The report is finally out on a groundbreaking discovery that some are calling the most important excavation in the Mariana Islands. "14 years ago our company did an excavation in Saipan and at a very old site, and we found hundreds of little cone shell beads and cone shell bracelets, but we didn't find any human remains there so we couldn't exactly line up those ornaments with the people," explained Judith Amesbury.

Fast forward to 2006 and a milestone excavation began at Naton Beach at the northern end of Tumon Bay, which helped archaeologists like Amesbury uncover the significance of jewelry in Chamorro history. "That excavation is particularly important, in fact I would say it's the most important excavation ever done in the Mariana Islands because we saw so many pre-latte people there," she stated.

The site uncovered more than 150 burials from the Pre-Latte Period, something scientists had never seen in the past. Amesbury said, "Those early burials go back 2,500 years, they date to about 500 B.C."

After studying artifacts from the Naton site for the past several years Amesbury discussed her findings during a talk entitled "Who Wears the Beads" given to the Rotary Club of Tumon Bay on Tuesday afternoon. "The answer is it's mainly the Pre-Latte women; they had hundreds and hundreds of ornaments, mostly cone shell beads, but also other kinds of beads," she said.

These beads were made from everything including shells, clams, and even shark teeth. "A very interesting thing is there's three people that have these beautiful pearl oyster shells. One man and two women have these two oyster shells and they have them in the same place on their body, they're always around their left shoulder, sort of over their heart," she said.

But what do these ornaments mean? "Obviously, it means something like wealth or status or respect. You know, those people must have been highly-respected people," she said.

Amesbury said although the excavation took place in 2006,the monumental three volume report is only now coming out, and will be available online later this year. She said this is one of the most interesting finds in her roughly three decades of archaeological experience in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. "I'm especially happy that I lived here long enough to see that Naton Beach excavation because it's really an eye opener, it really gave us a lot of new information," she said.