and 3D digital microscopy at different magnification ranges provided a thorough understanding of wear trace formation, distribution, and characterization. We demonstrate how individual beads develop characteristic use-wear in relation to one another and to the strings. We further challenge common assumptions made in the analysis of archaeological ornaments. In sum, this research addresses methodological and interpretative issues in the study of bodily adornment at large, by providing insight into the biographies of objects that were actually worn in a lived context. In the future, our results can be applied as reference for a more effective understanding of the use of ornaments worldwide.

Museum History Journal, 2019

Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, museums and private collectors across the ... more Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, museums and private collectors across the Americas and Europe began amassing objects produced by the indigenous peoples of north-central Venezuela before the European conquest. The rich imagery displayed on decorated pottery and figurines, as well as on skilfully made body ornaments, strongly appealed to the aesthetic tastes of the museum curators and visitors of that time. With some laudable exceptions, most of the excavations that expanded these collections did not follow the archaeological practice standards of our time and did not leave behind any written reports. In consequence, these objects and associated data have remained disconnected from subsequent advances in regional archaeology. In this paper, we provide a general overview of the diverse archaeological collections from the region under study and insert them, critically, into the current understanding of north-central Venezuelan archaeology. We go on to focus on body adornments in order to show how microwear analysis of their production, along with the use wear traces they exhibit, combined with data concerning raw material procurement and depositional contexts, can shed light on the intricacies of the social life of these objects. We argue that up-to-date knowledge of regional archaeology interwoven with new interdisciplinary approaches on museum collections enables researchers to resuscitate the vibrant indigenous pasts lying in museum drawers.

Figurative ornaments displaying biomorphic and geometric designs have often been recovered from p... more Figurative ornaments displaying biomorphic and geometric designs have often been recovered from pre-Colonial sites in the Caribbean and northern South America. Such artefacts are held in museum and private collections, but often have not been the focus of systematic research. On the other hand, recent research into ornaments worldwide has focused on simple beads and automorphic shell ornaments. In this article, microwear analysis is used to assess technologies of production and use-wear of figurative shell ornaments from north-central Venezuela. It is our goal to reflect on the challenges posed by such collections, in terms of reproducibility of traces through experiments , post-depositional and curatorial modifications, and the complexity of past attachment configurations. The underlying question is how to deal with the limitations posed by the very nature of the studied collection in terms of preservation and of the high skill required in the reproduction of figurative artefacts.

Baessler-Archiv, 2017

Large collections of beads, pendants and other bodily ornaments have been recovered from pre-Colo... more Large collections of beads, pendants and other bodily ornaments have been recovered from pre-Colonial contexts on the shores of the Lake Valencia in north-central Venezuela. Most excavations took place in the early and mid-part of the 20th century, but the ornaments have not been thoroughly studied to date. These artefacts were produced by the bearers of the Valencioid culture (AD 900–1500) and are currently held in several public and private collections dispersed throughout the world. This paper aims to recontextualize shell, lithic, and clay ornaments from the Alfredo Jahn collection, housed in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. Production and use wear traces were investigated through microwear analysis and were combined with data concerning raw material acquisition strategies and depositional contexts. By combining these results with new, unpublished data provided by Jahn’s excavation report from 1901 and with up-to-date Valencioid archaeology, we were able to recontextualize an indigenous tradition that encompassed ways of producing, decorating, and dealing with bodily ornaments.

Resumo: O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variant... more Resumo: O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variante amazônica da tradição Tupiguarani era um local especializado na produção de adornos corporais em uma matéria prima lítica, a caulinita silicificada. Principalmente, contas discoides estariam sendo produzidas, o que está evidente na predominância de suas pré-formas e restos brutos de debitagem. Para o presente artigo, foi feita a análise tecnológica de uma amostra do material, centrada no estudo da cadeia operatória das contas, com o objetivo de acessar as escolhas feitas por aqueles que frequentaram o sítio: quais as técnicas utilizadas e como se encadeavam em sucessivas operações no trabalho do material. Ao mesmo tempo, procuramos entender o sítio, tanto dentro do padrão observado para as ocupações Tupiguarani no sudeste amazônico, quanto no contexto mais amplo da região amazônica durante a Nossa Era, na qual a referência à circulação de adornos corporais é uma constante. Palavras-chave: Contas líticas. Adornos corporais. Tecnologia lítica. Tupiguarani. Amazônia.
Abstract: The archaeological site MMA-02, found in the Serra dos Carajás region (state of Pará, Brazil) and associated with the Amazonian variant of the Tupiguarani tradition, was a specialized place for the production of body adornments in raw stone material, known as silicified kaolinite. Stone disc beads were the main goal of production, as evidenced by the predominance of bead preforms and cutting products among the collected assemblage. For this paper, a technological analysis was conducted on a sample of the pieces, focused on the 'operational chain' involved in the production of beads, with the aim of assessing choices made by those that used to frequent the site: which techniques were used and how were these enchained in successive operations for working the material. At the same time, an effort was made to understand the site both in relation to the settlement pattern observed for Tupiguarani occupations in the Southeastern Amazon, and to the Amazonian context during our Current Era, in which there is continuous reference to the circulation of bodily ornaments.

Velasquez, C.B., and Haviser, J.B.. Proceedings of the 26th Congress of the IACA (International Association for Caribbean Archaeology). Sint Maarten. SIMARC Heritage Series No.15, 2017

Pendants and beads from the Late Ceramic Age have received limited archaeological attention from ... more Pendants and beads from the Late Ceramic Age have received limited archaeological attention from an analytical perspective, with only a few notable exceptions. This is because, in contrast to the Early Ceramic Age, not many workshops are known which can provide evidence of bead production sequences. In the context of the NEXUS 1492 project focused on the late pre-Colonial and early colonial northwestern Dominican Republic, beads were recovered from surveyed and excavated sites. Most artefacts were excavated from the site of El Flaco, dated to the 13th – 15th century AD, including beads made of igneous rocks, calcite, coral and shell. The aim of this paper is to assess how beads were produced and used by the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, in other words, to reconstruct their biographies. The beads were studied through microwear analysis, using different ranges of magnifications (up to 200x). An experimental programme provided a reference collection whose traces could be compared with the archaeological specimens. Manufacture and use were further contrasted to regional raw material availability and depositional contexts. The
combined evidence shows that, even though beads can be grouped together according to their types and contexts of recovery, their biographies are more varied than previously thought. Furthermore, it suggests that the biographies and even production sequences may have been distributed across space, being potentially entangled in broader, regional interaction networks.

Velasquez, C.B., and Haviser, J.B., Proceedings of the 26th Congress of the IACA (International Association for Caribbean Archaeology). Sint Maarten. SIMARC Heritage Series No.15, 2017

The biographies of non-ceramic artefacts remain understudied in circum-Caribbean archaeology. Eff... more The biographies of non-ceramic artefacts remain understudied in circum-Caribbean archaeology. Efforts have mainly been focused on
provenance and reduction sequences of lithics. However, there is considerable potential for generating independent data regarding manufacture and modes of use. In order to assess which kind of activities were performed and how regionally available materials were integrated into practice, research methods such as microwear analysis are indispensable. Microscopic examination of artefacts opens avenues into the nature and structure of Amerindian techniques, crafts, and technology. Manufacture and use in the past left traces of wear on artefact surfaces, which can be observed under different ranges of magnification. The experimental replication of these activities can provide insight into tool functions, motions, contact materials, and familiarity with the material properties. Here we report the experimental replication of techniques used for splitting, abrading, carving, and perforating materials, using tools made of flint, bone, coral, coarse and fine-grained sandstone, and Lobatus gigas, on a variety of shell species and rock types. In these experiments we reproduced technical procedures potentially employed in the production of ornaments, axes, threepointers, and ceremonial objects in the precolonial circum-Caribbean. The results offer detailed comparison with traces observed on archaeological artefacts, and serve to further identify gaps in our understanding of regional technological systems.

Sessions by Catarina Guzzo Falci

Ornamentation of the body is recurrent across different societies and time periods. It generally ... more Ornamentation of the body is recurrent across different societies and time periods. It generally takes a variety of forms: from objects added to the bodies of people to modifications of the body itself. Body ornamentation is often connected to group identity and cosmology; in addition, ornaments and their exotic raw materials have been circulated through long-distance exchanges. Extensive variability is seen in terms of ornament types, raw materials, and attachment systems. In face of this cross-cultural and long-term importance, alongside material variability, a broad range of instruments of analysis has been used for studying archaeological bodily ornaments, especially beads. In the last 20 years, different scientific approaches have emerged, including optical microscopy at different magnifications, SEM imaging and SEM-EDS, -CT scanning, XRF, morphometrics, etc. Focus has been placed on one or several of ornaments’ traits: raw material characterization and sourcing, morphology, technologies of drilling, carving and grinding, use and its duration, and material preservation. An important concern has been the use of non- or minor destructive analytical techniques. The present session invites papers concerned with the use of scientific approaches to the study of ornaments of different raw materials, such as stones, minerals, shell, bone, teeth, and metal. Focus on one or multiple aspects of ornament biographies are both welcomed. We also encourage a reflection on the different toolkits available for their study and the methodological choices that guided analysis. It is the final aim of the session to discuss the differences, advantages and shortcomings of selected methods of analysis.

Conference Presentations by Catarina Guzzo Falci

Research Master Thesis by Catarina Guzzo Falci

Bodily ornaments are abundant in the circum-Caribbean region. Made of a variety of raw materials,... more Bodily ornaments are abundant in the circum-Caribbean region. Made of a variety of raw materials, most notably shell, stone and minerals, they have been recovered from the archipelago and surrounding mainlands. This research focuses on how pre-Colonial indigenous communities have dealt with ornaments by investigating artefact biographies (collection of raw material, sequences of production, use, reuse and deposition). A chaîne opératoire approach is integrated in order to assess technological choices, gestures, techniques, toolkits and skill levels. Two case studies from the Late Ceramic Age are discussed: the Valencia Lake Basin in north-central Venezuela (AD 800 – 1200) and the northwest of the Dominican Republic, especially the site of El Flaco (AD 1200 – 1400). Microwear analysis is conducted on beads and pendants using optical light microscopy, with magnifications of up to 200x. Experimental data from the replications of specific techniques with local tools and contact materials serves as analogues to the microscopic evidence. An overview of the biographies of ornaments among lowland South American indigenous societies is presented in order to shed light into archaeological patterns. This combined approach permits a new insight into the role of ornaments in these contexts and on how their biographies were connected to social relations at local and regional levels.

Articles by Catarina Guzzo Falci

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2022

Pre-colonial Caribbean jade objects from the National Museum of Denmark Hatt Collection were subj... more Pre-colonial Caribbean jade objects from the National Museum of Denmark Hatt Collection were subjected to a provenance and microwear analysis. Thirty-nine jade celts and bodily ornaments from the US Virgin Islands, i.e., St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John, and five celts from the West Indies of unknown location, St. Vincent, Cuba and the Dominican Republic were analysed.

A comprehensive in-depth examination of jade adornments from St. Croix, combining typo-technological and microwear analysis, is compared to other lithologies used for pre-colonial ornaments. A portable laser ablation system was used to sample jade celts and bodily ornaments on site in a quasi-non-destructive manner. Low-blank trace element and Sr-Nd isotope ratio data were evaluated with a multiclass regression provenance prediction model.

This study demonstrates that the pan-Caribbean exchange of jade raw materials, pre-forms or finished objects during the Ceramic Age (400 BC to AD 1492) occurred on a more complex scale than previously thought involving jade sources in Guatemala, eastern Cuba and the northern Dominican Republic. In addition, the study of ornaments recovered from St. Croix reveals use of specific lithologies suggesting stronger ties to Indigenous communities on Puerto Rico than other Lesser Antillean Islands.

Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020

The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the... more The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the whole of its pre-colonial history. The period cal. AD 1000-1800, covering the Late Ceramic Age and early colonial era, represents an archaeologically understudied time during which the Lesser Antilles came under increasing influence from the Greater Antilles and coastal South America and participated in the last phase of indigenous resistance to colonial powers. This article summarizes the results of the Island Network project, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in which a multi-disciplinary set of archaeological, archaeometric, geochemical, GIS, and network science methods and techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.

Resumo: O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variant... more Resumo: O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variante amazônica da tradição Tupiguarani era um local especializado na produção de adornos corporais em uma matéria prima lítica, a caulinita silicificada. Principalmente, contas discoides estariam sendo produzidas, o que está evidente na predominância de suas pré-formas e restos brutos de debitagem. Para o presente artigo, foi feita a análise tecnológica de uma amostra do material, centrada no estudo da cadeia operatória das contas, com o objetivo de acessar as escolhas feitas por aqueles que frequentaram o sítio: quais as técnicas utilizadas e como se encadeavam em sucessivas operações no trabalho do material. Ao mesmo tempo, procuramos entender o sítio, tanto dentro do padrão observado para as ocupações Tupiguarani no sudeste amazônico, quanto no contexto mais amplo da região amazônica durante a Nossa Era, na qual a referência à circulação de adornos corporais é uma constante. Palavras-chave: Contas líticas. Adornos corporais. Tecnologia lítica. Tupiguarani. Amazônia. Abstract: The archaeological site MMA-02, found in the Serra dos Carajás region (state of Pará, Brazil) and associated with the Amazonian variant of the Tupiguarani tradition, was a specialized place for the production of body adornments in raw stone material, known as silicified kaolinite. Stone disc beads were the main goal of production, as evidenced by the predominance of bead preforms and cutting products among the collected assemblage. For this paper, a technological analysis was conducted on a sample of the pieces, focused on the 'operational chain' involved in the production of beads, with the aim of assessing choices made by those that used to frequent the site: which techniques were used and how were these enchained in successive operations for working the material. At the same time, an effort was made to understand the site both in relation to the settlement pattern observed for Tupiguarani occupations in the Southeastern Amazon, and to the Amazonian context during our Current Era, in which there is continuous reference to the circulation of bodily ornaments.

Figurative ornaments displaying biomorphic and geometric designs have often been recovered from p... more Figurative ornaments displaying biomorphic and geometric designs have often been recovered from pre-Colonial sites in the Caribbean and northern South America. Such artefacts are held in museum and private collections, but often have not been the focus of systematic research. On the other hand, recent research into ornaments worldwide has focused on simple beads and automorphic shell ornaments. In this article, microwear analysis is used to assess technologies of production and use-wear of figurative shell ornaments from north-central Venezuela. It is our goal to reflect on the challenges posed by such collections, in terms of reproducibility of traces through experiments, post-depositional and curatorial modifications, and the complexity of past attachment configurations. The underlying question is how to deal with the limitations posed by the very nature of the studied collection in terms of preservation and of the high skill required in the reproduction of figurative artefacts.

Articles and Book Chapters by Catarina Guzzo Falci

The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020

The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the... more The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the whole of its pre-colonial history. The period cal. AD 1000-1800, covering the Late Ceramic Age and early colonial era, represents an archaeologically understudied time during which the Lesser Antilles came under increasing influence from the Greater Antilles and coastal South America and participated in the last phase of indigenous resistance to colonial powers. This article summarizes the results of the Island Network project, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in which a multi-disciplinary set of archaeological, archaeometric, geochemical, GIS, and network science methods and
techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed
through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.

Latin American Antiquity, 2020

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2020

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2018

Museum History Journal, 2019

Baessler-Archiv, 2017

Velasquez, C.B., and Haviser, J.B.. Proceedings of the 26th Congress of the IACA (International Association for Caribbean Archaeology). Sint Maarten. SIMARC Heritage Series No.15, 2017

Velasquez, C.B., and Haviser, J.B., Proceedings of the 26th Congress of the IACA (International Association for Caribbean Archaeology). Sint Maarten. SIMARC Heritage Series No.15, 2017

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2022

Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020

Resumo: O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variant... more Resumo: O sítio arqueológico MMA-02, encontrado na Serra dos Carajás, Pará, e associado à variante amazônica da tradição Tupiguarani era um local especializado na produção de adornos corporais em uma matéria prima lítica, a caulinita silicificada. Principalmente, contas discoides estariam sendo produzidas, o que está evidente na predominância de suas pré-formas e restos brutos de debitagem. Para o presente artigo, foi feita a análise tecnológica de uma amostra do material, centrada no estudo da cadeia operatória das contas, com o objetivo de acessar as escolhas feitas por aqueles que frequentaram o sítio: quais as técnicas utilizadas e como se encadeavam em sucessivas operações no trabalho do material. Ao mesmo tempo, procuramos entender o sítio, tanto dentro do padrão observado para as ocupações Tupiguarani no sudeste amazônico, quanto no contexto mais amplo da região amazônica durante a Nossa Era, na qual a referência à circulação de adornos corporais é uma constante. Palavras-chave: Contas líticas. Adornos corporais. Tecnologia lítica. Tupiguarani. Amazônia. Abstract: The archaeological site MMA-02, found in the Serra dos Carajás region (state of Pará, Brazil) and associated with the Amazonian variant of the Tupiguarani tradition, was a specialized place for the production of body adornments in raw stone material, known as silicified kaolinite. Stone disc beads were the main goal of production, as evidenced by the predominance of bead preforms and cutting products among the collected assemblage. For this paper, a technological analysis was conducted on a sample of the pieces, focused on the 'operational chain' involved in the production of beads, with the aim of assessing choices made by those that used to frequent the site: which techniques were used and how were these enchained in successive operations for working the material. At the same time, an effort was made to understand the site both in relation to the settlement pattern observed for Tupiguarani occupations in the Southeastern Amazon, and to the Amazonian context during our Current Era, in which there is continuous reference to the circulation of bodily ornaments.

Figurative ornaments displaying biomorphic and geometric designs have often been recovered from p... more Figurative ornaments displaying biomorphic and geometric designs have often been recovered from pre-Colonial sites in the Caribbean and northern South America. Such artefacts are held in museum and private collections, but often have not been the focus of systematic research. On the other hand, recent research into ornaments worldwide has focused on simple beads and automorphic shell ornaments. In this article, microwear analysis is used to assess technologies of production and use-wear of figurative shell ornaments from north-central Venezuela. It is our goal to reflect on the challenges posed by such collections, in terms of reproducibility of traces through experiments, post-depositional and curatorial modifications, and the complexity of past attachment configurations. The underlying question is how to deal with the limitations posed by the very nature of the studied collection in terms of preservation and of the high skill required in the reproduction of figurative artefacts.

The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2020

The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the... more The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the whole of its pre-colonial history. The period cal. AD 1000-1800, covering the Late Ceramic Age and early colonial era, represents an archaeologically understudied time during which the Lesser Antilles came under increasing influence from the Greater Antilles and coastal South America and participated in the last phase of indigenous resistance to colonial powers. This article summarizes the results of the Island Network project, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in which a multi-disciplinary set of archaeological, archaeometric, geochemical, GIS, and network science methods and
techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed
through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge.