Abstract
Fluorite 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.
Highlights
Of the 25 Raman analyzed beads only a set formed by Los Millares translucent pale violet beads, El Pozuelo 7 colourless bead and the translucent pale pink beads from Casa da Moura, Anta Grande da Comenda da Igreja, Anta Grande do Zambujeiro and Fuente Álamo tomb 111 (CMR-436, AGCI-2011.154.278, AGCI-985.51.617, ME-3760, FA-T111-DJ83773 and FAT111-VI-1) records the fluorite diagnostic T2g Raman band at c. 320 cm-1
Recent studies (Zhuk 2017) have shown that in some cases calcite shows PL spectra very similar to that of fluorite leading to a misclassification of the specimen, and preventing the immediate classification of these beads as fluorite
The use of fluorite can be circumscribed to the period from the mid-4th to the mid-3rd millennia BCE, while a few isolated cases attest an interesting symbolic continuity in the 2nd millennium in south-east Iberia, in Tomb 111 at Fuente Álamo
Summary
In the Iberian Peninsula, apart from the long-known social value of amber (for a review see Odriozola et al 2019), transparent or translucent beads are rare, and when recorded they were generally classified as quartz or rock crystal with no further analysis than that of the naked eye. Besides quartz varieties, there are many more transparent minerals that are not usually considered, for example fluorite, calcite, and many sheet silicates that when thinned to a certain level are capable of transmitting light (Baysal 2017: 6-7). The social value of translucent ornaments made of those minerals would partially stem from its visual and physical properties and its scarcity in the archaeological record (Garrido-Cordero et al 2020)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
