La parure en coquillage au Paleolithique.

La parure en coquillage au Paleolithique. Along with their gold, jade and dyed cottons, the Mexica lordsesteemed and often wore the plumage of tropical birds, above all theemerald tail-feathers of the quetzal. To us, their love for shimmering,brilliant feathers is one of the Mexica's attractive features, yetit was little appreciated by the Castilians, who passed on thisunmeltable loot to their Tlaxcalan allies, and precious few examples ofthe Mexica's art in feathers accordingly survived. Thus throughneglect and decay we have lost something of the chromatic, brilliantquality of their past. We only rarely glimpse signs of the fascinationthat people must once have had with such shining, gleaming things in auniverse far more sparing with bright colours and dazzling reflectionsthan our own. Yet there are hints. In their splendid ethnographic studyof Riji and jakoli: Kimberley pearlshell in Aboriginal Australia, KIMAKERMAN & JOHN STANTON explore the rich meanings and value of theshells to aboriginal groups (Northern Territory Museum of Arts andSciences The Museum of Arts and Sciences is the name for several museums: Museum of Arts and Sciences (Macon) in Macon, Georgia Museum of Arts and Sciences (Daytona Beach) in Daytona Beach, Florida Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Connecticut Monograph Series 4. xii+ 73 pages, 50 colour plates. 1993.Darwin: Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences; ISBN0-7245-2842-3 paperback Aus$29.95). The nacreous nacreous/na��cre��ous/ (na��kre-us) having a pearl-like luster. na��cre��ousadj.Resembling mother-of-pearl; lustrous.nacreoushaving a pearl-like luster. , gleaming pearlshellcould be found only on particular beaches and rarely exposed reefs, butonce shaped and engraved, with the incisions ochre-filled, it mighttravel hundreds of kilometres across western Australia. To aborigines aborigines:see Australian aborigines. ,the pearlshell was water and lightning: iridescent, reflective,dazzling: an attribute of the Rainbow Serpent: an object full of powerand beauty. That the shells' brilliance was indeed the key is shownalso by revealing substitutions recorded after Western rubbish began toappear on Australia's beaches, for new ornaments made out of tincans or opalescent opalescent/opal��es��cent/ (o?pah-les��int) showing a milky iridescence, like an opal. o��pal��es��centadj. plastic were not only used like pearlshells but wereactually named as such. This is a small but wonderful book with manysuperb photographs. Such a book could not be written about the shellwork Shell´work`n. 1. Work composed of shells, or adorned with them. of the deep hunter-gatherer past, yet to infer similar values from thefragments that remain is a tantalizing desire. In YVETTE TABORIN'SLa parure en coquillage au Paleolithique (XXIXe supplement a GalliaPre-histoire. 538 pages, 120 figures. 1993. Paris: CNRS; ISBN2-271-05071-5 paperback 520FF) the shell jewellery of the Palaeolithicis recorded with all the normal, formidable weaponry of archaeologicalillustration and analysis. It is a fine piece of work, yet maybe we needto experience something else: a sense, however fugitive, of the suddenglint of light as a piece of ancient shell catches the sun.