Building belonging and evoking identity through bodily adornment: pendants from the Ortiz site, south-western Puerto Rico

As a means for both the construction and communication of social identity in diverse human groups worldwide, objects of personal adornment can help to explain some prehistoric lifeways and beliefs. This study examines the materials and manufacture traces of whole and fragmentary pendants found in association with human burials at the Early Period ( c . 4200 cal BC–cal AD 250) Ortiz site in south-western Puerto Rico. Using data from microscopy, elemental analysis and petrography, the authors propose that these pendants were a tangible manifestation of group identity, rooted in a sense of localised belonging, which persisted over almost a millennium.