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Taiwan: Trendy Prehistoric Jade Source

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Trendy Stones

Nov. 20, 2007 -- Taiwan was at the center of a one of the most extensive sea-based trade networks in the prehistoric world, new research shows.

The network, which traded in Taiwanese jade, has been uncovered after mineral analysis determined the source of jade used in two types of earring. Lead researcher Hsiao-chun Hung, of the Australian National University in Canberra, says since the 1930s archaeologists have noticed two very specific styles of ancient jade earring common across Southeast Asia.

These are the three-pointed, so-called lingling-o earring, and the double-headed animal ear pendant.

Hung says mineral analysis of a number of these has shown most are made from Taiwanese jade. Her finding overturns the long-held theory that the earrings originated in northern Vietnam and spread to the Philippines and Taiwan.

It also suggests, she says in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the existence of a small group of highly skilled jade craftsmen who carried or acquired the jade from Taiwan. They then travelled the region, with or without the help of transporting middlemen, making "extremely uniform jade ear ornaments to suit the demands of the local elites."

As part of the study, Hung and her colleagues created a mineralogical database for nephrite deposits in regions across East Asia and the Pacific. Nephrite is one of two minerals, the other is jadeitite, that are commonly known as jade. And it is the nephrite that's found in artifacts studied from Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The team developed a way of identifying Taiwanese jade based on the mineral chemistry of the nephrite and the zinc chromite inclusion minerals.