BiblioVault - Books about Obsidian

Obsidian

Geology and Archaeology in the North American Southwest

M. Steven Shackley

University of Arizona Press, 2005

Obsidian was long valued by ancient peoples as a raw material for producing stone tools, and archaeologists have increasingly come to view obsidian studies as a crucial aid in understanding the past. Steven Shackley now shows how the geochemical and contextual analyses of archaeological obsidian can be applied to the interpretation of social and economic organization in the ancient Southwest. This book, the capstone of decades of investigation, integrates a wealth of obsidian research in one volume. It covers advances in analytical chemistry and field petrology that have enhanced our understanding of obsidian source heterogeneity, presents the most recent data on and interpretations of archaeological obsidian sources in the Southwest, and explores the ethnohistorical and contemporary background for obsidian use in indigenous societies. Shackley provides a thorough examination of the geological origin of obsidian in the region and the methods used to collect raw material and determine its chemical composition, and descriptions of obsidian sources throughout the Southwest. He then describes the occurrence of obsidian artifacts and shows how their geochemical fingerprints allow archaeologists to make conclusions regarding the procurement of obsidian. The book presents three groundbreaking applications of obsidian source studies. It first discusses an application to early Preceramic groups, showing how obsidian sources can reflect the range they inhabited over time as well as their social relationships during the Archaic period. It then offers an examination of the Late Classic Salado in Arizona’s Tonto Basin, where obsidian data, along with ceramic and architectural evidence, suggest that Mogollon migrants lived in economic and social harmony with the Hohokam, all the while maintaining relationships with their homeland. Finally, it provides an intensive look at social identity and gender differences in the Preclassic Hohokam of central Arizona, where obsidian source provenance and projectile point styles suggest that male Hohokam sought to create a stylistically defined identity in at least three areas of the Hohokam core area. These male “sodalities” were organized quite differently from female ceramic production groups. Today, obsidian research in the American Southwest enjoys an equal standing with ceramic, faunal, and floral studies as a method of revealing social process and change in prehistory. Shackley’s book discusses the ways in which archaeologists should approach obsidian research, no matter what the region, offering a thorough survey of archaeological obsidian studies that will have methodological and theoretical applications worldwide. The volume includes an extensive glossary created specifically for archaeologists.

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Obsidian, Second Edition

Advances in Geological and Archaeological Obsidian Studies in the North American Southwest

M. Steven Shackley

University of Arizona Press, 2027

Archaeological obsidian studies in the American Southwest and beyond have significantly matured in the last two decades. Like ceramic analysis, obsidian artifact analysis has become a key factor in many archaeological projects because obsidian used to produce chipped stone tools is common across time periods in the Southwest—from Paleoindian through colonial periods. Even today, making stone tools from obsidian is used in teaching.

In the last twenty years, not only have the ways archaeologists use obsidian provenance to address twenty-first-century issues changed, but we now also see geologists and paleontologists using obsidian in ways never before imagined.

In the second edition of Obsidian, author M. Steven Shackley examines the newly discovered sources of archaeological obsidian and other volcanic rocks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. This work has aided in building new inferences concerning exchange, group interaction, and social networks: subjects that were only emerging twenty years ago in obsidian studies.

The field of obsidian provenance studies is truly international, linking archaeologists and geologists in the United States like never before. While the obsidian sources covered in this volume are regionally specific, the applications and methods used in the understanding of source recording, composition issues, and provenance are relevant worldwide.

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Prehistoric Quarries and Terranes

The Modena and Tempiute Obsidian Sources

Michael J. Shott

University of Utah Press, 2021

Because of the sheer volume of industrial debris and the limited information it yields, quarries are challenging archaeological subjects. Michael J. Shott tackles this challenge in a study of flakes and preforms from the Modena and Tempiute obsidian quarries of North America’s Great Basin. Using new statistical methods combined with experimental controls and mass analysis, Shott extracts detailed information from debris assemblages, and parses them by successive “stages” of reduction continua. The book also reports the first test of the behavioral ecology field-processing model that treats quarry biface production in continuous terms, and estimates the production efficiency of prehistoric Great Basin knappers. After mapping and interpreting the abundance and distribution of quarry products, Shott concludes by charting future lines of research in the analysis of large toolstone sources. Whatever area of the world and technological traditions they research, lithic analysts will learn much from this book’s approach to complex archaeological deposits and their constituent artifacts.

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Sally in Three Worlds

An Indian Captive in the House of Brigham Young

Virginia Kerns

University of Utah Press, 2021

In this remarkable and deeply felt book, Virginia Kerns uncovers the singular and forgotten life of a young Indian woman who was captured in 1847 in what was then Mexican territory. Sold to a settler, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, the woman spent the next thirty years as a servant to Young’s family. Sally, as they called her, lived in the shadows, largely unseen. She was later remembered as a “wild” woman made “tame” who happily shed her past to enter a new and better life in civilization.

Drawing from a broad range of primary sources, Kerns retrieves Sally from obscurity and reconstructs her complex life before, during, and after captivity. This true story from the American past resonates deeply in the current moment, attentive as it is to killing epidemics and racial injustices. In telling Sally’s story, Kerns presents a new narrative of the American West.

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