[Aztlan] Mica at Teotihuacan from Appalachia?

[Matthew H. Robb]

With regard to mica, I am not familiar with any 'recently discovered' sheets at Teo that anyone has sourced to Appalachia. I could very easily have missed something in the last few months, but so far as I recall there wasn't even a whole lot of mica found at the Pyramid of the Moon burials. The really big chunks are the mica sheets found in the 'Viking Group,' which was excavated in the 1930s/40s. They are amazing, and they do attract a lot of 'fantastic archaeology' attention (mica shields or channels radiation thus implying the presence of space aliens or something goofy like that). 

The Appalachia connection is not one I have heard before - down-the-line trading might be plausible, but these are pretty big sheets and it's hard for me to imagine they could have been transported over land/water without significant breakage.

I do not know of any recent work that attempts to source the Viking Group mica and would welcome a reference if someone has it! Margaret Turner has done work on Teo's lapidary industry and in one of her essays makes generic reference to mica sources in Puebla and Oaxaca. Does anyone know more about these, and/or the technology that allows for the sourcing? Given the relative prominence of mica as a necessary component in incensarios, etc., and given the Viking Group's proximity to the elite precinct of the Street of the Dead Complex, I wonder if those mica floors might have functioned as a 'bank' of sorts, similar to the massive offerings at La Venta? 

Matthew Robb


----- Original Message ----
From: "dlbrowma at artsci.wustl.edu" <dlbrowma at artsci.wustl.edu>
To: Aztlan at lists.famsi.org
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2007 2:04:04 PM
Subject: [Aztlan] Mica at Teotihuacan from Appalachia?


Listeros

I have a colleague teaching 'Fantastic Archaeology' who wants to know
 the 
reliability of the statement that the recently discovered mica sheets
 from 
Teotihuacan came from Appalachia.

Can anyone direct me/her to the correct information on this?

Thanx

Dave Browman
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