Personal Adornment and Expressions of Status: Beads and the Gambia River’s Atlantic Trade

Abstract

The presence of glass trade beads at Atlantic trade period sites is often thought to provide limited information for the analyst. Several archaeologists working in West Africa have addressed the difficulty of using beads as chronological markers, let alone using these objects to discern local patterns of demand, preference, or consumption. Overall, few scholars have moved beyond the development of descriptive catalogues to determine what information can be ascertained from bead collections other than chronological data. At Juffure on the Gambia River, bead attributes such as shape, color, and size inform the analyst of how change in the demand for and availability of beads were tied to changing local notions of taste and value.

Serving Status on the Gambia River Before and After Abolition

“…As new communities, in that both Juffure and Bathurst were founded in response to shifts in the Atlantic trade, their residents were able to manipulate old and new forms of identity assertion to gain or maintain their position in the local economic order. Niumi had become dependent on the Atlantic trade to access world markets to acquire the material goods they used to assert status (Gijanto 2011a;Wright 2012:111). Recognizing the role of material culture in creating or projecting a desired identity, an aesthetic form is then a resource through which objects can create or undermine the existing social order as people and status become synonymous with things.…”

“…In eighteenth-century contexts a total of 154 ware types were identified, many of which were restricted to episodic contexts. While other methods of display were enacted, such as forms of personal adornment (Gijanto 2011a), archaeological investigations demonstrate that status was actively expressed through food at Juffure.…”

Personal adornments in West-Central Africa—the case study of a talc bead from the Kongo Kingdom (Mbanza Kongo, Angola)

“…Semi-precious stone adornment pieces found in both East and West Africa are generally considered to be evidences of trans-Saharan, European, or Indian Ocean trade (Chami et al 2002;Gijanto 2011), which may have been in place as early as the middle of the 1st millennium BC in East Africa (Chami et al 2002). However, local or regional production should not be excluded, as evidenced by the extraction of jasper intended for bead production in Niger and reported by Posnansky (1981).…”

Nyishi Beads Tradition of Yazali: The Changes and Continuity

“…Beads also hold economic significance as it was widely used as primitive currency as stated by Graebner ‘beads retains attributes that the economists would consider as money it is portable, does not decay and roughly commensurable’. Exotic glass beads with embedded socio-cultural significance were also extensively traded and formed an important element in early trade network between Europe and Africa (Gijanto, 2011).…”