Provenance study of the variscite artifacts of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia and approach to routes of pre-Hispanic exchange

Abstract Variscite is a rare mineral that offers new opportunities for research on the mobility of raw materials in America during pre-Hispanic times through the provenance study of the source material. In this article we address a detailed characterization of the texture, mineralogy and chemical composition of the variscite beads belonging to the Nahuange (100–1000 AD) and Tairona (1000–1600 AD) societies of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region (northern Colombia), which we compare with the known deposit located in the Gran Roque Island, Venezuela. The presented evidence proves the origin of the material from this location, allowing the interpretation of the distribution models of northern South American archaeological variscite. Indeed, different findings of beads made of variscite have shown that this mineral could have a much wider distribution that extends to the Northern Andes, the Amazon basin and the Caribbean islands, though other not yet discovered geological sources cannot be discarded. This is shown by the discovery of variscite beads at the Nueva Esperanza Archaeological Site south of Bogota and in the archaeological records of the Narino culture (Colombia), the Amazon basin in Brazil, Aruba and the Lesser Antilles.