- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Waist ornament of strings of black coral and white shell discs with wooden spacers and plaited plant fibre ties. [El.B 'DCF 2004-2006 What's Upstairs?' 6/6/2005]
- Geographical reference
- Bioko [Fernando Póo]
- Date / Period
- Date made: On or before 1874
- Date collected
- ?On or before 1874
- Acquisition information
- Transferred: 08/03/1886
- Materials and processes
- Material Shell, Material Gorgonia Coral Animal, Material Wood Plant, Material Bead, Material String, Material Plant Fibre, Process Plaited, Process Perforated, Process Strung
- Dimensions
- Length: max 1200 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1886.1.555
- Associated publications
- This object features in the Museum's audio tour produced in 2010. Transcription as follows: “A bead does not occur naturally, it is a man-made decorative object. In the case to the right, you’ll see examples of ‘unworked’ beads, that is seeds or shells that have been left as they are and simply pierced and threaded to make a necklace. In contrast, this case and the ones above and to the left, contain beads that have been carefully worked: organic materials that have been cut, shaped, smoothed or polished, to turn them into beads. This case contains beads mainly from America and Oceania. They are made from a wide variety of materials, including various seashells, but also bird bones, dried grass stems, coconut shell, rat’s teeth, bird quills, nuts, and coral. The shallow and warm waters around the islands of the Pacific are ideal environments for coral reefs and a particular type of coral species known as gorgonia, is commonly used to make beads for ornaments. The gorgonian corals are sea fans with a black or brown skeleton. At the back of the case, in the centre, you can see a piece of gorgonia stem, which is dark and glossy in colour. This was collected in the 1870s during an expedition by HMS Challenger, a round the world voyage that made lots of discoveries about oceanography and identified more than 4500 new marine species. Beneath this is a finished necklace from the Solomon Islands made from gorgonia beads with a few shell beads. Lying along the back of the case is a belt similarly made of alternating gorgonia and shell, with wooden spacers. The style is of the Caroline Islands, just north of the Solomon Islands, but our records show that it was once thought to have originated thousands of miles away, off the coast of Equatorial Guinea in Africa, another region where this family of corals is found. Either way, from both these examples you can appreciate that a lot of effort must have gone into cutting, shaping and perforating the coral chunks into such small, smooth and uniform beads. Many of the beads on display are made from shells, not least because of their colour and iridescence. Beads made from deliberately perforated sea snail shells have been found by archaeologists in North Africa, and are thought to be up to 100,000 years old. This puts beads among, not just the earliest evidence for personal decoration, but among the earliest evidence for human material culture in general, at a time when anatomically modern humans were walking the earth alongside Neanderthal man. Shell necklaces are still made all across the world today and so they represent one of mankind’s oldest continuing manufacturing traditions.” (Written by Bryony Reid and Helen Hales) References: • Deacon, M., A. L. Rice and C. P. Summerhayes, Understanding the oceans: a century of ocean exploration, London: UCL Press (2001), p.46 • http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1670011.htm • http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=517 • http://coralpedia.bio.warwick.ac.uk/en/octocorals/gorgonia_flabellum.html [HH 26/10/2010]
Search terms: Ornament, Clothing, Waist Ornament, Belt