A Social Landscape of Shell, Trade, and Value in the Tucson Basin: A Statistical Analysis of Nacreous Marine Shell Artifacts from the Early Agricultural Period

Archaeological work on nacreous shell jewelry dating from the Early Agricultural period (2100 BC – 150 AD) has focused primarily on the sourcing location of such rare and beautiful objects. Central to my analysis is how nacreous shell was valued in its deposition locations and if that differed from those items without a nacreous layer. This paper reports on a series of chi-square and Fisher’s exact tests conducted on the shell assemblages recorded from 17 Early Agricultural period sites in and around the Tucson Basin. These tests compared shell objects across eight types of contexts and 26 stylistic forms examining if either shell material made up a larger portion of the assemblage than would be expected due to chance. The results suggest nacreous shell material was used and valued independently from non-nacreous shell. Additionally, they reaffirm previous hypotheses on the origin of nacreous shell and discuss how such artifacts interacted with their social landscape.