A holistic provenance and microwear study of pre-colonial jade objects from the Virgin Islands: Unravelling mobility networks in the wider Caribbean

•Novel application of a minimally invasive portable laser ablation sampling device with subsequent low-blank geochemical analyses.•A trace element and multi-isotopic analysis of pre-colonial jade artefacts recovered from the Virgin Islands.•Typo-technological and microwear study of jade artefacts from Ceramic Age settlements on St. Croix.•Predictive modelling of artefact provenance based on trace elements by applying a binary logistic regression method.•Artefacts from Ceramic Age sites on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John include Guatemalan, Cuban and Dominican material.•Evidence of large scale (>3000 km) pre-colonial mobility networks in the Greater Caribbean.