Overview of Cultural Context
In 2006, a group of perforated marine gastropod shell beads found at the Western Asian site of Skhul in Israel and the North African site of Oued Djebbana in Algeria were dated to the Middle Palaeolithic period, 100,000 to 135,000 years ago. (fig 1.1) The shells from Skhul were found by archaeologists to be part of a layer containing human fossils. Together with the remoteness of these sites from the nearest shorelines, this indicates deliberate transport by humans for symbolic use and demonstrates the earliest recorded emergence of modern human behaviour (Vanhaereny, et al 2006: pp1785 -1788). This predates by 25,000 years, the discovery in 2004 of 39 perforated shell beads dating from the Middle Stone Age (75 thousand years ago), at the Blombos cave site on the shoreline of the Indian Ocean (Henshilwood, et al 2004: 404). With such early origins, these finds position the wearing of jewellery as the oldest of basic human instincts though one can only surmise the power or significance, if any, this bestowed on the wearer at that time.
Artefacts remaining from earliest history show jewellery has been a potent and universal part of human experience. Shells, beads, stones, then metal have been fashioned to adorn the human body to create images of power and status, magic and desire. (Game 2005: xiii).
Jewellery can be understood on a number of different levels; as a means of communicating position, status, rank, of measuring wealth and indicating gender, of conveying sentiment or as a means of simple body decoration. Devoid of any sense of utility it is moreover, capable of bestowing a certain power upon the wearer as in ritualistic or shamanistic ceremony e.g. that used by pre-Columbian Indians, and in ceremonial use, such as royal regalia (more commonly called ‘Crown Jewels’). During the seventeenth century,
Apart from being an object of great price it is a symbol and a sign. It was even more than that at the beginning of the Renaissance when it had been endowed with a quasi-magical power. “Every bishop wears a sapphire in his pastoral ring,” says the Mercure Galant of 1678, “to remind him of his duty to help victims of the plague and cure them by means of the virtue which nature has vested in this precious stone”. (Lanllier & Pini 1983: 40).
The wearing of jewellery has long been an indicator of familial wealth and of celebration in many societies. For example the ornate chest and head decorations worn on special occasions by the women of Marken in the Netherlands, and the significantly heavy chest decorations worn in Estonia, ‘speak’ of the same status as the extravagant headdresses worn currently by the sons and daughters of the Dong people in China’s remote and mountainous provinces of Guangxi, Guizhou and Hunan. (fig 1.2)
The very nature of jewellery and its cultural context is a well-documented subject. For the 1998 exhibition Jewellery Moves, it is adequately defined as a;
...collective noun for a series of relatively small scale objects which can be attached to clothing, or worn directly on the body, for personal adornment. (Game & Goring 1998: 5).