History Ancient Beads From 30,000BC Lavish Pix Magic Asia Rome Egypt Mesopotamia

The History Of Beads From 30,000 BC To The Present by Lois Sherr Dubin.

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DESCRIPTION: Hardcover: 364 pages. Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1987). Dimensions: 12 x 9½ x 1¼ inches, 5½ pounds. Beads have been used throughout the ages and in virtually every culture, not simply as adornment but to express social circumstances, political occurrences, and religious beliefs; as a form of currency; or as symbolic embodiments of curative powers. And they're colorful, made of various interesting materials, and can be combined in endless configurations. With more than 100 crisp color photos and intelligently written text that reaps the benefits of the author's 30 years of research, The History of Beads documents bead styles and uses in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Far East. Ranging from prehistoric times to the 20th century, this book stops along the way to consider the magic eye bead, prayer beads, and beads with other special attributes. An eight-page color gatefold section offers a fascinating timeline of the bead's history at a glance. Bead devotees can satisfy their curiosity about their medium of choice and draw inspiration for their own creations from the beautiful photos of necklaces, collars, bags, headdresses, and other beaded ornaments.

CONDITION: NEW. NEW MASSIVE five pound hardcover with dustjacket. Harry N. Abrams (1987) 364 pages. Unblemished and pristine in every respect save for extremely faint shelfwear to dustjacket and covers. Pages are clean, crisp, unmarked, unmutilated, tightly bound, unambiguously unread. Except for the extremely faint shelfwear mentioned above (almost imperceptible, we're really nitpicking) the blue full cloth covers are otherwise without blemish. Likewise the extra heavy white dustjacket is without blemish except for the extremely faint shelfwear mentioned, i.e., if you scrutinize the dustjacket very closely, you can detect very faint crinkling to the dustjacket spine head, heel, and the four open dustjacket corners (or "tips"), top, bottom, front and back. Just normal shelfwear, particularly for such a large, heavy book. You need to scrutinize the dustjacket and covers very intently to discern this faint shelfwear. The overall condition of the book is entirely consistent with new stock from a bookstore environment (such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, or B. Dalton for example) wherein new books might show faint signs of shelfwear, consequence of simply being shelved and re-shelved. Satisfaction unconditionally guaranteed. In stock, ready to ship. No disappointments, no excuses. PROMPT SHIPPING! HEAVILY PADDED, DAMAGE-FREE PACKAGING! Meticulous and accurate descriptions! Selling rare and out-of-print ancient history books on-line since 1997. We accept returns for any reason within 30 days! #138.2j.

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PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW.

PUBLISHER REVIEW:

REVIEW: Beads have played an important role in every major civilization and have traveled widely as valuable and easily portable objects of adornment. This comprehensive and visually stimulating history focuses on the bead in its cultural context as personal decoration, currency, status symbol, magical charm, and form of cultural communication. Complementing the well-documented text are full-page color photographs of beads from museums and private collections; maps showing bead-making centers and distribution routes; and a fold-out chart of every major bead type (over 1230) from the dawn of history to the present.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS:

REVIEW: This remarkable book was the first comprehensive history of beads ever published. It includes several thousand examples of beads, beaded jewelry, and beadwork representing 30,000 years of history and drawn from every major culture and region of the world. For thousands of years, beads have played an important role throughout the world, from Japan to Cameroon. This highly unusual and innovative volume surveys the fascinating story of their evolution: beads have been used as a medium of trade, as talismans, as personal adornment, as status symbols, and as religious artifacts. They are capsules of cultural, historical, and technological information. This ambitious survey of beads and their unique contribution to history features more than 100 illustrations, most in full color, a spectacular illustrated time line of bead history, detailed maps, a chart of bead shapes, and a highly readable text by Lois Sherr Dubin.

READER REVIEWS:

REVIEW: I first met this breathtakingly beautiful book several years ago while working at a bead store. It was an absolute treasure trove of information while I was studying the history of beads and beadwork. This huge tome is a labor of love, and is one of the best books available to learn why every culture devised by man has valued these little objects with holes in them. There are plenty of photos, and the book follows the parallel paths of humans and beads throughout history. The photos of historical and cultural projects are a wonderful source of inspiration and knowledge. The pull-out chart of the bead time line is beautiful and very informative. It can be startling and amusing to discover that what we consider to be new and exciting has been done many times in the past by people in cultures everywhere. I personally found it fascinating to discover that one of the first things that humans do when we discover a new material is to punch a hole in it and wear it as a bead.

REVIEW: Lois Sherr Dubin's 32,000 year history of beads book appeals to both lay person and scholar. Gorgeous color photos and striking black and white photos enhance the reader's imaging delight. The author's all-encompassing focus on the multi-faceted technological achievements of the human imagination in creating beads throughout the millennia is both astounding and inspiring. In addition, the comprehensive time line, table, notes, bibliography, and index make this an invaluable research tool as well as an illuminating work of art. This book carefully traces the travels and roles of beads throughout human history. It is organized mainly by geography, but it also has chapters on special bead types (amber, pearls, eye beads and prayer beads). The photos of historic beads and jewelry are worth the price of admission all by themselves, and can be very inspiring for creative folks. It is also an eye-opening history: I was a history major in college, and I learned A LOT from this book. If you create with beads, Dubin's book will show you what the human race has done before you. If you collect beads, you will learn much about the people and places your prizes may have passed through on the way to your hands. I cannot recommend this book more highly.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

History of Beads:  Beads have been used as body adornments since before 30,000 B.C., even by Neanderthal Man. Made of various materials such as bone, stone, pearls, amber, and as civilization advanced, primitive ceramics (such as the faience beads manufactured by the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Phoenicians). Probably the most famous ancient beads were those produced by the ancient Phoenicians in the second and first millennia B.C. and traded throughout the Mediterranean. This trade certainly extended to North Africa, and according to some evidence, perhaps even as far as the East Coast of Africa around the cape.

African Trade Beads were typically produced in Europe (especially Venice, Amsterdam, and Bohemia) and India and transported to West Africa. Conclusive evidence has such beads being brought to Africa by Arab traders overland from North Africa. They were eventually brought to Africa by European traders in their sailing ships from the 16th century onward. They were used by the Europeans as currency to purchase from the Africans gold, ivory and palm oil on the triangular trading routes from Europe, to West Africa, and then onto the West Indies (and eventually the "New World" including the American Colonies) to return with produce from the plantations. [Ancient Gifts]. The World’s Oldest Beads: Beads are known to be one of the earliest forms of trade between the human race. It is thought that is because of bead trading that humans developed language. Beads are said to have been used and traded for most of our history. Amongst he oldest beads found to date were at Ksar Akil, in Lebanon. Artifacts recovered from the site include pierced shells that suggest these have been used as pendants or beads. This indicates that the inhabitants were among the first in Western Eurasia to use personal ornaments. Results from radiocarbon dating indicate that the early humans may have lived at the site approximately 45,000 years ago or earlier.

The beads found in the Blombos Cave (South Africa) are about 72,000 years old. More than 70 marine shell beads of the sea snail species Nassarius kraussianus have been found in the Blombos Cave. It appears that the marine shells were deliberately pierced through the aperture, probably with a bone tool, thus creating of a small-sized perforation. Contextual information, morphometric, technological and use-wear analysis of the Blombos Cave beads, alongside experimental reproduction of wear patterns, show that the Nassarius kraussianus shells were strung, perhaps on cord or sinew and worn as a personal ornament.

A cluster of 24 perforated Nassarius kraussianus strengthens this interpretation, as it appears that these shells originated from a single beadwork. Beside the deliberate perforation of the Nassarius shells, repeated rubbing of the beads against one another and against the cord, have resulted in discrete use wear facets on each bead that are not observed on these shells in their natural environment. These use-wear patterns are the principal factor that defines the shells as beads. Also, the consistency in shell size and color indicates that the Nassarius shells were carefully selected. Ochre has been detected inside some of the shell beads, implicating that they were subject to deliberate or indirect use of ochre as a coloring agent. [Wikipedia].

Siberian Paleolithic Jewelry: Still Eye-catching After 50,000 Years. Beads made from ostrich eggs buried in a Siberian cave around 2,000 generations ago reveal amazing artistic (and drilling) skills of our long-ago ancestors. A fascinating collection of jewelry made of ostrich eggshells is being assembled by archaeologists working in the world famous Denisova cave in Altai region. Ostriches in Siberia? 50,000 years ago? Yes, it seems so. Or, at least, their eggshells made it here somehow.

In a month that has seen disclosures of the fossil of a tropical parrot in Siberia from at least five million years ago in the Miocene era, this elegant Paleolithic chic shows that our deep history (some 2,000 generations ago, give or take) contains many unexpected surprises. The collection of beads in the Denisova cave are perfectly drilled, and archaeologists say they have now found one more close by, with full details to be revealed soon in a scientific journal.

The archaeologists claim to have no doubt that the beads are between 45,000 and 50,000 years old, placing them in the Upper Paleolithic era, making them older than strikingly similar finds 11,500 kilometers away in South Africa. Maksim Kozlikin, researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Novosibirsk, said of the Siberian ostrich egg beads: "This is no ordinary find. Our team got quite excited when we found the bead. This is an amazing piece of work. The ostrich egg shell is quite robust material, but the holes in the beads must have been made with a fine stone drill."

"For that period of time, we consider this to be an exquisite jewelry work of a very talented artist." The skills and techniques used some 45,000 to 50,000 years ago are remarkable and more akin to the Neolithic era, dozens of millennia later. He believes the beads may have been sewn into clothing - or formed part of a bracelet or necklace. The latest discovery "is one centimeter in diameter, with a hole inside that is slightly wider than a millimeter," he said. Yet he admits: "As of now, there is much more that we do not know about these beads than we do know. For example, we do not know where the beads were made." "One explanation is that the egg shells could have been exported from Trans-Baikal or Mongolia with the beads manufactured here. Another possibility is that the beads were purchased elsewhere and delivered to the Altai Mountains perhaps in an exchange. Whichever way we look at it, it shows that the people populating the Denisova Cave at the time were advanced in technologies and had very well-established contacts with the outside world."

Today ostriches are an exotic import into a couple of areas in Siberia, but were they endemic 50,000 years ago, or were they brought from afar? Kozlikin acknowledged there are far more questions than answers. "'We don't know if they decorated elements of men, or women, or children or their clothing with these beads", he said. "We do not know where the beads were sewn on the clothing, if they were. Did they only decorate wealthy members of society? Were they a sign of a special religious status, or did they signify that the person had more authority than the others?" "How did the beads, or the material for them get to Siberia? How much did they cost? What we do know for sure is that the beads were found in the Denisova Cave's 'lucky' eleventh layer, the same one where we found the world's oldest bracelet made from rare dark green stone. All finds from that layer have been dated as being 45,000 to 50,000 years old. We had three other beads found in 2005, 2006 and 2008. All the beads were discovered lying within six meters in the excavation in the eastern gallery of the cave."

"We cannot say if they all belonged to one person, but visually these beads look identical. Yet they also appear similar to ostrich egg beads found in an area called Border Cave in South Africa that have been dated up to 44,000 years old. The site is in the foothills of the Lebombo Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal." Dr. Lucinda Backwell, senior researcher in the palaeo-anthropology department at Wits University, has previously highlighted how this African proto-civilization "adorned themselves with ostrich egg and marine shell beads"'.

The Siberian beads is the latest discovery from the Denisova Cave which is possibly the finest natural repository of sequential early human history so far discovered anywhere on the planet. The cave was occupied by Homo sapiens along with now extinct early humans - Neanderthals and Denisovans - for at least 288,000 years, and excavations have been underway here for three decades, with the prospect of many exciting finds to come in future. In August, we revealed the discovery of the world's oldest needle in the cave - still usable after 50,000 years.

Crafted from the bone of an ancient bird, it was made not by Homo sapiens or even Neanderthals, but by Denisovans. Professor Mikhail Shunkov, head of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, said: "It is the most unique find of this season, which can even be called sensational. It is a needle made of bone. 'As of today it is the most ancient needle in the word. It is about 50,000 years old." [AncientOrigins.net]

Ancient Egyptian Beads: The desire for personal adornment, especially in the form of beads, has been with us for a very long time--as far back as the Neanderthal era, some 75,000 years ago or perhaps even more. Like many before them, the Predynastic (circa 3600 BC) inhabitants of Hierakonpolis gave into this primeval urge, but seemingly not as freely as those living at other sites of this time.

Beads are not especially prevalent, except in the graves of the elite where the selection is choice, but limited in quantity. Then as now, beads were valuable and this lack probably has more to do with theft and plunder over the millennia than with any disaffection for such finery. In fact, bead making appears to have been a significant industry at Hierakonpolis--far more plentiful than the beads themselves are the tools used to make them...or at least this is what we think they are.

Distinctive little flint borers, called microdrills, averaging only 2 cm in length, have been recovered in great numbers at Hierakonpolis in conjunction with evidence to deduce their use. In 1899, the British archaeologist, F.W. Green, discovered two caches which he described as containing "an enormous number of exceedingly small pointed flint implements" (i.e., microdrills) along with many broken carnelian pebbles, some chipped into the form of rough beads, some showing the signs of the beginning of the boring operation, as well as chips of amethyst, steatite, rock crystal, obsidian and ostrich egg shell.

These objects had been stowed in cavities, rather like little lockers, hollowed out at the base of the outer wall surrounding the temple precinct in which the famous Narmer palette had been found just the year before. Green attributed them to the Old Kingdom, but they may be older. Selected items from one cache were taken back to England and now reside in the Petrie Museum of Archaeology at University College London and include 464 microdrills, and several unfinished beads. The whereabouts of the second cache remained a mystery until 1996, when we rediscovered it carefully re-cached in a small pit in the ground just outside of the New Kingdom rock cut tomb that the British team in 1898-99 called home.

Apparently with so many wonderful finds, some things had to be left behind and when the packing crates were full, the residue was buried on the spot. Whether this cache and the other abandoned objects were originally meant to be retrieved later is unknown, but it took almost 100 years before they finally were. This cache not only contained a large number of microdrills, but also the cores and numerous blades from which they were made, a substantial quantity of broken carnelian pebbles, and even a handy little hammer stone. The complete kit...or so it seemed.

More of these little drills were found in 1985-86 during excavations at a ceremonial center where they were the most prevalent tool at the site and were especially numerous in the deposits covering the east half of the oval floor. During preliminary analysis of less than half of the assemblage 553 of them were counted, making up 35% of all identifiable tools recovered. Their presence at this site suggests that workshops with craftsmen specializing in the creation of various high status items were attached to the sacred precinct, functioning like the temple workshops known later in Egypt to supply the gods and their representatives.

As we are currently involved in the detailed analysis of the lithic material from the ceremonial center, we naturally became interested in how these tools actually worked. Despite the evidence of the associated raw materials, few are willing to commit on the function of the microdrill. Green would only say that they were evidently for boring beads of carnelian and the like, but just how this was accomplished was not evident. More recently, Denys Stocks, in his fascinating study of ancient Egyptian stone-working technology was equally cautious and queried the true function of microdrills pending microscopic examination for wear patterns.

While not really questioning the efficacy of flint, Stocks has instead been investigating bead-making via experimental reproductions of ancient Egyptian bronze tools. With these, he was able to bore beads made out of a variety of materials using a bow drill. Based on artistic representation he has also been able to reconstruct the clever method developed in the New Kingdom by which multiple beads were produced at one time. It was still an arduous task. Even with a bronze drill bit, for hard stones like quartz and amethyst he calculates that it took up to 300 minutes to drill a hole 1 centimeter deep.

As most carnelian beads at Hierakonpolis are about 3 millimeters thick, each bead would then have taken about 1.5 hours to perforate using a bronze bit--how long would it have taken with flint? Considering this time investment, it is little wonder that techniques to allow mass production were sought. So how did they make beads in the Predynastic period? What were these little drills really for? We decided to do a few experiments of our own to gain better insight into the problems and possibilities.

Volunteering his services for this experiment was Hitoshi Endo, of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan. A member of the Hierakonpolis Expedition since 2007, he has been assisting Izumi Takamiya (Associate Professor at Kinki University, Japan) in the excavations of a Predynastic brewery site (the subject of our next update). While he enjoys a good beer, lithics are his true love, so in his spare time he has been investigating the lithic assemblages at the "temple" and puzzling over its numerous microdrills.

Hitoshi has also worked in India, where carnelian beads are still made by hand. Having made some beads of his own under the direction of these modern producers, he applied this experience to the microdrill experiment. Here he reports on his progress: "A wide variety of materials were used to make beads in Predynastic Hierakonpolis. Not all of the raw materials were available to us, but using what we could, we decided to begin with the softest materials and work upward to see just what a flint microdrill could do."

"First to be tested was ostrich egg shell. While beads of this material are not especially common in Predynastic Hierakonpolis, they do occur at most localities. Most appear to be well made, but the largest single collection, found as a necklace around the neck of an infant in a burial within a non-elite cemetery are rough and clearly unfinished. As with all beads, the first step is to break up the raw material into a workable size and roughly shape it. Because the available piece of ostrich egg shell was collected from the surface, it was a bit brittle so I decided only to snap off a small piece rather than create a rough circle with a hammer stone."

"The bead blank was then set into a piece of local sandstone into which I had carved out a small hollow. With a little bit of mud, this held the blank firmly in place for drilling. In order to use the microdrill, the flint tool was set into the split end of a wooden handle and held in place with string. The wooden handle was about 2 cm in diameter and about 35 cm in length. Once completed, it somewhat resembled the tool held by the seal cutter in the Old Kingdom tomb of Ti."

"Although in that depiction the artisan is apparently using wrist action to create the rotation, I used a different, perhaps less elegant, method, influenced by my experiences in India. With the bead-fixing stone held between my feet, I rotated the drill handle between my palms; water was added to lubricate. It worked perfectly and I was able to drill one bead in about 3 minutes, first drilling one side and then flipping it over and doing the other. The drill bit showed almost no signs of wear at all.

"Once successfully perforated, it was time to polish the bead. I polished the bead edge first on a piece of local sandstone with the help of water as lubricant and then gave it a fine finish on a hard sedimentary rock picked up on the desert surface. It took about 15 minutes to make a smooth, circular bead that is almost impossible to distinguish from an ancient one. It was so easy, I made three more. Encouraged by this success, I tried the drill on a number of other materials to test its perforating power. Bone, limestone, and greywacke could be drilled with more or less effort, but without difficulty."

"When it came to carnelian, however, it was a different story. Carnelian, also known as red chalcedony, sard, or red agate, is a silica mineral and it is hard, rating a 7 on the Mohs Scale of mineral hardness, which is the same hardness as flint. Waterworn pebbles of this translucent red to yellow stone were widely available in ancient times and could be collected on the surface in the Eastern Desert. Many of the pieces in the bead-kit cache still have the weathered cortex on the exterior."

"The pebbles in the cache are usually about 3-5 cm in diameter and all had been tested for color and quality with a neat knick off one side. Carnelian is easy to fracture, so knocking off a piece to the correct size is not difficult. I then began to shape the piece into a circular form, first roughing it out by knapping the edges on an anvil stone. After that I used only a hammer stone to shape a fairly round bead blank. The hammer and anvil stone were hard sedimentary rock I collected from the desert surface."

"This part of the operation required no special equipment. The edges of most (but not all) ancient carnelian beads have clearly been ground smooth, so I tried to grind a bead edge using the sandstone that worked so well for the ostrich egg shell. I got nowhere on the carnelian but managed to make deep furrows in the soft sandstone instead. This was a harbinger of things to come. Installing the carnelian blank carefully into its sandstone holder, I tried to bore it with the flint microdrill tool."

"Rotating it between my palms with the help of water, again I made no impact on the carnelian but managed to wear the tip of the drill down to a nub. We even tried to increase rotation with the use a makeshift bow, but still no luck. As the carnelian is as hard as flint, if this was going to work, some abrasive was going to be needed. I tried the finest quartz sand I could find in the immediate vicinity, but it was still too coarse and simply rolled away. Although a reservoir to hold it in place may have helped, it was clear that regular sand wasn't fine enough for the small perforation required."

"So how did they do it? Denys Stocks mentions that even with the bronze drill an abrasive was required. Several authors mention the use of emery, which technically is a fine sand made from a very hard form of aluminum oxide (corundum) which has a Mohs scale hardness of 9, but the term has been used loosely as "emery" per se was not available in Egypt. But, clearly, they managed somehow. The tomb depictions of bead drilling show a bowl within easy reach of the craftsman, and this apparently contained the magic material that made it work."

"Stocks believes this bowl contained a runny paste which was composed of a mixture of muddy water (clay particle acting as a fine polish) and fine quartz sand, or even more likely, the waste powder from the boring out of stone vessels, where dry desert sand does work well as the abrasive and is ground fine during the process. As a result, he suggests that the two industries were interconnected and evidence bears that out. From the "temple" workshops we have recovered a variety of exotic stone materials, distinctive crescent drills and fragments of the stone vessels themselves."

"In the Dynastic town site too, crescent drills and bead blanks have been found together. However, this does not necessarily mean that bead maker and stone vessel maker were one and the same. Considering the time investment to make just one bead, it is hard to believe there were enough hours in the day for one person to make any progress doing both! Thus, like fine cuisine, it appears that the secret to success is in the sauce. Clearly, our bead-making kit didn't contain all of the necessary ingredients. Or perhaps it once did, but a pile of sand, even if it was special sand, is very likely to have gone unnoticed."

"Should the opportunity to find a bead-making cache ever present itself again, we will be sure to look for it! In the coming season we will try to recreate the special sauce, and give bead drilling another try. Nevertheless, our experiment wasn't a total failure. Although we have yet to crack carnelian, it is clear that softer stones and materials could be and no doubt were bored using the microdrills. In addition, we actually learned a great deal about microdrills especially with regard to carnelian."

"In particular, the rate at which the drill wore down even when perforation was unsuccessful shows that the drills would need to be sharpened and replaced frequently. We'll know more once we are successful, but it looks like the average carnelian bead may have required several drills to complete the hole. Thus any self respecting bead maker would have needed to have at hand a large number of drills, and the cores and blade for making more. While the amounts found in the caches may initially have seemed rather excessive, in light of what we know now, this may not be the case."

"This experiment has also allowed us put in perspective the vast number of drills found in the excavations. The hundreds of drills are evidence of what must have been an active industry, but one that now seems to have been much more selective that previously imagined. Finally, we have also learned to appreciate the effort that must have gone into some of the very lovely beads we have been lucky to find and what length we can go to in order to indulge our primal urge to adorn." [Archaeology.org].

Ancient Egyptian Meteorite Beads: A new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has revealed that Ancient Egyptian beads found in a 5,000-year-old tomb were made from iron meteorites that fell to Earth from outer space. The nine tube-shaped beads strung together in a necklace, along with other precious beads made of carnelian, lapis lazuli, agate and gold, were recovered in 1911. This during an excavation of an ancient burial ground dating back to 3,200 B.C. near the village of El-Gerzeh, located about 5,100 kilometers south of Cairo.

They were found in the grave of a teenage boy along with other treasures. When an analysis revealed that nine of the beads contained unusually high concentrations of nickel, a metal found in human-made iron, the unique jewelry item immediately attracted attention as they were crafted roughly 2,000 years before Egypt’s Iron Age. Thilo Rehren, a professor at UCL Qatar, a Western Asian outpost of the University College London's Institute of Archaeology, conducted an analysis of the composition of the beads by scanning them with beams of neutrons and gamma rays.

In addition to nickel, the results revealed high concentrations of cobalt, phosphorous and geranium; these elements were present at levels that only occur in iron meteorites. Now that one mystery has been solved, the scientists are now faced with another one – how were they made? The X-ray technology revealed that the beads had been hammered into thin sheets before being meticulously rolled into tubes. However, meteoric iron is an extremely hard material found in lumps so how the ancient Egyptians were able to form it into thin beads is still unknown.

Normally working with solid iron requires a process involving the repeated heating of metals to red-hot temperatures and then hammering them into shape but this was an elaborate operation which is assumed to have only developed in the Iron Age 3,000 years ago - it seems that we may have another case of underestimating the skills and abilities of our ancient human ancestors. [AncientOrigins.net]

Ancient Egyptian Faience Jewelry: Egyptian faience is a glassy substance manufactured expertly by the ancient Egyptians. The process was first developed in Mesopotamia, first at Ur and later at Babylon, with significant results. However faience production reached its height of quality and quantity in Egypt. Some of the greatest faience-makers of antiquity were the Phoenicians of cities such as Tyre and Sidon who were so expert in making glass that it is thought they invented the process. The Egyptians took the Phoenician technique and improved upon it, creating works of art which still intrigue and fascinate people in the present day.

Faience was made by grinding quartz or sand crystals together with various amounts of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and copper oxide. The resulting substance was formed into whatever shape was desired, whether an amulet, beads, a broach or a figurine and then said pieces were heated. During heating, the pieces would harden and develop a bright color which was then finely glazed. It is thought that the Egyptian artisans perfected faience in an attempt to imitate turquoise and other hard to find gemstones. The calcium silicates in the mixture were responsible for the bright colors and the glassy finish.

Among the most famous of faience statuary is the blue hippopotamus popularly known as "William", currently on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, New York. This piece was one of a pair found in the shaft of the tomb of the steward Senbi II who served under either Senusret I (circa 1971-1926 B.C.) or Senusret II (circa 1897-1878 B.C.), both of the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom.

The figure was molded of faience and painted with river and marsh plants, representing the natural habitat of the hippo. A paste of copper, limestone, and quartz oxide was then applied all over the figure which, when heated, turned it a bright blue. The hippo was considered an extremely dangerous animal by the ancient Egyptians and were sometimes included with grave goods (whether as statuary, amulet, or as an inscription) for protection of the deceased in the afterlife. The soul of the dead person, however, also required protection from its protecting hippo and some provision had to be made for this. In the case of "William" the Hippo, three of its legs were purposefully broken after the statue was completed so it would not be able to run after Senbi II in the afterlife and harm him.

Besides statuary, the Egyptians used faience for the manufacture of jewelry (rings, amulets, necklaces) but also for scarabs, to create the board and pieces for the game of Sennet, for furniture and even for bowls and cups. Among the most popular objects made from faience, however, were the Shabti dolls which were placed in the tombs of the dead. The Shabti was a figure, sometimes fashioned in the likeness of the deceased, who would take the dead person’s place at communal work projects, ordained by the god Osiris, in the after-life of the Field of Reeds.

The Egyptian word for faience was “tjehenet” which means 'gleaming’ or 'shining’ and the faience was thought to reflect the light of immortality. So closely was faience associated with the Egyptian after-life that the tiles for the chamber walls of tombs were made of faience as was seen at King Djoser’s tomb at Saqqara. And most famously, in the tomb of Tutankhamun where over one hundred objects were entirely or partially of faience.

The poor of Egypt, if they could even afford a Shabti doll, would have one made of wood, while the more wealthy and the nobility commanded Shabti of faience. The colors of the faience (as with color generally) were thought to have special symbolism. Blue represented fertility, life, the Nile river on earth and in the after-life. Green symbolized goodness and re-birth in the Field of Reeds. Red was used for vitality and energy and also as protection from evil. Black represented death and decay but also life and regeneration. White symbolized purity. The colors one sees on the Shabti dolls, and in other faience, all have very specific meaning and combine to provide a protective energy for the object's owner.

The earliest evidence of a faience workshop has been unearthed at Abydos and dated to 5500 BC. The workshop consists of a number of circular pits, clearly the remains of kilns, with a lining of brick and all of them fire-marked. Layers of ancient ash in the pits are evidence of continuous use over many years. Small clay balls were also discovered and it is thought that they may have been used as the surface on which faience beads were fired in the kilns. The names of the faience makers are lost to history save for one man, Rekhamun, who was known as “Faience Maker of Amun”, and another known as Debeni, the overseer of faience workers. Of the other craftsmen in faience, and there must have been many, nothing is known. [Ancient History Encyclopedia].

Ancient Egyptian Faience Bead Dresses: Stunning bead-net dresses were apparently the zenith of ancient Egyptian fashion. Women and men of ancient Egypt were known to embrace fashion as an important part of life. Clothing, makeup and jewelry were not only used to augment one’s beauty, but were also meant to represent the wearer’s social rank and class. Egyptians were especially adept at the art of weaving and dress-making. In fact, the world’s oldest woven dress is the now-tattered Tarkhan Dress, originally made in 3,482 BC in Egypt.

Historians are quick to point out that this rich civilization was actually the pioneer of high fashion. One instance of this is the bead-net dress, a strikingly bold garment that the wealthy ancient Egyptian women often wore during festivities. As its name suggests, the attire was crafted with several thousand faience beads of different colors arranged in a variety of geometrical patterns. Discovered only in the 1920s, it was worn by priestesses and upper-class women, along with beaded collars and headdresses.

Women from the lower classes, however, had to settle for ornate waist-strings. According to experts, bead-net dresses were created in two basic ways. One involved the sewing of beads onto an already-made linen dress. The other entailed stringing the tiny multi-colored orbs directly onto a net mesh. As pointed out by historians, these garments were at times among the things that were buried with the deceased. A clear evidence that women also wore these precious garments in daily life can be seen in a number of Egyptian statues and murals.

For instance the figure of sky goddess Nut, dating back to somewhere between 3,000 and 2,000 BC, actually shows the deity donning a beaded dress. References in Egyptian literature to the bead-nut dress include the "Threes Tales of Wonder", a short story collection also called "Tales from the Westcar Papyrus". One particular piece in the collection known as "The Story of the Green Jewel", depicts King Snefru on a boat rowed by pretty girls wearing spectacularly-detailed beaded garments.

So far, archaeologists have unearthed 20 ancient Egyptian bead-net dresses, all of which are currently kept in museums around the world. One such dress was found during a 1923/4 excavation inside a Fifth or Sixth Dynasty-era tomb near the city of Qau. The team involved in the digging originally thought the artifact, which had tiny stones that made sounds every time the dress moved, might have been worn by a dancer. Following further analysis, however, the researchers realized that the attire was actually too heavy to be suitable for dancers.

The dress currently exists in London’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. Uncovered in a Khufu-era tomb in Giza, another of these bead-net dresses is housed at Boston-based Museum of Fine Arts. [RealmofHistory.Com].

Ancient Egyptian Beads in a Danish Burial: The chemical composition of 23 glass beads unearthed in Denmark was examined with plasma-spectrometry, and compared with the trace elements found in beads from Amarna in Egypt and Nippur in Mesopotamia. One of the beads, made of blue glass, had come from a woman’s Bronze Age burial that was excavated in 1880 at the Ølby site. She had been buried in a hollowed-out oak trunk wearing a belt disc, a string skirt with small bronze tubes, a bracelet made of amber beads, and a single blue glass bead.

Science Nordic reports that the research team, made up of scientists from Moesgaard Museum, the National Museum of Denmark, Aarhus University, and the Institut de Recherche sur les Archéomatériaux in Orléans, France, matched this bead’s chemical signature to beads made 3,400 years ago in an Egyptian workshop. They now think that Egyptian glass beads, perhaps symbolizing the Egyptian sun cult, traveled north from the Mediterranean on the amber route, which carried Nordic amber south. Amber and glass beads have been found together at sites in the Middle East, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Germany. [Archaeological Institute of America].

Ancient African Beads: 1000-year-old glass beads provide first evidence of glassmaking development in Sub-Saharan West Africa. A newly found treasure trove of more than 10,000 colorful glass beads and evidence of glassmaking tools, makes scientists think that an ancient city in southwestern Nigeria was one of the first places in West Africa to ace the complicated art of glassmaking. The new finding reveals that people who lived in the ancient city of Ile-Ife produced their own glass with the use of local materials.

Interestingly they could transform it into colorful beads, as the study lead researcher Abidemi Babalola, a fellow at Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, told Live Science. "Now we know that, at least from the 11th to 15th centuries AD, there was primary glass production in sub-Saharan Africa". He also added that Ile-Ife is also popular for its copper alloy and terracotta heads and figurines that were made around the same period and included the colorful glass beads.

For that matter some of these figurines were decorated with glass beads on their headdresses, crowns, necklaces, armlets and anklets. Additionally researchers have discovered glass beads at Ile-Ife's ancient shrines and within unearthed crucibles — ceramic containers that were used to melt glass. The question is: where did these glass beads come from? The majority of the researchers suggested that the beads were transported through trade, most likely from the Mediterranean area or the Middle East. There the art of glassmaking flourished in early antiquity. From them then local artisans in Ile-Ife used crucibles to melt and reshape some of them into new beads.

Glass was first (accidentally) produced by merchants moored on the river Belus in the Syrian region of Phoenicia. These merchants were said to be transporting niter (potassium nitrate) in their ship. As they were preparing their meal on the beach, the merchants could not find suitable stones for supporting their cauldrons. Therefore, they decided to take some lumps of niter from their ship for that purpose. When the niter combined with the sand on the beach, and reacted with the heat from the fire, “they beheld transparent streams flowing forth of a liquid hitherto unknown”.

After that coincidental event and the invention of glass, several techniques would be used in order to produce glass in the ancient world. Some of them are core-forming, slumping, and mould-forming. The first technique involved coating molten glass around a mass made of dung or clay. A similar process was used to form glass beads, though a rod coated with a release material replaced the core. Slumping was used to produce open vessels such as bowls and plates. Molten glass was poured into a heat-resistant mould (either a positive of negative refractory form), and was allowed to flow downwards due to gravity. When the glass cooled, it would achieve its desired shape.

Bowls and plates were also produced by the mould-forming technique. However, Babalola insists that his African ancestors didn’t borrow much from foreign nations when it comes to complex glass-making. During a 2012 excavation he collected almost 13,000 beads, 812 crucible fragments, 403 fragments of ceramic cylinders (rods that were possibly used to handle the crucible lids), almost 7 pounds of glass waste and about 14,000 potsherds, as the researchers noted in the study.

Despite not finding any furnaces that would have helped artisans heat the crucibles, the researchers write that "the abundance of glass-production debris and the presence of vitrified clay fragments [clay with melted glass on it] indicate, however, that these areas were in, or very near, a zone of glass workshops," as Live Science reports. Furthermore, researchers found that many of the beads, mainly the blue ones, were made "almost exclusively" from materials that are found near Igbo-Olokun. These beads as Babalola said are called drawn beads, meaning that artisans used a unique technique that included using an air bubble to make the beads' holes.

Of course, Indian craftspeople were making drawn glass beads many centuries before the West African artisans, with earlier archaeological finds suggesting that such beads were made in India as early as the fourth century BC. However, because of the distance between India and modern-day Nigeria, Babalola and his colleagues suggest that West African artisans developed the technique separately, admitting though that further research is needed in order to prove that theory, since there’s no clear evidence backing it up at this point. [ancient-origins.net]. Ancient Australian Aborigine Beads: Aborigines were using European glass beads as currency long before sustained contact with Europeans themselves, say Australian National University archaeologists Daryl Wesley and Mirani Litster. They have excavated 30 beads of European manufacture in the Arnhem Land region and think the artifacts were brought to the continent by Maccasans, an Indonesian people known to have traveled to the area to harvest sea cucumbers.

The Maccasans could have traded the beads with the Aborigines, probably in return for access to land. While beads have been found at sites in the area before, it was thought they dated to after 1916, when European missionaries would have brought them to Arnhem Land. But the team found the beads in deposits that long predate the arrival of missionaries. Wesley says the discovery has implications for Aboriginal land claims, which in part are based on the idea that they negotiated with the Maccassan for access to their traditional fishing grounds.[Archaeological Institute of America].

Ancient American Bead Trade: Beads made from meteorite reveal ancient American trade network. Researchers have confirmed iron beads in Illinois come from a Minnesota meteorite. In 1945, archaeologists opened a 2,000-year-old Hopewell Culture burial mound near Havana, Illinois, and discovered 1,000 beads made of shell and pearl. They also found 22 iron-nickel beads which they determined came from a meteorite. But iron meteorites in North America are rare, and it wasn’t clear just which space rock the beads were related to, reports Traci Watson at Nature.

A few years later, in 1961, a meteorite was found near Anoka, Minnesota, a town along the Mississippi River. At the time, chemical analysis ruled out that lump of iron as the source of the beads. Then, a second piece of the same meteorite was discovered in 1983 across the river from the original. Timothy McCoy, curator in charge of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, tells Smithsonian.com that a consortium of museums spearheaded by the National Museum of Natural History bought the 90-kilogram chunk in 2004.

While doing an inventory of the meteorite collection at the museum in 2007, he was reminded that the museum owned two of the Havana meteorite beads. He decided to compare the composition of the newer Anoka meteorite with those beads as well as take another look at the original chunk. Mass spectrometry analysis showed that the composition of the beads and the space iron was a near-perfect match. The research appears in the Journal of Archeological Science.

“I think it’s pretty solid evidence,” says McCoy. “We have 1,000 iron meteorites and there are only 4 that are possibly related to the beads. One is in Australia, ruling that out, and the others are in Kentucky and Texas. But they differ enough in composition to make me think they are not the parent material.” McCoy says that “fingerprints” left on the surface of the chunks caused by cosmic radiation indicate that the original meteorite was roughly 4,000 kilograms.

That means it’s likely the meteorite rained down chunks of iron from the sky across the upper Midwest, though those pieces are probably buried (the fragments that have been found were dug up during sewer and road projects). He thinks the beads came from another lump of the meteorite found by people from the Hopewell culture. The new study not only confirms the origins of the beads, but also shows just how extensive prehistoric trading networks were.

Kelsey Kennedy at Atlas Obscura reports that while the discovery wrapped up the mystery of the beads origins, it spawned others. For one, how did the iron travel so far from the site of the meteor? And how did a culture that had no experience with iron working create the beads? Léa Surugue​ at The International Business Times reports that anthropologists have two competing theories about the economic and social organization of the Hopewell, a culture that stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast at one point.

Researchers have found some pretty incredible artifacts in graves and village sites, including at the main Hopewell cultural center near Chillicothe, Ohio. At that site, believed to be a religious and pilgrimage site, archaeologists have recovered shark teeth from the Gulf Coast, obsidian from Yellowstone and silver mined near the Upper Great Lakes. One theory called the Hopewell Interaction Sphere suggests that the Hopewell traded these objects from village to village in a vast trading network that spanned the continent.

The other model is direct procurement, in which people traveled on long expeditions from their villages to gather exotic metals and other resources. McCoy tells Surugue that he thinks the meteorite beads support the Interaction Sphere hypothesis. “Meteorites are exceptionally rare objects. While it might make sense for an individual to travel to the site of large copper deposits and bring back material, it is difficult to reconcile that kind of model with something like a meteorite,” he says.

“By establishing a link between Anoka, Minnesota and Havana, Illinois – two places within reach of known Hopewell centers and connected by major river systems – the trade model seems much more plausible.” Kennedy reports that it’s possible that the Havana Hopewell got the iron from the Trempelau Hopewell to the north who may have discovered a fist-sized lump of the iron. Watson reports the Havana likely didn’t get the metal through trade, though, but that the precious iron might have been used as a gift to ratify an alliance or was brought by religious pilgrims.

But McCoy tells Smithsonian.com the Havana beads are just one small piece of evidence for the trade network. In Chillicothe, researchers have found tons of objects made from a meteorite that fell in Kansas, including axe heads, pounding stones and beads. “They may have had two mechanisms in two places,” he says. “They may have had expeditions going to Kansas and bringing back iron while the Anoka meteorite was acquired through trade. The Hopewell loved exotic objects and meteorites were the most exotic. In Hopewell culture these beads had the rarest of rare materials.”

So how were the beads made? McCoy says it’s likely the Hopewell adapted the methods they used to work copper and silver to working with the iron. As he tells Watson, when the meteorite metal is shot through with a mineral called schreibersite, it allows it to be broken apart. McCoy first tried to simulate a bead by using constant heat and steel tools to work on a chunk of the meteorite, but the method was too efficient and did not produce the same microtexture as the original beads.

But when he used methods available to the Hopewell, heating the iron in a wood fire and heating and pounding it in repeated cycles, he was able to produce a bead very similar to the Havana beads. Watson notes that the method is similar to the way the Egyptians crafted beads out of meteorite iron 3,000 years ago. [Smithsonian.com].

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ABOUT US: Prior to our retirement we used to travel to Eastern Europe and Central Asia several times a year seeking antique gemstones and jewelry from the globe’s most prolific gemstone producing and cutting centers. Most of the items we offer came from acquisitions we made in Eastern Europe, India, and from the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean/Near East) during these years from various institutions and dealers. Much of what we generate on Etsy, Amazon and Ebay goes to support worthy institutions in Europe and Asia connected with Anthropology and Archaeology. Though we have a collection of ancient coins numbering in the tens of thousands, our primary interests are ancient/antique jewelry and gemstones, a reflection of our academic backgrounds.

Though perhaps difficult to find in the USA, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia antique gemstones are commonly dismounted from old, broken settings – the gold reused – the gemstones recut and reset. Before these gorgeous antique gemstones are recut, we try to acquire the best of them in their original, antique, hand-finished state – most of them originally crafted a century or more ago. We believe that the work created by these long-gone master artisans is worth protecting and preserving rather than destroying this heritage of antique gemstones by recutting the original work out of existence. That by preserving their work, in a sense, we are preserving their lives and the legacy they left for modern times. Far better to appreciate their craft than to destroy it with modern cutting.

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