HARTMAN: ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCHES ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF COSTA RICA 85 
Buckle-shaped object of dark green stone. Length 4 cm., breadth 2.9 em. PI. 
XXXIX, Fig. 32. (Nat. Mus. of Costa Rica, Velasco Coll.) 
Buckle-shaped object of quartz. Length 4.7 cm., breadth 2.7em. PI. XXXIX. 
Vig. 338. (Cat. No. 7337. 
Cylinder, compact of dark green bowenite, adorned with encircling incisions at 
both ends. Height 3.4 cm., diameter 1.8 cm. Pl. XXXIX, Fig. 34. (Cat. No. 
29:39 ) 
1321: 
OBJECTS OF JADE AND OTHER GREEN STONES OF LAs GuACAS. 
The burial-ground of Las Guacas has produced far more objects of jade than all 
other ancient sites of Southern Central America combined. Hundreds of specimens 
of jade, comprising all forms of amulets, beads, tubes, etc., have been found in this 
small spot. The term “jade” is then, as by previously quoted archeologists, p. 18, 
used in its common and widest, not in its strict mineralogical sense, comprising only 
jadeite and nephrite. Most of these ‘““jades” are objects of bowenite, pale to dark 
green, or saussurite, bluish green, often with white spots, while the more or less 
translucent jadeites are less numerous. No close mineralogical investigation has 
however been made as yet of the jade objects of the Costa Rican collections of the 
Carnegie Museum, but I am indebted to Professor L. P. Gratacap of the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York for the general determination of the most 
conspicuous of the minerals represented in these collections. Professor Amos P. 
Brown” of the University of Pennsylvania, who has published a study based on 
the Velasco collection, which was deposited in Philadelphia, considers it to contain 
“probably the best assemblage of worked (American) jade in existence.” 
In my previous excavations during 1897 in other burial-grounds of Nicoya and 
its surroundings, I found jade ornaments in the graves but sparingly. ew of those 
from other localities were so large and elaborate as those of Las Guacas. On the 
whole mainland of Costa Rica objects of jade are very rare. In all my excavations 
on the highlands I only came across a few small beads of this mineral. But some 
fine specimens of jade amulets have been found sporadically in graves on the slopes 
of Irazu, and even on the Atlantic coast at Mercedes, and one or two other places. 
All these finds, however, have been of ‘Nicoyan origin. On the Pacific side of 
Nicaragua jade objects also have been reported, but even all of these which I have 
seen show forms identical to those characteristic of Nicoya. ‘The extensive excava- 
tions at Chiriqui seem only to have brought to light a single specimen of jade, a 
common type of the Nicoyan plain amulets included in the collections of the Yale 
University Museum. 
22 Brown, Amos P. ‘‘ Jade and similar green stones.’’? Bull. Free Museum of Science and Art of the University 
of Pennsylvania, April, 1898, p. 145. 
