A Shell Bracelet Manufactory

Abstract

Some of the most common artifacts found on all of the ancient Hohokam sites in southern Arizona, and upon many of the Pueblo sites further to the north in both Arizona and New Mexico, are the thin, well-made bracelets, earrings and finger rings, fashioned from the Glycimeris shell. The broken fragments of these specimens are particularly noticeable in the great trash heaps marking the Hohokam villages. The normal type is a plain, smoothly-cut, well-polished circlet of shell, usually perforated with a small hole at the apex of the hinge.Although archaeologists have long been familiar with these, and know that the shells from which they were made are found in the Gulf of California, the origin of the artifacts themselves has not been established. It has been inferred that the Indians of the interior obtained the complete shells in trade, or that in ancient times the inhabitants of the Gila and Salt valleys traveled to the Gulf, a nine days' journey on foot, even as the Pima and Papago have resorted thither for salt in more recent historic times.