The state of Jalisco hosts the fourth-largest obsidian deposits in the world. In pre-Hispanic times, obsidian was perhaps as valuable as oil is today because from it could be made knives, scrapers and arrowheads, as well as jewelry and mirrors.
Because obsidian was so abundant in western Mexico, a typical mine was nothing more than a hole or trench no deeper than a meter or two and open to the sky.
Today their remains typically resemble shallow depressions, surrounded by the broken bits of tools that didn’t pass muster.
But one day archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza told me about an exception.
“Not far from San Isidro, we found an obsidian mine that’s completely underground and dark as a cave. It’s just the sort of place you would love . . .”
San Isidro Mazatepec is located 13 kilometers west of Guadalajara. Here, members of our Zotz Caving Club found Rodrigo Esparza and Phil Weigand, the legendary discoverer of the Guachimontones, waiting for us next to a beat-up truck.

• Mexican Obsidian Spear Point
• Green Obsidian From Mexico

“This is the first underground obsidian mine we’ve found in Jalisco,” said Weigand, “so it needs to be surveyed and mapped. However, to get inside of it, you have to crawl on your hands and knees through low, narrow passages . . . and we suspect there are plenty of vampire bats inside . . .”
“So you thought of us,” I replied, “but to tell you the truth, it does sound like a place we would love!”
We climbed into the truck bed and the old archaeologist drove us out of town along a dirt road full of ruts. Eventually we passed through a fence on to private land.
“We’ve been riding on an expressway until now,” said Weigand, “but here comes the rough stuff.”
And rough it was. We had to make sure some of us were sitting on two concrete slabs (kept in the truck bed for ballast) so they wouldn’t fly around and land on top of us.
In parts of the mine, the ceiling is less than a meter high.
After half an hour of bouncing and bumping, we pulled to a stop among tall oak trees at the base of a small hill. Pieces of obsidian covered every inch of the ground around us like autumn leaves in New England.
Rubbing our sore bottoms after the hammering they had received on the awful, rocky road, we picked up unfinished arrow and spear heads, knives, flakes, scrapers and other fragments that had obviously been worked on and discarded.
We were standing in the middle of a typical obsidian workshop and it brought home the importance — perhaps unimaginable to us moderns — that obsidian played in the lives of the people living here for most of the last 2,000 years.
Those ancients had no metal tools or weapons but they knew what few people today would believe, that nothing on earth is as sharp as an obsidian blade.

“All other liquids crystallize when they turn solid,” explained Phil Weigand, “except obsidian, which has no crystal structure whatsoever.”
Metal can’t be sharpened less than the size of its smallest crystals, but obsidian has no such limit. In the old days, indigenous Mexicans used to line the edges of their flat wooden sword — called the macahuitl — with obsidian flakes, and it is said it could slice off a man’s leg with one blow.
Several pieces we picked up did indeed have a smoky-green luster and a very shiny surface. “Do you think they made mirrors out of this?” I asked.
“Oh no,” replied Phil. “They only used the blackest obsidian for that because they believed mirrors depict how you will look in the afterlife and black was the color of death.”
As we discussed death and obsidian, we walked up the hill to the mine. Emanating from the small, triangular entrance hole, barely large enough for a human being to squeeze through, was a light current of air carrying the unmistakable smell of a dead animal inside.
Immediately, it was decided that I would go first into the Smelly Unknown. I wriggled through the small hole and was received by a welcoming committee of little black flies which angrily flew around my head. As they didn’t bite, I started crawling along until I found myself in a room where the roof was just one meter above the floor. The evil stench was coming from somewhere in here but I couldn’t find the source.
Above me there was a small skylight. A few meters on, in another room where there was almost no daylight, I nearly put my hand into a gooey black puddle that I immediately recognized from so many visits to western Mexico’s caves.
“Yup, we’ve got vampire bats, alright,” I shouted to the others, who were listening at the entrance hole, hoping this would encourage them to rush right in. Of course, the fresh vampire guano added yet another tantalizing odor to the already notable aroma of the mine.
Ten meters from the entrance, I came to a steep down slope. I glanced up at the ceiling and gulped. My headlamp revealed sharply pointed “spears” of obsidian pointing down at me and it looked like any one of them could easily be pulled out — or even fall out by itself — perhaps resulting in the collapse of the entire roof! This was a unique substitute for the stalactites found in limestone caves.
“Amigos, you have to come in here. This is something you’re never going to see in a cave.”
To my surprise, my compañeros (but not the archaeologists, by the way) did come in, braving the bugs, the decomposing corpse and the slimy vampire guano. By then, I was moving down the slope to total darkness and another, much bigger pool of tar-like vampire goo.
Now, they had told us that this mine was as dark as a cave, but I would say “darker than the darkest cave” because the black obsidian ceiling, walls and floor — with a little help from the vampire guano on the floor — absorbed light even more than the black basalt walls of a lava tube, making it exceedingly difficult indeed to see anything using flashlights and headlamps.
The creatures living in that black room, however, had no problem “seeing” us thanks to their marvelous echolocation skills. All around us we could hear them darting.
Suddenly one would land on the wall near us. In the dim light of our headlamps, we could see it shifting left and right, showing us its fangs, shaking its head menacingly and then flying right at us.
Ah, but we knew about this little trick. It’s all a show and they never actually hit you (much less bite you, which they only do to sleeping or immobile prey).
One nice thing about this room which we soon christened “The Boudoir of the Vampires,” was that at last we could stand up and move around easily, truly a blessing as we had been crawling along on the natural equivalent of broken beer bottles: shards of volcanic glass that tinkled every time we moved.
In Stygian blackness we walked down the slope to what turned out to be the end of the mine. And suddenly we were standing at the very last spot where the ancient miners had been at work. This was a perfectly vertical wall.
It was flat, except for a beautiful nodule of creamy-green obsidian — big as a basketball — embedded in the wall and protruding from it.
What had stopped the ancient miners from prying out this prize? Was it a shout from a fellow worker: “Hey, Mixtli, forget that rock! Some bizarre creatures are coming down the hill, half men and half animals. We have to get out of here — run for it!”
For whatever reason, they left, their job incomplete. We, instead, were able to complete our survey and then we too, left, allowing the old mine to return to its habitual darkness and silence, broken only by the occasional flapping of vampire wings.

( Fr- obsidienne/obsidiane; Ger- Obsidian/Feuerkiesel; Nor- obsidian; Rus- )

Ranked as one of the best Heuchera, award winning Heuchera 'Obsidian' is a particularly attractive variety of Coral Bells with its foliage of lobed, rounded, long-petioled, rich dark purple to almost black, shiny leaves that remain dark throughout the growing season and do not fade. In early-mid summer, panicles of small, bell-shaped, creamy-white flowers bloom on slender stems rising up to 24.

• Black Panther 1 kilo silver coin obsidian black Palau 2021. Mexican Libertad 2 oz Silver Coin PCGS MS70 FS 2020.
• Obsidian was an essential material in the daily and ritual lives of the ancient cultures of Mexico and Guatemala. It was used to make all types of sharp instrument tools such as knives, arrow heads, scalpels, and scrapers. It was also used as body ornaments.
• Description of: Mexican Obsidian Sculptures. What youre looking for purposes of ese obsidian figural carving crafts a kneeling position wearing an edge as the basin of the many outstanding chefs of obsidian etsy is glass but effective ways obsidian figurines etsy is an obsidian stone holds great benefits that an obsidian source area in the.

OBSIDIAN

B. Snowflake obsidian (height - ca. 3.6 cm) from Black Rock, Milford, Utah. (© original photo [here irregularly cropped] by Frederick H. Pough)

C. Rainbow obsidian heart (width - 9 cm) from Mexico. Talisman Trading. (© photo by Jeffrey A. Scovil)

D. Obsidian hippopotamus (length - ca. 9 cm). Carving from brecciated obsidian by Gerd Dreher. Silverhorn. (© photo by Jeffrey A. Scovil)

E. Gold-sheen obsidian (height - 8 cm) from Mexico. Carving appears black when viewed from some directions. Rick Dietrich collection. (© photo by Dick Dietrich)

DESCRIPTION: Obsidian is natural glass formed by quenching (i.e., rapidly cooling) magma of granitic/rhyolitic or similar composition.
Colors - commonly dark gray to nearly black, less commonly bluish gray or reddish brown and rarely with streaks of pastel hues that are pinkish, yellowish, greenish, purple, brown, etc.; some is iridescent, most commonly exhibiting silver or golden tones; some is mottled or roughly banded, the latter apparently representing flow patterns.
H. ~ 5-5½
S.G. 2.3-2.6
Light transmission - most is transparent to subtranslucent in thin slivers; some reddish brown obsidian and a dark green glass, most of which is sideromelane rather than obsidian (see REMARKS) is virtually opaque
Luster - vitreous or subvitreous
Breakage - conchoidal fracture is typical
Miscellany - some obsidian appears to be chatoyant, iridescent, or aventurescent because of the presence of minute inclusions of minerals -- e.g., hematite and/or ilmenite --and/orbubbles that are relatively abundant in some lamellae and less so or virtually lacking in intervening lamellae. Streak -- i.e., powder -- of virtually all obsidians, even those that re nearly black, appears white.

OTHER NAMES:A few obsidian bodies have extents that have led to their being named according to the scheme used for stratigraphic units (see Appendix B, Glossary). Three examples are the East Lake Obsidian of Obsidian cliff, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; the Mono Craters Obsidian of the Sierra Nevada of California; and the Newberry Obsidian of Oregon. Additional names, many of which have been given in the markeplace, follow:

• Agata Negra (black agate) - misnomer sometimes used in the marketplace.
• Apache tears - dark gray to nearly black, pebble-sized glass nodules, most of which have greatest dimensions ranging between two and four centimeters, that occur as remnants within or weathered out of light gray perlite. (Perlite, apparently derived from obsidian as the result of hydration involving meteoric water, is a light gray rock made up of concentrically fractured fragments.) Many apache tears in the marketplace are from Maricopa and Pinal counties, Arizona.
• Banded obsidian - the banding commonly exhibits a flowlike appearance; some roughly banded obsidian has been incorrectly designated onyx obsidian.
  
• Black lava glass - descriptive name given to some obsidian.
• Colombianite (americanite) - a variety of obsidian from the vicinity of Cali, Colombia.
• Chatoyant obsidian - name sometimes applied to varieties that are iridescent in diverse colors; appearance is apparently due to the presence of minute inclusions and/or bubbles.
• Desert glass - name sometimes applied a pale yellow glass that some people have identified as obsidian but seems more likely to be an impactite glass-- e.g., that from Libya. This term is further confounded because it also has been applied to the amethyst-colored man-made glass frequently found in sandy areas, such as deserts and on beaches, with its purple color apparently developed as a result of exposure of essentially colorless glass to ultraviolet or cosmic rays from the sun. See TECTITE entry.
  
• Electric blue obsidian - obsidian with a vibrant blue color.
• Fire obsidian - iridescent obsidian from Glass Buttes, Oregon; 'fire' is said to be due to reflection of light off thin layers the refractive indices of which are higher than the rest of the obsidian because of their containing extremely small (nanometric) magnetite crystals (Rossman and Miller, 2007).
  
• Flame obsidian - another name of fire obsidian: (also called 'mar-chett' according to Emory Coons, (p.c., 2008), who also notes that the one from Glass Buttes apparently owes its appearance to 'a paper thin opake (sic) line of red mostly[,] sometimes yellow or greenish or mixe of the varying color [and] it is very rare to have what is called fire on it.')
• Flowering obsidian - similar to snowflake obsidian.
• Glass (or glassy) lava - overall term that has been used, especially in the field.
• Glass agate - atrocious misnomer sometimes given obsidian.
• Golden sheen obsidian (also gold or golden obsidian) - name widely given in the marketplace to sheen obsidian (q.v.) with the precominant 'sheen' a golden brown color (see Fig. E).
  
• Iceland agate (or Iceland agate lava) - misnomer sometimes given to a brownish or grayish variety of obsidian from Iceland.
• Iris obsidian - another name for rainbow obsidian.
• Itatli - obsidian (Aztec).
• Iztli - obsidian (Aztec).
• Lassenite - glass of trachytic composition (trachyte is the aphanitic equivalent of syenite, which is composed of 90 or more percent of alkali feldspar) from the vicinity of Lassen Peak, California.
• Libyan glass - see Desert glass.
• Mahogany obsidian (also Mountain mahogany) - reddish subtranslucent obsidian, commonly including black or gray bandlike or streaked swirl-like patterns. See Fig. A.
  
• Marekanite - name for Apache tearlike masses OR, according to some ambiguous statements, a mottled brown and black obsidian from the vicinity of the Marekanka River, which flows into the Sea of Okhotsk, off eastern Siberia.
• Marskanite - name applied variously -- e.g., to mottled brown and black obsidian from Siberia; to any cloudy, smoky gray obsidian; and to brown and gray, commonly in part yellowish or reddish, obsidian (especially those from Mexico).
• Mexican 'Mayan' - see Rainbow obsidian.
• Mount Saint Helens emerald - a misleading misnomer given obsidian (and even more often to a green glass produced by melting ash erupted by Mount St. Helens.
  
• Montana jet - a misleading misnomer given some black obsidian from the Yellowstone National Park area, Wyoming.
• Mountain mahogany - See Mahogany obsidian.
  
• Nevada diamond - term that has been applied, albeit rarely, to what is said to be artificially decolorized obsidian.
• Obsidian 'cat's-eye' (or 'cat's eye obsidian) - name sometimes given to obsidian that has a golden chatoyant-like appearance; see Golden sheen obsidian.
• Obsidianite - name introduced by Walcott (1898) for what are now known to be tektites (australites) from Australia; however, according to Bates and Jackson (1987) this term came to have wider usage, and 'Most stones originally described as 'obsidianite' were later shown to be true obsidian and not tektites.' [To date, however, I have not found examples to document this purported later, wider usage.]
• Onyx obsidian - term sometimes applied to banded obsidian.
• Peanut obsidian - a gray to greenish gray perlite that contains red or brownish red stellate spherulites, which consist of radiating fibers of hematite-stained feldspar within shells of chalcedony; the overall appearance -- both color- and size-wise -- roughly resembles a mass of peanuts. A noteworthy occurrence is near Alamos, State of Sonora, Mexico.
• Pearlylite - name sometimes given in the marketplace to obsidian in jewelry.
• Pitchstone - obsidian that has a pitchlike luster. This rock apprently represents an intermediate phase in devitrification of the precursor obsidian per se; among other things, it contains more water and is less brittle than typical obsidians.
• Plum obsidian - obsidian with a plum (purplish) color.
• Pumpkin obsidian - obsidian with a pumpkin-orange color.
  
• Porphyritic obsidian - obsidian containing sporadic phenocrysts.
• Rainbow obsidian (also rainbow sheen obsidian and iris obsidian) - obsidian that exhibits a multicolored iridescence, apparently because of the presence of inclusions -- e.g., that from Glass Buttes, Lake County, Oregon and that, called Mexican 'Mayan' from the state of Jalisco, Mexico (see Koivula, Kammerling and Fritsch, 1993). See Fig. C.
  
• Royal agate - misnomer sometimes applied to mottled obsidian.
  
• Rhyolite glass - name apparently given by someone who knew that most obsidian is chemically like rhyolite but did not know that rhyolite is an aphanitic rock consisting only in part of glass.
• Royal blue obsidian - a bluish obsidian from northeastern California.
• Schiller obsidian - obsidian exhibiting a schiller effect.
• Sheen obsidian - obsidian that exhibits a sheen when rotated in reflected light; many marketers distinguish diverse 'sheen obsidians' by directing attention to the color of their sheen -- e.g., golden .. , silver .., and even rainbow sheen obsidian.
• Snowflake obsidian (also spherulitic obsidian and flowering obsidian) - dark gray to nearly black obsidian with inclusions of white, gray or rarely red spherulites, which in many specimens have been identified as cristobalite (a high-temperature polymorph of silica). Fine examples of this obsidian occur near Milford, Beaver County, Utah. See Fig. B.
  
• 'Star' obsidian (also 'starred Apache tear obsidian') - misnomer -- in that no asterism is apparent -- applied in the marketplace to gemstones cut from aventurescent (hematite- and ilmenite-bearing) obsidian, most of which occur as Apache tears (see Koivula & Tannous, 2003).
• Velvet obsidian - obsidian with a velvetlike appeareance.
  
• Volcanic glass - geological designation sometimes applied to obsidian used as a gemrock.
• Xaga - name used for obsidian by some native Americans from California. The Pomo Indians are said to have distinguished between hard obsidian, which they called dupa xaga and used for razors etc. and less hard obsidian, which they called bati xaga.

USES: Obsidian is frequently carved for jewelry -- especially earrings, bracelets and pendants -- and into diverse ornaments, such as busts and animals, made especially for the souvenir trade, and rod and needlelike pieces of obsidian have been incorporated into wind chimes. Especially in ancient times, because it breaks to give sharp edges, obsidian was sought and used for cutting tools, weapons and ceremonial points such as spearheads; indeed, even today replica arrow heads are made from obsidian for use as pendants or incorporation in decorative items, including jewelry. In addition, obsidian has been carved into diverse vessels such as chalices and vases, and incorporated into statues (etc.) as pupils of eyes (Weiner, 1983), and Pough (ms) reports that 'in Mexico, Eduardo Obe's, of Morellos creates giant sculptures for art galleries and tequila cups [from obsidian] for his opening night patrons.' A rather ancient 'tangential' use, which relates to visual 'art,' seems to warrant inclusion here: 'Obsidian flakes with retouched points were used as tattooing tools [ that were involved in social, ritual and/or medical practices ~] 3000 BP at the Nanggu [archaeological] site [in the Solomon Islands]' (Choi, 2016; Kononenko, Torrence & Sheppard, 2916).

NOTEWORTHY LOCALITIES: Parts of Italy; the Caucasus Mountains of the former U.S.S.R; and areas in Mesoamerica -- e.g.,the vicinity of Real Del Monte, State of Hidalgo, Mexico (especially for sheen obsidian) -- have been major sources. Also, several localities in the western United States are well-known for one or another kind of obsidian that has been used as a gemrock -- e.g., Mariposa and Pinal counties, Arizona; Glass Mountain, south of Lava Beds National Monument, Siskiyou County and near Davis Creek in adjacent Modoc County, northern California (especially for rainbow obsidian, but also for other varieties -- see Mitchell, 1987); near Milford, Beaver County Utah (especially for rainbow obsidian, but also for several other varieties, especially Apache tears); Glass Buttes, in northeastern Lake County, Oregon (photographs of fire, gold sheen, mahogany and rainbow obsidian from this locality are given in Pough, 1996); Millard County, Utah (especially snowflake obsidian); and Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. See also Weiner (1983).

Mexican Obsidian Spear Point

Yosemite app store download. REMARKS:The term obsidian is said to have resulted from a printer's error involving the Latin word Obsianus, which was meant to allude to Obsius, who, according to Pliny, the Elder (Book xxxvi), discovered this rock in Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia).

Obsidian is said to have been artificially decolorized -- see Nevada diamond under OTHER NAMES subheading. Obsidian that exhibits flow lines has been cut into thin slices and cemented on to, for example, synthetic spinel, to made doublets with the flow lines of the slices oriented in selected directions. Some rainbow obsidian has been fashioned for pendants so it exhibits heart-shaped reflections; these pieces are produced by cutting a groove from near the edge to about the center on the flat side of a suitably shaped piece such as a relatively thick cabochon.

Obsidian has been used as mirrors, for example, in telescopes. However, as noted by Pliny the Elder (ibid.), these so-called mirrors reflect silhouettes (umbras) rather than images like those seen in what most people call mirrors. Pliny also reports that Caesar Augustus was the emperor who so-to-speak commissioned carving of the obsidian elephants in the Temple of Concord.

The designation Apache tears is apparently based on American Indian lore: These masses were said to have formed when Apache warriors leaped from a cliff to their death rather than being captured by an enemy. Frederick Pough (ms) notes that 'In Superior, Arizona, a cut along a cliff reveals thousands of staring black 'eyes' [the Apache tears], peeping out from gray flaky lids .. [And, he also notes that being] full of water, [these] marble-size nodules swell to baseball dimensions on being heated with this behavior giving expanded perlite,[which has] a role in building insulation.' -- i.e., perlite is used as a light weight aggregate in such things as sound-absorbing tiles.

The Aztec term iztli was so-to-speak surnamed teotetl, which has been translated as divine stone, apparently in reference to its many uses -- Aztecs fashioned both tools and items for adornment from obsidian. An especially noteworthy piece is the famous 'monkey bowl,' said to have been used in rituals involving human sacrifice, at one time exhibited in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, Mexico.

Items fashioned from basaltic composition glass, properly called sideromelane or tachylyte, are frequently called obsidian, especially in the marketplace. Petrologically, different origins of their parent magmas and their different compositions distinguish basaltic glasses from obsidians. So far as uses of basaltic glass as a gemrock, pieces made from them are extremely rare as compared to those made of obsidian. Two things, in particular, appear to be responsible for this difference: A.basaltic glasses are uncommon whereas obsidian is relatively common; and B.baslatic glasses, unlike obsidians, tend to dissolve readily in acids. Webster (1994, p.290), however, does record cabochons fashioned from different colored basaltic glasses from the vicinity of Flinders River, northern Queensland, Australia.

SIMULANTS:

Green Obsidian From Mexico

***Emerald obsidianite (also called Mount St. Helens obsidian) - a man-made glass that has been made to be sold as a souvenirs of the May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Winrar mac online. Helens, Washington. - [Appearance suffices.].

Glass portions of impactites -- [for pieces in, for example, small carvings, some of these could be distinguished on the basis of chemical analyses or even microscopic means; others might be nearly impossible to distinguish from obsidian unless their occurrence is known].

***Glassy slag - [for some -- determination of total composition is necessary, and this requires use of relatively sophisticated equipment].

***Helenite - glass said to have been produced by melting volcanic ash and/or dust erupted by Mount St. Helens, Oregon in 1980, that has been molded into, for example, subspherical and egg-shaped masses and sold for use as paper weights and curios. The purported origin of the material used to make at least some of these glass pieces has, however, been questioned by Nassau (1986). [For all of these I have seen appearance suffices. By the way, Nassau's conclusions about the origin of the precursor material for this simulant are based on chemical analyses.].

***Man-made glasses of diverse compositions, including glassy slags from some smelters. Some bluish slags resemble hyalite opal -- e.g., some of those from the old iron furnace in the area now set aside as part of the Layette State Park, on Big Bay de Noc, Delta County, Michigan, where they occur as cobbles and pebbles on Slag Beach (I collected some of these for a lapidary friend in the early 1970s.). Several years later, I read that an apparently similar slag from Sweden is being fashioned into, for example, attractive cabochons (Johnson and Koivula, 1999) - [Some, but not all, of these are not distinguishable as manufactured without laboratory investigation.] Along this line, most of the glass usually referred to as 'Beach Glass' is Man-made glass. In any case, the North American Sea Glass Association has recently held a annual contest that makes awards for to collectors for some of the diversely colored pieces of glass that have been given their current characteristics -- e.g., smooth edges -- as a result of erosion they have undergone within oceans, the Great Lakes, etc. .

Tektites -- [same remarks as those given for 'Glass portions of impactdites]. See TEKTITE entry.

Note: This listing raises another topic of at least tangential interest: A number of green gemstones, many of which have been faceted, have been marketed as green obsidian. Johnson, Reinitz and Owens (in Moses, Reinitz and McClure, 1998), however, report that 'We cannot recall seeing an example of transparent 'green obsidian' that has ever been proved to be a natural obsidian.'

REFERENCES: Montgomery, 1981; Pough, ms in preparation, 1997; VanLandingham, 1962, pt.2; Weiner, 1983.

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