For greater than 3,500 years, i Manaotåomo’na, the People of Before, made their houses all through Guåhan and throughout the islands of Laguas yan Gåni, the Mariana Islands. Over these many generations, they continued to watch, experiment, and innovate in order that canoes carried them quicker, fishhooks grew to become simpler, and instruments produced from stone, shell, and bone had been refined.
The ornaments they wore modified as effectively.
While we regularly use phrases like jewellery, gildings, or decorations, the time period “ornaments” is used to extra broadly describe the various sorts of objects folks wore to adorn themselves. Though we don’t but know the entire story of Manaotåomo’na ornaments, the labor, time, and talent invested in creating them, recommend that they had been usually excess of ornament. Like regionally crafted items right now, they might have expressed id, household connections, achievement, or inherited rights.
One of the locations serving to us perceive these tales is Naton, an ancestral village inside Tumon Bay. During tiempon Mañåga I Mantåtasi, the early intervals of CHamoru settlement, ornaments of Pépega, cone shell, particularly as beads, seem to have dominated. Among the Manaotåomo’na buried at Naton throughout this era, some 95 p.c of their ornaments that survived had been produced from Pépega.
Yet Pépega beads weren’t the one decoration they valued. They had been additionally laid to relaxation adorned with bracelets, cowry shell beads, giant hima (clam shell) circlets, and for one younger palao’an (lady) quite a few tiger shark enamel. One can really feel the depth of care that went into what they might have worn of their each day life or for particular events, and what was laid with them.
Not everybody was buried with ornaments, nevertheless, and it was famalao’an (girls) extra usually than males who had been adorned with them. Some of probably the most touching discoveries are the ornaments positioned with infants and youngsters. They remind us that these younger lives had been cherished and that households will need to have felt their loss deeply.
As generations handed and communities expanded inland and all through the northern islands of the archipelago, decoration traditions modified as effectively. During tiempon Manmanhåtsa Latte’, when CHamorus grew to become latte’ builders (round AD 800-1700), spondylus shell ornaments grew to become more and more widespread at villages corresponding to Naton, and spondylus pendants appeared.
Elsewhere in Guåhan and Saipan, some famalao’an had been laid to relaxation sporting giant spondylus disks round their necks and waists, maybe as a part of a woven belt, tifi (a small apron), or skirt. Spanish clergymen additionally described famalao’an as having their very own occasions particularly for sporting their Spondylus.
At the identical time, throughout this later interval, fewer taotao Naton (folks of Naton) had been buried with ornaments general. Instead, they had been extra usually laid to relaxation with different features of their lives like pottery, fishhooks, and instruments.
Shells, shark enamel, and different sorts of adornment, reveal glimpses of what i Manaotåomo’na valued, how they noticed themselves, and the way they cared for each other.
Yet many items of the story stay unknown. Historical accounts, for instance, describe different valued ornaments and attainable symbols of talent, standing, or wealth produced from turtle shell and different supplies that don’t survive the passage of time in addition to shell, stone, and bone.
Through oral traditions handed down throughout generations, cultural practices which are maintained and recaptured, remembered place names, and numerous different connections, i Manåotaomo’na nonetheless have a lot to inform us about who they had been and the way they proceed to form who we’re right now.
Saina ma’åse’ to the steering and assist of Judy Amesbury, one of many founders and administrators of Micronesian Archaeological Research Services (MARS), who has been the go-to archaeologist specializing in marine useful resource use within the Mariana Islands for many years and is understood for working carefully with elders and cultural practitioners.
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Kelly Marsh-Taitano is a curator on the Guam Museum, the place she leads the Cultural Anthropology and History Unit. At the University of Guam, she has taught Guam History and Anthropology and co-led programs with cultural practitioners on latte quarrying and carving. She served as senator within the thirty fifth Guam Legislature.
Sources Amesbury, Judith R. (MARS) and Walth Cherie Ok. (SWCA) Who Wears the Beads? 2,000 Years of Ornaments from an Archaeological Site on Guam. [Booklet soon to be available for viewing on the Guam Museum Foundation website.] and Flores, Judy. Ancient CHamoru/Chamorro Jewelry, Manmade Accessories and Body Coverings. Guampedia.