The archaeological site of Pearls on the Caribbean island of Grenada is the only Early Ceramic Age lapidary workshop in the southern Antilles, where stones and semi-precious stones were made into beads and pendants through a range of specialized techniques, like cutting, polishing, drilling and engraving. Pearls is also considered to be the main center of amethyst bead production in the Caribbean, as amethyst beads have been found at archaeological sites located across the archipelago. This suggests that Pearls provided these sites with beads, thus having an important role in the region’s exchange network. Long-term looting and destruction has affected the site of Pearls. As a result, lapidary items, ceramic finds, and stone and bone tools are now part of many private collections.
The archaeological site of Pearls is located on the south-eastern Caribbean island of Grenada. Whilst Grenada has an area of 306km2, the site of Pearls itself is dense and large, located 400m inland from the Atlantic Ocean and covers approximately 500,000m2. The Pearls site first became public knowledge with the construction of Grenada’s first airport, which opened in 1943. However, it has been suggested that Pearls was known before 1941, with ornaments found prior to this proposed to be from this site.
The data we can gather about the human settlement of the site is highly impacted and limited by the site’s destruction through long-term looting, agriculture, bulldozing for airport construction, and soil removal. First tested for its archaeological potential in 1964, excavations were carried out in some sectors of the site from 1988 to 1990. Recent research proposes that Indigenous communities inhabited Pearls between AD 370 and 770. However, due to the large size of the site and complexities in the layers of archaeological remains, it is possible that its occupation started earlier and continued until a later date. Pearls continues to be an important heritage site due to its historic and Indigenous components.
Across the eastern Caribbean, Pearls is one of the large Indigenous sites that functioned as specialized workshops for the production of ornaments. These ornaments are made from various stones and minerals that are rarely found or even absent from the archipelago. Pearls is considered to be not only the main centre of amethyst bead production, but also a southern Caribbean hub for the production and exchange of ornaments made from various rock types. For instance, the most numerous ornament materials found in this collection are diorite, turquoise, and jadeitite. At Pearls itself various midden deposits were identified. The middens are areas where domestic waste was deposited, including faunal and floral remains, ornaments, decorated ceramics, and stone tools likely used in the processing of food resources. In particular, a deposit in the northern sector of the site contained lapidary making remains, indicating the presence of a lapidary workshop.
We know that reciprocal and long-distance exchange of ornaments happened between the islands and with surrounding continents. This connection between different communities for the production of stone materials, which are exchanged as raw materials, partially worked products, and finished goods, established further group interactions and regional unity.
Due to instances of unsystematic collections, looting, and destruction at Pearls, archaeological finds such as lapidary items, ceramics, and stone and bone tools are now part of many private collections. Artefacts from one such collection include ornaments such as amethyst, carnelian, turquoise, and diorite beads, as well as greenstone frog-shaped pendants made from materials such as jadeitite and nephrite. Several of these artefacts were analysed by Dr. Catarina Guzzo Falci in the context of NEXUS1492.The examination of large collections from Pearls is important in further understanding this site and the role it played in local and regional archaeology.
Text by Jemma McGloin and Catarina Guzzo Falci, based on original published research (see further reading).
Cody, A., 1991. From the site of Pearls, Grenada: Exotic Lithics and Radiocarbon Dates. In Proceedings of the thirteenth congress for Caribbean archaeology. Reports of the Archaeological Anthropological Institute of the Netherlands Antilles 9, 589-604.
Falci, C. G., Knaf, A. C., Van Gijn, A., Davies, G. R., & Hofman, C. L., 2020. Lapidary production in the eastern Caribbean: a typo-technological and microwear study of ornaments from the site of Pearls, Grenada. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 12(2), 53.
Hanna, J. A., 2019. Camáhogne’s chronology: the radiocarbon settlement sequence on Grenada, West Indies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 55, 1-24.
Hofman, C.L., Mol, A.A.A., Rodriguez Ramos, A. & Knippenberg, S., 2014. Networks Set in Stone: Archaic-Ceramic interaction in the early pre-Colonial northeastern Caribbean. In: Bérard B., Losier C. (Eds.) Archéologie Caraïbe. Leiden: Sidestone. 119-132.