History

Neolithic Beads from Africa

A recent discovery in a stone age cave overlooking the Indian Ocean in South Africa has given us the earliest known evidence of beads, dating back 75,000 years. They are made from tiny shells & have holes bored in them showing signs of wear indicating that they were strung together. Beads have probably been made & used by every culture in the world since then.

Modern Westerners tend to think of beads as adornment, but for centuries beads have served as more than just jewellery. They have expressed social circumstances, political history & religious beliefs.

Beads have frequently symbolised sacred knowledge, been deemed to have curative powers, served as a fee for passage to the afterlife & been used as prompts to ensure the proper conduct of ritual & prayer. Beads have been the medium of exchange in barter & as money themselves. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, Europeans  exchanged glass beads for beaver pelts in North America, for spices in Indonesia & for gold, ivory & slaves in Africa. So often beads mirror the culture of which they are a part, so much so that they tell us a great deal about the social, political, economic & religious lives of the people that have made & worn them. Over the centuries, cultures have expressed their own decorative styles in locally made beads, using  local raw materials. Throughout history, beads have frequently been one of the first items produced by societies experimenting with new technologies. This has remained so to the present day giving us a vast range of wonderful beads from which to choose to use in whatever way our inspiration leads us.