 As I said, I'm from the National Museum of Denmark and I got a PhD project on something called the Head Collection. And at some point it became apparent to me that there probably was a lot of jadeite artifacts in the collection. So I had to try to find out if that was true or not because it had implications as both Sebastian and others have said before. Unfortunately, most of the jadeite artifacts quite have an old collection history. And we see a picture here from the most significant part of the collection history, the Danish-Dutch Archaeological Expedition in 1923. This was quite a long expedition, nine months long. It went both to the Dutch Antilles, the former Danish U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. And I had nine months and I sent back 22 tons of materials to the National Museum. So it's quite a significant collection, size-wise. And I had to split it up a little bit to focus on certain areas. And that was where the jadeite became important in my opinion. But I quickly realized that this I couldn't do on my own because I'm pretty much the only Caribbean archaeologist in Denmark. There's one more who is looking into ancient DNA. So I quickly went to Leiden to get some help and to Amsterdam to get more help. And so some of the slides will be a little bit similar and I'll just briefly skip them if we've seen them before. The expedition's leader was a very brilliant archaeologist called Gullman Hed and I don't know if it's this guy or this guy, or the one taking the photography here. But I know that this is his wife who was also an archaeologist, one of the first female archaeologists in Denmark. And her handwriting is a lot better than his, which is an advantage. And then there was the Dutch anthropologist Joss van de Jong, which is a big name in Dutch anthropology and archaeology as well. They went over, they did this expedition and Hed, in fact, posed the first chronology for the pre-Columbian Caribbean. A chronology that's in many ways still is intact. Of course it's been refined but it's still intact in many ways. They excavated more than 35 different places and surveyed the same number, approximately 70 different places from the expedition. And then we had a lot of donations by Danish traders, officials, ambassadors and whatnot that has also been put into the collection. So a very, very collection history. This map is pretty much what we've seen from Sebastian and Alves before. We see the different known source areas and then there's one hype of these ferrerized source area down here. And I put it in not so certain terms because we don't really know where it is. And then we have suspected, are now proven, jade artifacts from St. Vincent, Burden Islands, Dominican Republic and Cuba in the Hed collection. As an archaeologist, I couldn't say for certain if it was jade or not. But I couldn't notice that we had all these magnificent axes, highly polished and slightly green or very green. And then I suspected it would be jade or nifrite. There was also the laboratory artifacts, not so common as the axes or the axes. And I had some problems to utilize them in my research. So I also got a hold of Katarina Guto Falzi from Leiden to get her to help me out and rejoin in this project as she is doing the useware analysis. The first step though was to go down to France to Pierre Petrican. He, Lasse, introduced me to him. And Pierre and Michel Eirea, they are offered to do Raymond and microscopic inspection of selected jade artifacts. And of course Raymond is not a 100% sure method, but it gives a high probability that you know what you have in your collection. And this was kind of interesting. And now this is preliminary research and preliminary conclusions from Pierre and Michel. So don't say that I said this or certain. But in their opinion, there is no nifrite in the Hed collection. There's only jadeite. They think these artifacts that have been identified as nifrite by Hed was also very good at identifying stuff, just macroscopic. They think it's very pure jadeite. So for example this straw pendant in the middle, which I long suspected to be a fake because it was so unique. He said this in his opinion and Michel's opinion, then this is jadeite, jade straw and not nifrite. He just thinks it's very pure jadeite. That's interesting. But as I said, it's preliminary conclusion. So don't say, but Casper said you said so. No, he said this is what we think so far. The axis also, it was a little bit dangerous to say that this is from the Caribbean because in Denmark we have a little unfortunate history of thinking that jadeite axis, European jadeite axis, were imports from the Caribbean. And for example this axis over here, where you see there's a star of the drill hole, looked very much like some of the European axis. So that was also a thing we wanted to try to separate if it was possible. But luckily we can now say that this is in fact a Caribbean axis and it's not something we mixed up. It was also after Alice had a look at it with Garrett Davis, it's also quite clear that there was now very high likelihood that we had a lot of jadeite artifacts in the collection. And this just samples from the different islands in the Virgin Islands. We see up here the top one. It's been reused as a grinder on Hammerstone, like Sebastian also said. We have these very elaborate axes that are very polished. We have these with slightly asymmetrical bit end and then we have one here that's, in my opinion, is very interesting because if you look at the edge here, then it's really, really finely polished. And when I looked at it I thought they were just finishing the axe but had written in the diary that it's been repacked the surface here and this bit end was in fact the original. And I didn't believe him but then Peter Kahn also said well, this is the same as we see in Papua and Nicanilla. They call it washing the axe. So that was quite an interesting discovery that I was wrong and had 100 years before had almost got it completely right. And then, of course, we had these elaborate area artifacts that I also had some problems to use but I'll get into that or Katarina will get into that later, so to speak. Then there was also axes and artifacts from other islands because we have these donations from other people. And it was quite interesting that we had a couple of axes like more than 100 years ago that were donated to the National Museum of Denmark and they have a slightly different shape, these two human axes. They are slightly conical in the bottom. Of course we only have two, so it's a very small sample to say anything about but at least here the St. Vincent axe that we found looks more like the Virgin Island axes. And we have at least 300 Jedi axes, I would say, in the National Museum's collections. Both complete and reused. And then we also have from the Dominican Republic but that has not been part of the study so far because that would just have killed me in my research if I tried to do that as well. I hope it's okay with Alistair, but this is one you gave to me. And here we see Alice and the garret set up in Copenhagen with the assembly. We see we have an artifact here on the laser ICP-MS. Then we see up here on the screen you see the bladed area on the artifact and that's approximately one micro square millimeters that we see up there, that's what's getting laser at the moment. So even on pristine artifacts like these we can in fact get permission to do it which was a little bit of a persuasive effort to get that permission. But I would say it's a very good method because afterwards you cannot see the bladed area. You cannot feel it. You have to use at least 10 and more like 20 times magnification to see the bladed area. And then it shows up as a very distinct circular hole which is kind of very different from natural indentations. So you can actually see it if you want to say this is where the laser and this is natural. So now I'm very looking forward to hearing the last in the future here on the separation of the Virgin Island artifacts because that would be significant if we can in fact say where they come from. Then Katharina Kutcher-False, she also came to Copenhagen from Leiden to look at the laboratory artifacts. Now they have a slightly different history because much of our laboratory Caribbean material is in fact collected by amateur archaeologists that lived on the islands and donated to the National Museum often on the suggestion of Goldman Head in 1923. A lot of this has been suspected of being from the early ceramic age. This is what Katharina has prepared so I'm not going to go into arguing with that. But it looks like on recent ceramic analysis with the thermal luminescence that there is a problem with the way we are dating the ceramics which might also have implications for how we have put the laboratory artifacts into what time slots we have put them into our periods and ages. But normally it's been like Katharina presented on the slide here. We have the early ceramic age laboratory networks. They circulate around in the Caribbean. All these are confined on the same croix, especially from a place called Prosperity and Spread Hall. And we see that they have a lot of different materials that are not found on the islands so they have to be traded in some way or exchanged in some way. As you can see a lot of different materials. As I said before, the two major sites where there is a laboratory of materials are Prosperity and Spread Hall which is up here on the western part of St Croix. They show a strong similarity with the laboratory artifacts that have been found on the island of Iegis which is a small long island there close to Puerto Rico where there are two significant typesites called Advaita and Solci. And they have a strong similarity. Unfortunately, as I said before, a lot of the elements of the laboratory in the HED collection are in fact artifacts that come from Gustav Norbuys donations. And he gave three different big donations to the National Museum. One without almost any information from 1920. Just said St Croix or the Caribbean. Then HED and his wife came around and said we need to know at least the plantation and something like that. So there we have a little bit more information. And then in 1946 he gave a lot more mixed material. Catarina she sampled or examined 65 almonds and of course there was 33 beads, 29 pendants and three non-perforated discs. And the material is shown here. J.D.I. botanical rocks for tonight. Malachi quartz amethyst and high pressure also botanical rocks and then in deterrents. Because it's collected by this there's no different charge and no unmodified materials. That Catarina has from other sites in the Caribbean, but not in this from the HED collection. Then she has done low and high magnification of the artifacts. She tried to assess the biographies of the objects. She had a technical stage, production techniques. Two kids use were recycling through these microscopic examinations. That's Catarina. And then she had for me some very nice finds that you could see some of the techniques they've used for reducing the rock. The planner convex beads. She concludes they have used flaking. Some of the other they have used snapping techniques. And some of the artifacts have in fact broken during production. She has also been able to prove almost. And then there are some techniques that are a little bit more unusual. And especially on this frog pin where it also looks like it's been sawing and drilling. So this was a nice add-on to our knowledge about the HED collection, especially the laboratory. Because this was something we were completely unaware of before. And this strongly suggests that there must have been a quite extensive trade network in the Eastern Caribbean. Other examinations of very rare objects like percury teeth, dog tooth pendants and so on. Also suggests there's been some connections down to South America. And maybe to the foothills of the Handys. But this is a very rare object. To what extent has been this exchange is difficult to say. Katharina's primary conclusion is that the ornament production took place locally. But if the blanks or the preforms came from the source areas, she cannot conclude that. The most common ornament types are very similar to those found in laboratory workshops in Puerto Rico. And I know she's also looked down to the southeast to Granada. So that's significant that she says there's more similarities to here. That was also what I would expect from a strictly archaeological point of view. But now it's a more solid base, we can argue this. Then there's something that's a little bit strange in my opinion. But you find there's a low presence of ornament in quartz. Which suggests that the context with the sub was restricted. There is quartz in the head collection. But not so much here in the laboratory. Which is a bit strange. And then her conclusion is also that the JJ's height is not treated differently and other green stones are rock materials. Such as gas, the sedimentary malachite, and even calcite, as we have on the top. Where we have some artifacts we call patrician depillary artifacts. And the important is that as far as we know all the materials are not to be found on the virgin islands. So everything has to come from somewhere else. Which is of course important for understanding of the society. It's also interesting that even though there are different materials it's made into the same time of ornaments and using a similar production of technologies. The one exception is this proxy opinion. Which I originally thought might be a fake. Which has a more naturalistic depiction. And has been produced using more sophisticated techniques. That's not observed on other artifacts of the head collection in Copenhagen. To sum it up, in my opinion of all these inputs I've gotten and what I've seen myself and other research I've been doing I tend now to maybe agree more with Sebastian that maybe these jadeite artifacts are more closely associated with the later ceramic age than early on. And for sure they had extensive networks. And also with South America and the footers of the Andes. But to what extent is very difficult to say. I think it's been very limited from what you can see right now. And then also research I've done with thermoluminescence of ceramics suggests that there are some problems with our original dating. I would argue. But that's something that's not related to jadeite. But then it's very clear that Alice's research with Garadavis if they can argue well for this is from the Dominican Republic that was up the scale again for having extensive long-range contacts. Because when we look at the axis, one of the conclusions I had is and I think Tom would argue this later so I'll only touch it very briefly. But it looks like there's almost been like a mail order. I need these axes this size, this number. And then they've been exported to St. Croix and others. Because there's a strong similarity between some of the axes. There's almost like a cache of when we see here in Europe we see bronze, we see silks, we find these caches are all the same. I can see almost the same in some of the sites in St. Croix especially. So I'll say I've become wiser during my research with Alice and Tom and Katharina but I also still have a lot of questions which I hope we'll solve in the near future. Thank you very much.