To their great amazement, the Spanish conquerors found that in Mexican eyes the most precious objects were not of gold, but rather were fashioned from various green stones which eventually came to be known as “jade.” As the author shows in her very useful summary of ethnohistoric sources on Aztec lapidary techniques, the workers in fine stones were organized into a guild, supposedly originating in Xochimilco. But Aztec lapidarians had in back of them no fewer than 25 centuries of experimentation, most of it carried out without the benefit of metal tools.
Part II presents a brief summary of techniques; these were largely restricted to percussion, drilling with tubular and solid instruments, string abrasion, polishing, and burnishing. The advent of tubular copper drills, after A.D. 900, must have opened up all sorts of possibilities for stone cutting, to which the fine onyx bowls of Post-Classic Mexico testify.
The most important section of the monograph is Part III, in which the author analyzes, by means of the binocular microscope, a variety of stone objects to discover their means of manufacture. For each artifact class (beads, ear spools, plaques, etc.) there are established discrete technical modes, which are presented for each site in tabular and graph form. Unfortunately, some of the graphs and tables have misprints, so that their usefulness is diminished.
I suspect that the last word has not been said on the full range of lapidary techniques employed in ancient Mesoamerica. For instance, in spite of what the author says about the concave, hematite mirrors of the Olmec or the paper-thin obsidian earspool of Post-Classic Mexico, the ways that they were produced still remain a mystery. Perhaps it is not so much laboratory analysis, but actual experimentation in reproducing these marvelous objects that will throw light on some of these problems.
