The Gift of the « Face of the Living »: Shell faces as social valuables in the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age
The Gift of the « Face of the Living »: Shell faces as social valuables in the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age. The peoples of the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age (AD 600/800-1492) were in contact through intensive and extensive exchange networks. This article takes a close look at the social mechanism behind...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Société des américanistes
2011-12-01
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| Series: | Journal de la Société des Américanistes |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/11834 |
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| Summary: | The Gift of the « Face of the Living »: Shell faces as social valuables in the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age. The peoples of the Caribbean Late Ceramic Age (AD 600/800-1492) were in contact through intensive and extensive exchange networks. This article takes a close look at the social mechanism behind one of these networks, which consists of face-depicting shell discs or cones. This is done from a gift-theoretical framework that focuses on aspects of alienability/inalienability of these shell faces in a specifically Caribbean setting. These artefacts are characterized from the indigenous concept of guaízas – « faces of the living » – as understood from ethnohistoric sources. After treating their iconography and giving an overview of their archaeological and socio-cultural contexts the discussion will focus on alienable and inalienable qualities of these artefacts. Finally, « shell faces as guaízas » will be used in an argument in which they figure as social valuables that are used to control extra-communal Others. |
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| ISSN: | 0037-9174 1957-7842 |