joshuaream
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I'm normally not too excited about sharing purchases, but these fall into both personal finds and purchased relics. I collected them in the Caribbean 25+ years ago, sold them 15+ years ago, and bought them yesterday. (Islands are US territory in North America for the sticklers of if it belongs in this forum.)
I found 3 of the four items here on a single site, and bought the other one from a local buddy who also collected the same site. No way to tell, but I think the three green pieces were made by the same person/family (likely from the same chunk of material), the black piece is similar piece that is fully finished (and dinged.) These came from a Saladoid site, pre-Taino for Caribbean history buffs. (500bc to 800ad or so.)
I found hundreds of effigies and beads on these sites over the years, what made this set memorable was that it had a blank, a first stage, almost finished and then a finished example.
The Saladoid made a lot effigies of frogs. There are two main theories as to why they liked frogs. The first is that they probably started out in an area of Venezuela and Guyana where there are lots of little colorful poison dart frogs, and some hallucinogenic toads. The other theory is that at some point they moved into some of the drier areas and islands, and frogs/toads typically come out of the dirt when seasonal rains start (kind of a built in fertility symbol.)
Joshua
I found 3 of the four items here on a single site, and bought the other one from a local buddy who also collected the same site. No way to tell, but I think the three green pieces were made by the same person/family (likely from the same chunk of material), the black piece is similar piece that is fully finished (and dinged.) These came from a Saladoid site, pre-Taino for Caribbean history buffs. (500bc to 800ad or so.)
I found hundreds of effigies and beads on these sites over the years, what made this set memorable was that it had a blank, a first stage, almost finished and then a finished example.
The Saladoid made a lot effigies of frogs. There are two main theories as to why they liked frogs. The first is that they probably started out in an area of Venezuela and Guyana where there are lots of little colorful poison dart frogs, and some hallucinogenic toads. The other theory is that at some point they moved into some of the drier areas and islands, and frogs/toads typically come out of the dirt when seasonal rains start (kind of a built in fertility symbol.)
Joshua
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Nice that you could get them back.
