gems, jade, pyroxene jade, fei cui, Guatemala, Mesoamerica, Nicaragua, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, archaeogemology, Cuba, Dominican Republic

Throughout history, many cultures made jade an object of worship and veneration. As early as three thousand years ago, the Olmecs were carving jade (Balser 1980). Jade was also venerated by the Maya, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Aztec cultures. At the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico, the custom still persisted of wearing jade ornaments as an exclusive privilege of the nobility. This precious material still exerts a great attraction today. At present, the word “jade” is applied to pre-Columbian carvings without taking into account the true quality (composition) of the stone (Balser 1980). Jade is a generic term that includes several minerals: jadeite, nephrite, and closely related species such as jade albite (albite-jadeite) and chloromelanite (Schumann 1976). However, indigenous lapidaries employed many other materials of inferior quality (such as chalcedony, jasper, feldspar, serpentinite, etc.) in the manufacture of carvings. Such carvings frequently appear in collections as “jades,” which is incorrect.