Amulet Atlas

materialsJet

said jet

also: azabache · gagate · oltu stone · Whitby jet · lignite

materialBritain and IrelandIberiaWestern EuropeAnatoliaNorth AmericaUnited KingdomSpainFranceTurkeyUnited States of AmericaGermany

Fossil wood. Jet is lignite, the lowest rank of coal, formed from wood under pressure — commonly from trees of the family Araucariaceae — and it is a mineraloid, not a mineral. It is soft, 2.5 to 4 on the Mohs scale, cuts easily but chips at fine detail, takes a high polish, and burns like coal with a coal smell. Rubbed, it can pick up a charge the way amber does. Held, it is not cold: black glass is, and that is the oldest test for telling them apart.

cited

French jaiet, modern jais, ultimately from the ancient town of Gagae
The adjective jet-black comes from the material. Spanish azabache is the same substance, and gives its name to the Puerto Rican child's bracelet. cited

When

c. 10,000 BCE to now still carried cited

PeriodUpper Palaeolithic to the present
How the date is knownexcavated — dug up in a dated context
NoteDated from the botfly larva model of about 10,000 BCE from Baden-Wurttemberg. Its documented use as a protective material is much later: the Roman period in Britain, from the early third century CE.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The story

The earliest worked jet anybody has is a model of a botfly larva from about 10,000 BCE, found in Baden-Wurttemberg among the Venuses of Petersfels. Britain has used it since the Neolithic, through the Bronze Age for necklace beads, then not at all through the Iron Age, until it came back in Roman Britain in the early third century CE. Whitby jet was collected by beachcombing and worked at Eboracum, modern York, into rings, hair pins, beads, bracelets, bangles, necklaces and pendants. Jet pendants were cut cameo-style, and the Medusa head was a favourite subject — a gorgon face carved from fossil wood, aimed at whoever looked at the wearer.

The Roman period is where jet is named as a magical material outright, used in amulets and pendants for its supposed protective qualities and its ability to deflect the gaze of the evil eye. Pliny the Elder gives the claims: "the kindling of jet drives off snakes and relieves suffocation of the uterus. Its fumes detect attempts to simulate a disabling illness or a state of virginity." Solinus and Galen refer to it too.

Then it becomes a pilgrim's stone. At the end of the Middle Ages the trade in religious objects and jet amulets reached great development at Santiago de Compostela, sold to pilgrims walking the Camino; the workshops were at Santiago, the deposits up the coast in Asturias, where beads and rosary beads were also cut. Near Erzurum in Turkey the same material is oltu stone and is made into prayer beads. In New Mexico, Navajo and Pueblo people were using regionally mined jet for jewellery and to ornament weapons when Spanish explorers reached the area in the 1500s.

Victorian Britain turned it into mourning. Queen Victoria wore a jet necklace as part of mourning dress in the 1850s and again for Prince Albert, and the trade followed her. Use peaked in the early 1870s; Whitby went from more than a thousand workers in the trade to three hundred by 1884, as Art Nouveau turned away from black jewellery; by the end of the Second World War three jewellers were left, and the industry ended with them.

cited

Now

Jet jewellery came back into fashion in the 1980s and new jewellers took up production. The Puerto Rican azabache bracelet is the material's busiest survival as a charm: it carries a black or red coral amulet in the shape of a fist with the index-finger knuckle protruding, and it is the commonest protection put on an infant there. Imitations are old and numerous — glass sold as French jet or Vauxhall glass, ebonite that fades, anthracite, offcuts bound with glue and moulded, and museum reproductions in epoxy resin.

cited

What this is near

carried-byAzabachethe bracelet named after this material in Spanish, and the commonest thing put on an infant in Puerto Ricocarried-byFigathe fist with the knuckle out, cut in jet where the bracelet is black rather than redmotifGorgoneionthe Medusa head Roman Britain liked to cut into jet cameos, aimed at whoever lookedcarried-byHamsamost commonly carved in jet or formed in silver, per the same sourcesparallelAmberthe other fossil that takes a charge when rubbed; what dealers call black amber is thisparallelRed coralthe red half of the azabache bracelet, where jet is the black halfcontrastGlasssold as French jet in imitation of it, and told apart because glass is cold to the touch and jet is notstoryThe fake marketthe long read on imitation, which this material has supported since the nineteenth centurytraditionCatholic sacramentalsthe tradition that bought jet by the shipload at Santiago de Compostela

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

materialAzabachethe material the amulet is named after — azabache is simply the Spanish for itmaterialFigathe Asturian material, and the one that carries the child's versionmaterialHamsathe black stone it was historically carved from, and the same stone Spain cuts a fist out ofmaterialThe fig fistthe black stone Asturias cuts it from, and the reason so many survivecontrastAmberthe other fossil that holds a charge when rubbed; what the trade sells as black amber is jetparallelRed coralcoral's black opposite in the same bracelet: one red, one black, both on the same infantkinTurquoiseone of the materials inlaid beside it in Aztec mosaic masks

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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