The beads of Mozambique Island.

Mozambique Island, on the northern coast of the African country of the same name, was the first place where Portuguese explorers, having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, encountered the trade networks of the Indian Ocean. At this time the island was ruled by a Muslim sheikh, with merchants using the island as a base from which to trade with the African interior or wider Indian Ocean needing his permission to do so, with all such merchants needing to be Muslims themselves. The island was quickly brought under Portuguese rule, with a Captain appointed to rule the island on behalf of the Portuguese Crown, and became a crucial stopover on the journey between Lisbon and Goa. While the Portuguese Captain in theory had control over all commerce occurring in the port, in practice many commodities were not regulated, and the island gained as a reputation as place where fortunes could be made with little interference from the Portuguese authorities.

During the Early Modern Era, beads were extensively used by European traders as a means of currency, being both a portable, high value item, and a desirable commodity which they could control the supply of. This certainly appears to have been the case on Mozambique Island, where large numbers of beads, many of them apparently derived from shipwrecks off the coast of the island, are today collected from the island's sandy beaches and made into necklaces, which are then sold to tourists.

In a paper published in the journal World Archaeology on 22 November 2024, Tânia Manuel Casimiro of História, Territórios e Comunidades at Nova University Lisbon, Yolanda Duarte of Archaeology at Eduardo Mondlane University, and Jéssica Iglésias, also of História, Territórios e Comunidades at Nova University Lisbon, present the results of an analysis of the origin of beads from Mozambique Island, and the implications of this for the history of the island.

Today, beads are collected by shovelling sand from the beaches into 25-50 kg bags and taking these to a flat, clean surface, where the sand can be sifted through for beads. No permit is needed for this activity, and no attention paid to the archaeological context of the beads by the collectors. However, some of the necklaces made by the bead-gatherers have been obtained by local people with an interest in the island's heritage, and it is from such collections that Casmiro et al. gained the beads used in their study.

Process for recovering the beads. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Casmiro et al. examined a sample of 12 166 beads, recording the material they were made from, as well as their style. Many of the glass beads were apparently Venetian, with Venice being a major manufacturing centre for beads used as colonial trade goods from the sixteenth century onwards, although Casmiro et al. note that many 'Venetian' beads were in fact made in other European cities in imitation of the Venetian style. However, such beads are clearly of European origin, easily distinguished from Indian beads (also very common around the Indian Ocean) which tend to be carved from a mineral such as carnelian or agate. Because of the way in which the beads were obtained, it was not possible to date them by context, although it was possible to build up a limited chronology for beads from the sixteenth to nineteenth century, with a few beads coming from outside this period.

Strings of beads sold to tourists on Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

The majority of the beads (10 626) were made of glass. Most of these were of a single colour, with examples of white, black, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red beads being found, along with some which combine a several colours. These glass beads also vary greatly in shape, with tubular, oblate, cylindrical, ellipsoidal, spherical, bicone, and barrel-shaped beads all present. After glass beads, the most common were stone beads,  followed by coral, shell, bone, ivory, and plastic.

A 'Venetian' glass chevron bead transformed into a pendant. Casmiro et al. (2024).

The most common glass beads (7789 examples) are seed beads, small spherical beads at most a few millimetres across, which have been manufactured in Europe since at least the fifteenth century. Another common type are Green Heart Beads (540 examples), cylindrical glass beads made up of layers of different glass, with the innermost being green, giving a shimmering, multi-hued effect, which were produced in Venice between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.

(Top) Glass Heart Beads. (Bottom) Seed beads. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Hudson's Bay Beads (235 examples), sometimes also known as White Heart Beads, or Cornaline d’Aleppo, were made in Venice between 1830 and the early 1900s. These again were cylindrical beads with multiple layers, this time having an inner layer of white or yellow glass.

Hudson's Bay Beads. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Chevron beads (11 examples) were elongate beads made by building up multiple layers of glass onto a central star-shaped moulded cane. These beads were invented in the late fifteenth century by craftswoman Marietta Barovier of Murano, and made at a number of glassworks in Murano and Venice, and probably elsewhere, although it is not generally possible to tell where an individual bead was made.

Chevron beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

A-Speo beads (186 examples) were made by drawing out a thick glass straw, which was then chopped into short segments. These segments were then placed on a metal rod, and placed in a furnace to melt them into a rounded shape (the name 'a-speo' derives from the Italian phrase for 'to skewer'). This technique was probably invented in Venice or Murano, but was practiced in many areas of Europe. 

A-speo beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Skunk beads (14 examples), were made in Venice (and probably other European bead-making centres) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, by adding small globules of glass to an a larger glass bead of a different colour, to give a speckled effect. These were most commonly black with added white speckles, hence the name 'skunk beads', but other colour patterns were also produced. 

Skunk beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Tubular beads (12 examples) were first made in Venice in the fifteenth century, but due to their ease of manufacture, continued to be made at centres across Europe for the next six centuries. Padre, or Pekin Glass, beads were made in Venetian and Czech workshops in the nineteenth century, in imitation of blue glass beads from China, themselves made as a cheaper substitute for jade beads.

(Top) Tubular beads and (bottom) Pekin Glass beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Millefiori beads are glass with complicated floral patterns, made since Roman times. They are manufactured by producing glass canes with a flower-shaped cross-section, which are then cut into thin slices, which are in turn incorporated within blown glass products, including beads. The name millefiori derives from the Italian for 'thousand flowers'.

Millefiori beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Eye beads (2 examples), which superficially resemble eyes, have been made around the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East, and South Asia for thousands of years, often as a charm against the Evil Eye. The earliest forms were made of clay, but the manufacture of glass eye beads can be traced back to about 1500 BC.

'King' or 'Golo' beads (2 examples) were made in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a high value trade item for African markets. There were large, striped, biconed beads which came in a range of colours, though green beads with yellow, black, and red stripes were the most common.

Dog Teeth, or ruffled beads (two examples) were made in Venice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mostly for trade with Nigeria. These are black beads with an irregular shape, and a 'ruffle' of white marks (or 'teeth') around their centre.

A single Nueva Cadiz bead was found on Mozambique Island. These were squared, tubular beads in a distinctive blue colour, made originally in Venice for trade with the Americas, but which were subsequently made in a number of other European cities. These beads are very common at sites on the Atlantic coast of Africa, but surprisingly rare at sites on the Indian Ocean.

The single Nueva Cadiz bead found on Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Bohemian beads (1147 examples) were made in the modern Czech Republic, where they developed a range of distinct techniques of their own, notably pressed glass. These beads often have vertical and horizontal lines, circular incisions, coloured bands, phytomorphic and zoomorphic decorations.

Bohemian beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Russian blue beads (183 examples) were a distinctive type of Bohemian bead produced in the eighteenth centuries. These beads were multifaceted with six, seven, or eight sides, and typically a transparent blue, although amber, green, and clear examples are also known.

Russian blue beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Vaseline beads (1 example), sometimes also called uranium beads because of the uranium used to tint the glass green, were large faceted of shaped beads made in Bohemia in the late  nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Haj beads (5 examples) were made in Bohemian the early twentieth century for export to the city of Mecca, where they were sold to pilgrims, often becoming heirloom objects within their families. Two of the examples found on Mozambique Island had moon-and-star symbols, while the remaining three had the name of the Prophet Mohammed written upon them.

Dutch opalescent beads (9 examples), sometimes known as moon beads, were glass beads made to resemble pearls by adding ash to the glass, made in the Netherlands, Bohemia, Germany, and Venice, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Dogon beads (187 examples) are large, chunky beads with a rough texture, which were produced in Amsterdam and possibly Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, principally for trade with the Dogon people of southern Mali, but were also traded to other areas of Africa.

Dogon beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Prosser beads (9 examples), sometimes known as Kakamba Prosser Beads after a town in what is now the Republic of Congo where they were popular. These were made in the nineteenth century by a French craftsman called Jean-Félix Bapterosses, who modified a technique developed by the Prosser Brothers of London to cold-press glass and porcelain buttons, instead producing disk-shaped opalescent beads.

While the majority of the examined beads were glass, stone beads were also common, with 996 in the collection. The most abundant stone types are jet and carnelian, with agate and garnet beads also quite common. Stone beads have been manufactured around the world, which can make it difficult to determine the origin of individual beads, although most stone beads found around the Indian Ocean originate from India or Southeast Asia. This potentially makes these beads the oldest on Mozambique Island, with some examples likely to have reached the island before the first Europeans.

Stone beads from Mozambique Island. Casmiro et al. (2024).

Three beads from Mozambique Island were identified as being of Chinese origin, although details of these are not given. China began to export large volumes of beads in the early twentieth century, something it does to this day, and has produced beads from porcelain, wood, cinnabar, cloisonné, enamelled metal, stones, and glass, among other materials.

Filigree is a form of intricate metalwork consisting of tiny beads and twisted threads soldered together, made in the Islamic world largely between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fifty five silver elements from Mozambique Island are probably derived from filigree jewellery, most likely originating from Mauritania.

Beads derived from Animal materials such as shell, bone, ivory, and coral were also quite common (469 examples), although it is difficult to assess where these came from, as these materials are available, and have been worked, across much of the globe.

Plastic beads (8 examples) are clearly of twentieth century origin, since the first plastic (Bakalite) was invented by the Belgian-American chemist Leo Hendrick Baekelandin 1909. Plastic beads are cheap and easy to manufacture, and are produced in many countries. The low number of these on Mozambique Island suggests that they may never have been a commercial import, but may have been brought to the island by people wearing them, or possibly even have floated there on ocean currents.

Finally, five items were found in the collection that probably did not start out as beads, but which had been repurposed as such. These were a black glass button or pendant, two jet buttons, a rectangular piece of jet with three diagonal incisions of unknown origin, and what appeared to be the bottom half of a Frozen Charlotte doll (a type of rigid doll, typically made out of china, made between about 1850 and about 1920, mostly in Germany for the US market).

Casmiro et al.'s study revealed the presence of a wide range of beads, made from a variety of substances, on Mozambique Island. Despite this variety, about 90% of the beads were glass, and of European origin. Glass trade beads have been considered to be powerful symbols of European colonial influence, which seems to be particularly relevant on Mozambique Island, a vital trade hub within the Portuguese Empire. The beads of the same designs as those found on Mozambique Island have been found at other sites around the world, although overwhelmingly in colonial contexts.

Glass beads were, of course, made before the fifteenth century, and it can sometimes be hard to differentiate these from later beads, but none of the glass beads found on Mozambique Island appear likely to be this old. The stone, and animal-derived, beads found on the island may date to before the arrival of Europeans in the area, although such beads continue to be made until the present day, making it hard to be certain of their age. Mozambique Island is known to have been a trading hub before the arrival of the Portuguese, but it appears to have become much more important once integrated into the global Portuguese network.

Curiously, the high abundance of European beads on Mozambique Island is in contrast to the situation in South Africa, where European beads are unusual at archaeological sites, but beads from India quite common. It has been suggested that this South African preference for Indian beads may have been established before the arrival of European traders, and that with South African customers unwilling to switch, European traders may instead have imported beads from India to cater for this market.

Casmiro et al. also note that the beads once brought to Africa by Europeans to trade for commodities such as slaves, ivory, and gold, have now taken on a new role in places such as Mozambique Island, being traded back to European tourists as a means of gaining hard currency, a much needed twenty first century trade commodity.

See also...

Looking for the origins of garnets from Lower Nubia.

From about the third century BC, garnets became highly valued gemstones to the peoples of the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East, India, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and China, along with other hard gemstones, such as emerald, aquamarine, and sapphire. Transparent red garnet was used to make engraved rings or seal stones; inlays in diadems; earrings or necklaces or even small sculptures; thin, doubly polished plates in cloisonné jewellery, as well as simple beads, merely drilled to be assembled into necklaces, bracelets, or applied to garments. Studies of garnets dating from the Hellenistic Period to Early Medieval times have identified seven distinctive garnet types (A-G), with unique compositions, some of which have been linked to sources in Europe, India, or Sri Lanka, while the source of others remains unknown.

Garnets were also used as gemstones prior to the Hellenistic Period in several places, although the origin and typology of these is less well understood. Green grossular, a calcic garnet, often intergrown with green vesuvianite was used to make seals, beads, and amulets by the Indus Valley Civilization, and to much lesser extent in ancient Mesopotamia. This material was worked in Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and Loal-Mari on the Indus River, and was probably sourced in Balochistan and northern Pakistan. Both grossular and vesuvanite have hardnesses of between 6.5 and 7.0 on the Moh scale (i.e. are slightly softer than quartz) making it possible to work these materials with the tools available to the Indus Valley Civilization.

Red aluminous garnet, however, is harder than quartz, making it much more difficult to work without specialist tools, and is rare in Asia before the advent of the Iron Age. Surprisingly, this material was worked early in Northeast Africa, with red garnet beads known from Predynastic Egypt and the contemporaneous A-group Cultures of Lower Nubia. The use of red garnet continued in Egypt till around the end of the New Kingdom, after which the mineral is seldom found. Thus, the red garnets of Egypt and Nubia are the oldest known examples of the working of this mineral.

In a paper published in the journal Archaeometry on 7 March 2024, Albert Gilg of Engineering Geology at the Technical University of Munich, Joanna Then-Obłuska of the Antiquity of Southeastern Europe Research Centre at the University of Warsaw, and Laure Dussubieux of the Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum, present the results of an analysis of 34 garnet beads from burials in Lower Nubia, dated from the late A-Group to the Post-Meroitic, an age range of about 3200 BC to about 600 AD, as well as two garnets from separate alluvial deposits near the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in the Bayuda Desert of Upper Nubia.

Ancient Nubia is divided into Lower Nubia, which lay between the First and the Second Cataracts of the Nile, and Upper Nubia, to the south of the Second Cataract. Gilg et al. selected beads excavated  from graves in Qustul, Adindan, and Serra East, in the collection of the Museum of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago, associated with the Early Nubian A-group Culture, the Middle Nubian C-group and Pan Grave cultures, and the New Kingdom, Napatan, Meroitic, and Post-Meroitic/Nobadian periods.

The A-group Culture (roughly 3700 to 2800 BC) and C-group Culture (roughly 2300 to 1550 BC) are known to have been wealthy societies, due to their location at a junction of trade routes between Egypt and the Mediterranean to the north and the African interior to the south. The Pan Grave people (2200 to1550 BC) lived in small, dispersed groups in the Eastern Desert. All of these peoples traded to differing extents with the Pre-Kerma and Kerma cultures of Upper Nubia. Between about 1570 and about 1069 BC Nubia was controlled by the Egyptian New Kingdon, then between 747 and 656 BC, Egypt was ruled by the Kushite 25th Dynasty, which ruled an area from the confluence of the Blue and White Niles to the Mediterranean. This interval forms part of the Napatan Period in Nubia, which lasted from about 750 BC to about 350 BC, and was another period of wealth in Lower Nubia. This was followed by the Meroitic Period, from about 350 BC to about 350 AD, when Lower Nubia became an intermediary in trade between the Kingdom of Meroë in Upper Nubia and the Hellenic and Roman rulers of Egypt. Between about 350 and 600 AD Lower Nubia was Kingdom of Nobadia, which often had less peaceful relations with both Egypt and the Blemmye peoples who controlled the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea Coast.

Map of Nubia. Gilg et al. (2024).

Gilg et al. analysed garnet beads from tombs 11, 17, 22, 24 of Royal Cemetery L at Qustul, which have been dated to Late A-Group/Naqada III (Naqada III is the final phase of Predynastic Egypt), as well as the late A-Group tombs W19 and V59; garnets from these tombs were commonly accompanied by similarly shaped carnelian beads. Another bead was from the  C-Group Phase III tomb T12B at Adindan, which is of equivalent age to the Egyptian 18th Dynasty (the first dynasty of the New Kingdom). Five more beads come from tombs K74 and K93 at Adindan, which were associated with the Pan Grave Culture; notably, garnet beads are more common in Pan Grave Culture burials than C-Group Culture burials, despite the two being roughly contemporary. Six more beads came from New Kingdom tombs VC45 and R19 at Qustul, three from the Amenhotep III to Amarna Period and three from the post-Amarna Period. A single short barrel bead came from the 25th Dynasty/Napatan tomb W43 at  Qustul. Also from Qustul came an oblate bead from the Meroitic tomb Q465, and a truncated hexagonal bicone bead from the Post-Meroitic tomb Q143.

Beads associated with the A-Group culture are all less than 5 mm in diameter and 2.5 mm wide. They were shaped into short cylinders, barrels, or oblates with a relatively poor polish, and perforated from each end by irregular pecking. Similar beads are known from Predynastic Upper Egypt, which were presumably made in the same way, possibly from the same people. A single bead of similar appearance has also been found at Mehrgarh in Pakistan, which is exotic to that site, but of unknown origin. C-Group and Pan Grave Culture beads are also typically poorly polished and of imperfect shape, though the shape varied slightly, with both rounded and short-barrel beads found. These beads were perforated from each end by drilling, forming either cylindrical or conical holes; the smooth nature of the hole suggests the drill made from a hard stone, such as flint, or possibly copper. Similar perforations have been observed in Middle Kingdom garnet beads from Egypt. Workshops producing carnelian beads are known from A-Group and C-Group sites in Lower Nubia, and while no trace of garnet-working has been found at these sites, the similarity between the carnelian and garnet beads suggests that the garnet beads are also likely to have been manufactured locally.

Microphotographs of garnet beads from lower Nubia. (a) A-group bead with irregular pecked hole (ISAC 13); (b) Pan Grave bead with a smooth drilled hole (ISAC 21); (c) C-group bead with silver beads (ISAC 20);  (d) New Kingdom long barrel-shaped beads with poor polish (ISAC 29-31); (e) Meroitic irregular oblate bead (ISAC33); (f) Post-Meroitic facetted bead (ISAC 34); (g) drill hole (about 1 mm in diameter) with concentric deep grooves from a diamond tipped drill (ISAC 34); (h) tiny short- and long-prismatic colourless inclusions (ISAC 34). Scale bar is 500μm. Gilg et al. (2024). 

The New Kingdom beads showed much improved shaping. The majority of these beads were globular in shape, but also present were unusually long barrel to tubular shapes with a length of up to 7.9 mm and a diameter of 4 mm. These beads all have a low polish, and again are drilled from both ends. The Napatan and Meroitic beads were similar in form to the Pan Grave and C-Group beads.

None of these beads had a high polish, something seen in Egyptian beads from the Great Aten temple at Amarna (18th Dynasty), which were made by polishing with corundum powder as an abrasive, a technique apparently unknown in Upper Nubia. How the Upper Nubian beads were polished is unclear at this time.

The youngest, Post-Merotic bead differs from all others in the study, having a faceted shape (a hexagonal truncated bicone), a well-polished surface, and deep, regularly spaced, concentric grooves in the drill hole, probably indicative of the use of a diamond drill bit. Similar garnet beads are known from Arikamedu in southern India, and sites in southern Sri Lanka. Microscopic examination of this bead revealed the presence of many tiny, short- and long-prismatic, colourless inclusions, something seen in Sri Lankan garnets but not garnets from southern India. Though this is not sufficient evidence to confirm the origin of this bead, Gilg et al. consider it highly likely that this bead comes from South Asia, and probably Sri Lanka.

Chemically, all of the garnets, including the alluvial samples from Upper Nubia were found to be of similar composition, with the exception of the single Post-Merotic bead. These beads have an almandine-rich composition, with a low calcium content (the Post-Merotic bead has a pyrope-rich composition with a low calcium content). Compositionally, these beads do not fit into any of the types used to classify Hellenistic to Early Medieval garnets, with magnesium oxide-calcium oxide ratios intermediate between type A and type B contents, combined with a high manganese and yttrium, low chromium composition not seen in either of these types. This suggests that the beads were made from alluvial garnets sourced from deposits in Upper Nubia, and that garnets from this source were not used in the Hellenistic to Early Medieval periods.

Almandine-rich garnet was the first mineral harder than quartz to be worked in northeast Africa, apparently being sourced at a site in the Bayunda Desert of Upper Nubia at least 670 km south of the most southerly known occurrence of worked garnet beads in Lower Nubia. These Upper Nubian deposits appear to have been the only source of garnets used in manufacturing for at least 3500 years. 

See also...

Nautilus shell beads from the End Pleistocene and Early Holocene of Alor Island, Indonesia.

Body ornamentation appears to have been a key piece of Human behaviour from the dawn of our species, and in Island Southeast Asia traces of such ornamentation, or other forms of artistic expression, is often the first evidence of Homo sapiens moving into an area. For a long time, rock art and shell beads from this region have automatically been assumed to be of Holocene age, but in the past decade it has become clear that many such items are much older, and that Modern Humans may have been active in the area as much as 50 000 years ago.

In a paper published in the journal Antiquity on 15 August 2023, Michelle Langley of the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and School of Environment and Science at Griffith University,  Shimona Kealy of Archaeology and Natural History and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage ar the Australian National University, Mahirta of the Departemen Arkeologi at the Universitas Gadjah Mada, and Sue O’Connor, also of Archaeology and Natural History and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage ar the Australian National University, report the discovery of crafted beads made from the shells of Nautilus pompilius from Alor Island in the Eastern Lesser Sunda Islands, which can be directly dated to about 12 000 years before the present.

The beads were found in Makpan Cave, a lava tube between the modern villages of Halmin and Ling Al on the southwest coast of the island. The entrance to the cave is currently 386 m from the shoreline, and 37.5 m above sealevel. Since Alor Island is extremely steep sided, the cave would have been within easy walking distance of the sea, even during Pleistocene low sealevel stands.

Location of Makpan on Alor Island, Indonesia (A)–(B) and site context showing main excavation pit outlined with range poles (C)–(D). Shimona Kealy in Langley et al. (2023).

Excavations at the cave were carried out by a joint team from the Australian National University and Universitas Gadjah Mada in June-July 2016. A 2 m x 2 m trench was excavated in four blocks (A, B, C, and D) in a series of 5 mm 'spits', down to a depth of 1.5 m, then a single block (B) was further excavated down to a depth of 3.5 m, where beach sand sterile of artefacts was found. Because only block B was excavated tor the full extent of the occupation, Langley et al. concentrate on this block in their study.

Stratigraphic sections for the upper 2 × 2m excavation at Makpan. Langley et al. (2023).

Dating of the sequence was based upon charcoal where this was found, and marine shells where it was not. Occupation of the site was divided into five phases. Phase 1 began about 43 076 years before the present, and lasted for about 28 000 years, incorporating spits 68-58. Phase 2 covers the Terminal Pleistocene, beginning from about 13 965 years before the present, and incorporates spits 57-37. Phase 3 is a substantial shell midden comprising spits 36-21, believed to have been laid down at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, starting from about 11 805 years before the present. Phase 4 covers the Early-Middle Holocene, starting from about 10 430 years before the present, and comprising spits 20-9. Phase 5 comprises Neolithic deposits, starting from about 3663 years before the present, and comprises spits 8-1. There are some detectable gaps in this record, most notably one of about 3500 years between the end of Phase 2 and the start of Phase 1, with a shorted gap between Phase 3 and Phase 4. The rate at which sediments were deposited appears to have changed over time, with the highest sedimentation rate during Phase 3 and the lowest during Phase 1.

Stratigraphic sections for the lower 1 × 1m square B excavation at Makpan. Langley et al. (2023).

Langley et al. recovered at total of 577 shell beads and bead fragments, of which 36 were deemed to be complete or near complete (i.e. more than 75% of the original bead was present. Of the 36 complete or near complete beads, 33 are of an ovoid shape, with two central holes, while the remaining three are roughly circular with a single hole at their centre.

‘Intact’ (more than 75% intact) beads recovered from Makpan. Bead provenance (Square and Spit) is listed below each artefact, along with their analysis identifier shown in parentheses. Michelle Langley in Langley et al. (2023).

The majority of the beads were found within the midden layer, and are estimated to be dated to between 11 805 and 11 223 years before the present. However, some beads were found within Phase 4, potentially as late as 7284 years before the present, as well as in phases 2 (11 000-13 500 years before the present) and 1 (21 500-40 500 years before the present). The layers within the deposits at Makpan are generally considered to have good stratigraphic integrity, with little movement between the layers, however, small beads would have a high potential for working themselves downwards in loose deposits, so, since the lowest two beads came from spits 63 and 60 (likely to be more than 20 000 years old, and potentially significantly so), Langley et al. decided that it would be prudent to directly date these before including them in the study. Unfortunately, it was not possible to relocate either of these beads, which had apparently been lost since the excavation. 

A direct radiocarbon date was therefore obtained from the third and fourth lowest beads found, a fragment and whole bead recovered from spit 58, at the end of Phase 1. This produced ages of 12 800-11 400 years for the fragment and 12 440-11 810 for the whole bead, slightly younger than a marine shell from spit 57 (the beginning of Phase 2), which was dated to 13 276-12 930 years before the present. This supports an End Pleistocene age for the beads, and suggests a revision of a dating system where Phase 2 starts with spit 57 may need to be revised, given that direct dates have not previously been obtained from spits 58 or 59, and the similarity between the deposits of phases 1 and 2, which makes differentiating a boundary difficult.

All of the beads appear to have been made from the shells of Nautilus pompilius, a Cephalopod Mollusc with an nacreous aragonitic shell which typically lives 200-300 m beneath the surface, but can survive as deep as 800 m. Nautilus are occasionally eaten by Humans, but are more often collected for their distinctive shells, which have an attractive orange, brown, and white pattern on their outer surface and an  iridescent nacreous interior.  Nautilus are caught by fishermen in the Philippines today, who use Bamboo and Rattan traps lowered to depths of 150-200 m. It is possible that the ancient inhabitants of Alor Island caught Nautilus, either intentionally or as a bycatch from other fishing activities (they are known to have been proficient fishermen), but more likely that they were collected from beaches, where they still wash up today.

Nautilus pompilius shell reaches to around 200mm in length, providing a large quantity of nacreous shell for material culture production. Michelle Langley in Langley et al. (2023).

All the intact and fragmentary beads were examined under a light microscope to look for traces of manufacture and use. Nacre is also known to have been used to make fishhooks at Makpan, so it was particularly important to be able to differentiate between bead fragments and fishhook fragments. Usefully, the examined fishhooks were all found to have been made from the shells of marine Gastropods of the genera Rochia and Turbo. Thus, the beads tend to be smaller and flatter than the hooks, which have a distinctive plano-convex shape. 

Typical fragments of two-holed beads. Scale bar is 1mm. Michelle Langley in Langley et al. (2023).

All the beads from Makpan are small, with intact specimens having a maximum width of between 4.4 mm and 11.6 mm. The overall shape of the bead, oval or circular, appears to have been achieved by controlled flaking, followed by grinding of the outer surface, though a significant proportion were never ground and retain a scalloped outer surface. The perforations were made with a handheld unifacial drill, which left striations on the shell surface, which do not form a full circle and have a wavey trajectory. This drilling was done from the inner, nacreous side of the shell, resulting in chips breaking away from the outer surface as the drill broke through. The striations left by the drilling suggest a stone tool was used.

Features of the Makpan Nautilus two-holed beads. (A) Near-complete example for Square B, Spit 18 with red ochrous residue between and in perforations; (B) & (C) Chipping on the outer shell surface created during unifacial drilling. From Square B, Spits 36 and 23, respectively; (D) & (E) Striations and red ochrous residue on back of bead from Square B, Spit 23; (E) Hand-held drilling of perforations on bead from Square B, Spit 23; Restriction of red ochrous residue to between the two perforations on bead from Square B, Spit 36; (G) polish on edge of bead from Square B, Spit 32. Scale bars are 1mm. Michelle Langley in Langley et al. (2023).

Surprisingly for small objects recovered from a site in a tropical environment, use wear and evidence of polishing can be observed on the beads. The high points of the outer (non-naceous) side of the beads are well polished, and the outer edges of the beads appear well rounded. The perforations are also well rounded, showing notching associated with a thread or string, with a distinct wear-notch between the two holes on the double-holed beads, as well as often having traces of a red, haematite-based pigment. This suggests that the beads were sewn, with their shiny nacreous side out, onto some form of soft fabric as a form of appliqué.

Indications of the mode of attachment on the two-holed beads. (Above) Examples of larger fragments from two-holed beads; (Below) mid-region of two-holed beads showing concentrations of residues and notches (indicated by red arrows). (A) Artefact 131; (B) Artefact 117; (C) Artefact 155. White scale bars are 1mm. Michelle Langley in Langley et al. (2023).

Many of the fragmentary beads appear to have broken across the centre part of the bead, and from the perforations to the outer edge by the shortest route. This supports the idea that they were sewn tightly to a cloth surface, creating a pressure point in the centre. Several beads also show signs of being delibarely ground or scratched with an rock on their exposed surface, possibly to increase their reflectivity. 

Langley et al. were able to split the double holed oval beads into four distinct groups, which they term A, B, C, and D. Type A have a distinctive elongated ellipse shape, while types B, C, and D are closer to round in shape, but fall into distinct size categories, Type B having a mean width of 10.5 mm, Type C having a mean width of 7 mm, and Type D having a mean width of 5.5 mm. Type A, B, and D beads were found throughout the sequence, but type C beads were only found in spits 30-34 (within the End Pleistocene shell midden).

Nautilus shell beads first appear at Makpan between 12 800 and 11 400 years ago and persist for about 5000 years. These beads present the oldest know evidence for appliqué decoration in Island Southeast Asia, although pigment-stained fragments of Nautilus shell have been found at Asitau Kuru on Timor-Leste which date back to at least 42 000 years ago. Further afield, the use of red pigments for both body decoration and for other forms of art is documented in Southeast Asia from a range of Pleistocene and Holocene sites, and such pigments appear to have been adopted by Homo sapiens in Africa and the Levant early in the history of our species. The Makpan beads appear to represent a new example of a persistent habit of combining red pigments with light or bright coloured objects.

Appliqué beads are widely documented in the Eurasian Palaeolithic archaeological record, using both shell and ivory as a material. Examples of this include the Arene Candide 1 burial from Italy, dated to between 28 000 and 27 000 years before the present, which had a cap with appliqué shell beads, and the Sunghir individuals from Vladimir Oblast in southern Russia, dating from between 33 000 and 30 000 years before the present, which had garments covered with ivory beads, both of which are attributed to the Gravettian Culture. The Gravettian is the oldest known culture to which the use of appliqué can confidently be attributed, although some older Aurignacian sites, such as Hohle Fels in Germany and Solutré in France have yielded beads which could have been used in appliqué decoration.

Although the Makpan beads are much later than the Eurasian examples, they form part of a shared cultural tradition found across several islands in southern Wallacea. Similar double-holed beads have been found on Kisar Island to the east of Alor Island, and Timor-Leste to the south, with one bead from Matja Kuru 2 on Timor-Leste directly dated to between 10 110 and 9629 years before the present, and another from Here Sorot Entapa on Kisar Island dated to 12 019–12 400 years before the present. This shows that the decorative tradition was shared between at least three islands in the region during the End Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Making garments covered with appliqué beads in this way would have required a considerable investment in time and labour, and such effort across multiple sites implies a shared worldview and culture across these sites, and the transmission of social information between these sites. 

The date at which these beads first appear correlates with the first appearance of obsidian tools on these islands; made with a material not found on any of the islands, and comes only very slightly after the appearance of fishhooks in the area, itself a manifestation of an increased investment in gaining resources from the sea. Polished shell adzes, considered another part of this shift to utilizing maritime resources, first appear on Obi Island in the Maluku islands in north-eastern Wallacea, and reach Timor by the early Holocene. These adzes are a rare part of these assemblages, with the oldest examples identified by pieces of shell which flaked from them during drilling, making it likely that the technology was in use quite a while before the oldest known examples which have been found.

It is likely that a trade  and social network which passed along technologies such as appliqué beads and materials such as obsidian would also have involved some genetic exchange, important for isolated communities on small islands, and such interchange of marriage partners across islands would have further deepened cultural ties and furthered the exchange of ideas, something potentially more important than the exchange of physical goods between islands, and which has been supported by recent genetic studies of End Pleistocene populations in Wallacea.

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Investigating the origin of a gold-coloured talc bead from the Kongo Kingdom of West-Central Africa.

Personal adornments are considered one of the key cultural traits of Modern Humans, and appear to have been more-or-less ubiquitous in all Human societies for at least the past 40 000 years. Adornments are used to convey information about an individuals social status, beliefs, gender identity, kinship, and affiliations, as well as personal taste, with these symbols typically being recognizable to other members of the society in which they live. Early adornments, in the form of perforated shells presumed to have been strung together as beads, appear in Africa north and south of the Sahara, as well as parts of the Middle East from about 82 000 years ago, with possible earlier use by the Aterian Culture of North Africa as long as 130 000 years ago (claims have been made for beads older than this, although these are not generally accepted anymore).

However, while there is strong evidence for these ancient items having been beads, with examples such as shells from Blombos Cave in South Africa, which show signs both of having sustained wear while hanging on a string, and of having been painted with red ochre, there is a gap in the archaeological record between about 70 000 and 450 0000 years ago, during which no beads are known, followed by a sudden re-appearance of beads, and their spreading to every inhabited landmass by about 40 000 years ago. These later beads are no longer made exclusively of shell, with bone and stone also being used as bead-making materials, and the appearance of pendants as well as simple strings of beads, and evidence that beads were being traded over quite long distances, at least in Southern Africa.

By the middle of first millennium BC, semi-precious stones were being widely used to make beads, and traded over wide areas, with examples having been used to demonstrate trade links between West and East Africa, the Indian Ocean rim, and Europe. However, while these high-status items appear to have been traded over wide areas, many people were still using beads made from local materials, with examples of locally-produced-and-used beads from Africa including the jasper beads known from Niger, a variety of stone and mineral beads from around Lake Turkana, in Kenya, and the stone beads of Njoro River Cave, also in Kenya.

Talc, talc-schist, soapstone, and steatite, are soft rocks easily carved into beads or other items, found widely in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite this, beads made from these materials are somewhat unusual on the continent. Talc is the softest of these minerals, and with a rating of 1 on the Mohs scale, is generally rated the softest mineral of any kind. It is variable in colour, ranging from white to green, depending on the nature and position of the metal ions within its crystal structure. Furthermore, while it's softness makes it easy to carve, it can be hardened by heating, reaching 3-5 on on the Mohs scale when heated to above 800°C and as much as 7 (equivalent to quartz) when heated to above 1000°C.

Talk which had apparently been collected with the intention of manufacturing something has been recovered from the Iron Age Thaba ya Batswana archaeological site, a stone walled enclosure to the south of Johannesburg, thought to date to about 1700 AD. Talk and soapstone were also utilized by early herders in East Africa to make beads and pendants. Away from Africa, soapstone items were widely used to make personal adornments in the Near East during the Neolithic, with items known from sites such as Çatalhöyük in Turkey, and Abu Hureyra, Tell Aswad, Dja’de el-Mughara, and Tell Halula, all in Syria, as well as sites in Israel, as well as and several Upper Palaeolithic Aurignacian sites from France, several sites associated with the Indus Valley Civilization in northern India, dated to between the 5th and 2nd millennia BC, the 10 000-year-old Arch Lake human burial site in New Mexico, and 15-16th century AD sites in eastern North America.

In a paper published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on 7 February 2023, Mafalda Costa of the HERCULES Laboratory at the University of Évora, and the Archaeometry Research Group at Ghent University, Pedro Barrulas, also of the HERCULES Laboratory at the University of Évora, Maria da Conceição Lopes of the Research Center in Archaeology and the Department of History, Archaeology and Arts at the University of Coimbra, João Barreira, also of the Research Center in Archaeology at the University of Coimbra, Maria da Piedade de Jesus of the Angolan Instituto Nacional Do Património Cultural, Sónia da Silva Domingos of the Angolan Centro Nacional de Investigação Científc, Peter Vandenabeele, also of the Archaeometry Research Group, and of the Raman Spectroscopy Research Group, at Ghent University, José Mirão, also of the HERCULES Laboratory, and of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Évora, present the results of a chemical and mineralogical characterization of a broken mustard-gold-colored stone bead excavated from the Lumbu archaeological site within Mbanza Kongo, the pre-colonial capitol of the  Kongo Kingdom, which covered much of what if now northern Angola and the west of the Democratic Republic of Kongo between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries AD.

The Kongo Kingdom is considered to have been highly socially stratified and centralized society prior to its first contact with Portuguese explorers in 1483. The Portuguese introduced Christianity to the nation, as well as a range of new technologies, and integrated it into a transatlantic trade network. The capital of this kingdom, Mbanza Kongo, was founded in the mid fourteenth century, and is considered to be the oldest continuously occupies settlement in West Central Africa, today being the capital of Zaire Province in northwest Angola. The Lumba archaeological site, uncovered during a three-month archaeological site in 2014, is thought to have either been a royal residence or a ceremonial court. The site comprises a dry-stone building made from irregularly shaped blocks, arranged in an uneven fashion, which led to the walls having considerable variation in thickness. Two radiocarbon dates have been obtained from pieces of charcoal from different parts of the site, these being 1637 and 1950.

The 2014 excavations produced a range of ceramic vessels, including Portuguese-made pottery, fragments of clay pottery, and a total of 53 beads, 52 of which were glass 'trade-beads' of European manufacture, but one, identified as 'Type 44' is a broken mustard-gold-colored bead, made from a softer material, initially thought to be clay. The surviving bead-fragment is about 8.7 mm in width, 9.0 mm long, and has a maximum thickness of 8.9 mm, with a central perforation with a maximum diameter of 5.6 mm. The unbroken end is rounded, possibly by contact with other beads on a string. In form, the bead resembles a monochrome elongate glass bead. It was found in Stratigraphic Unit 6 of area H17 at Lumba, along with several hexagonal blue glass beads made in Bohemia in the nineteenth century, and some blue and green glass beads thought to be of Venetian manufacture.

Stereomicroscope images of Type 44 bead found in Lumbu (Mbanza Kongo, Angola). Costa et al. (2023).

Examination of Type 44 under a stereomicroscope revealed it was made from a fine-grained material, with white, black, and dark brown mineral inclusions. The fine grains were found to be made from platy grains of magnesium silicate with a maximum size of 10 µm, making the substance talc. The mineral inclusions range from 5 to 30 µm in size, and appear to be a mixture of zircons, iron oxides, and iron-titanium oxides. During the examination, the bead was accidentally scratched with a fingernail, suggesting it has a hardness of about 2.5 on the Mohs scale. This could be consistent with a talc bead which has been heat-treated to harden it although mineral inclusions can also harden talc this much.

Trace element, and rare earth element, analysis has been used to distinguish talc-minerals from different environments. Talc which formed in marine environments tend to be more enriched in heavier rare earth elements, and depleted in lighter members of the group, as well as having very low levels of cerium and high levels of lanthanum, while talcs from terrestrial hydrothermal systems tend to be enriched in both heavy and light rare earth elements, but deficient in those in the middle of the range. Talcs from ultramafic environments tend to be enriched in chromium and nickel, which often reach levels around 2000 parts per million, while talcs from carbonate environments tend to be very low in these elements.

Type 44 is enriched in heavy rare earth elements, depleted in cerium, and enriched in lanthanum, suggesting that it is made from talc which was precipitated from seawater. The specimen also has a boron concentration typical of seawater, and very low levels of both chromium and nickel, with suggests it formed in a carbonate-rich marine environment, probably with a small amount of detrital material.

Mbanza Kongo sits on rocks of the 575-550-million-year-old Schisto-Calcaire Subgroup, a sequence of sedimentary rocks including of limestones, dolostones, siltstones, and shales with rare intercalations of sandstones, cherts, and evaporites. Two types of talc have been recovered from this sequence, the Pseudo-Oolithe de Kisantu, in which talk oolites are found within quartz-rich layers within a dolomite, and an authigenic hydrothermal talc, which is found associated with copper and lead-zinc mineralizations.

The talc oolites appear to have been formed diagenetically from the remineralization of magnesium-rich clay, and are quite unlike the material from which Type 44 was made. The low levels of chromium and nickel in the material appear to rule out the hydrothermal talc. The talc-schists of Nigeria can also be ruled out as an origin, as these formed within an ultramafic environment. The pattern of rare earth elements and boron concentration seen in the material from which Type 44 is made could support it having been manufactured from an unknown talc-source within the Schisto-Calcaire Subgroup, although such a talc would be likely to have aluminum and iron oxide levels similar to those of the Pseudo-Oolithe de Kisantu, while these are at much higher levels in the Type 44 than in the oolites. However, the Schisto-Calcaire Subgroup outcrops over a wide area in northern Angola, as well as in the vicinity of the Congo River near Luozi, and near Inkisi and Kisantu within the Democratic Republic of Congo, with much of this area, including the area directly around Mbanza Kongo, being very poorly explored by geologists, making it quite possible that unknown talc-deposits within this sequence. Furthermore, the range of materials used in pottery-making in the Kongo Kingdom suggests that the people of the kingdom had a good understanding of the local geology prior to contact with the Portuguese. and even produced talc-rich pottery in the provinces of Nsundi, Mbata, and Mpemba (which is where Mbanza Kongo is located). Since carved talc objects are known from other African kingdoms which were contemporary with Kongo, and likely to have been in contact with it, such as Esie in southwestern Nigeria and Great Zimbabwe in the southeast of modern Zimbabwe, it is quite likely that the people of Kongo had the geological knowledge to seek, locate, and exploit talc resources.

Although Type 44 is only a single (broken) bead, it represents the first known example of a locally made item apparently used for personal adornment. The bead appears to have been made within the Kongo Kingdom, using a source of material familiar to the people of the kingdom, but lost to modern geologists, although it is (obviously) not possible to say quite where this source was. The bead bears a notable resemblance to the elongated monochrome glass beads made in Europe from the sixteenth century onwards, and known to have been exported to the Kongo Kingdom, where glass-making was not known, and appears to represent local craftsmen responding to an introduced European fashion trend.

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