J is for Jewelry

All kept objects have a purpose.

It’s a basic rule of archaeology, the discipline where people dig up other people’s graves and trash. What gets buried with a person is generally thought to be valuable. What remains at settlements, even discarded, was thought to be there for a reason.

When it comes to carved objects, though, whose purpose is not shelter, food, or defense, the logic gets a little squirrelly. If scholars can argue the items are religious, like a “venus” figurine or ankh symbol, it might be filed under protection or belief systems. Let’s explore the purpose for personal ornamentation as the archaeologists call it. We just call it Jewelry.

The ancient history of Jewelry is interesting for several reasons, which roughly follow the approach I’ve taken on other posts.

1. Define Jewelry–this seemed to stump early researchers which influenced how jewelry was analyzed.
2. When and Where? Mind-bogglingly old is the answer, with surprising origins.
3. Around the world? And what’s it for? Once populations centers were established, societies created sophisticated jewelry one after the other, parallel craftsmanship.

Just as humans painted art on caves and rocks around the world, they made themselves pretty things to wear.

Personal Ornamentation Finally Begins to Shine

It’s hard enough to date items, especially the older they are. Time has worn away what we might recognize. Are scratches on a shell 400,000 years ago considered art? (Answer: yes) If the shell has a hole in it, does that make it jewelry? (Answer: yes) Archaeologists had to grapple with whether something was meant to be worn or looked at rather than leftovers from a meal with random markings.

The history of archaeology as a discipline made this more complicated. Before it was created, the diggers were “mere” grave robbers, taking shiny things out and selling them for whatever they could get. There was little thought to what the things “meant.” A good portion of the jewelry that ended up in collections or museums from the ancient world fits this profile. If it had precious metal or gems on it, it fetched a pretty price, but separate from its place of origin, professionals later had a hard time figuring out what, who, and when. Later, the discipline of archaeology took off in the 19th century, with big finds like Troy and Tut’s tomb bringing the spotlight and some rigor to the grave robbing.

Still, even when the more professorial (and slightly more scrupulous) researchers did the good work of noting where and how they found the item, if it was deemed to be jewelry–personal ornamentation–it was ignored unless it had gold or jewels attached. At first, “fashion items” that seemed to have no function were simply bundled and sent to the museums to deal with.

Then, when jewelry was given its due as a sophisticated or ornate piece of human workmanship, it was thrown over to the art historians. But the art historians had a hierarchical sorting system: parietal and portable. Parietal meant cave paintings, which were symbolic and praised to the roof. As archaeologist Oscar Abadia explains, these precious few were considered miraculous “for their realism.” Portable art, in contrast, meant figurines or jewelry which was manufactured. If it was made to be worn or touched, it was generally overlooked.

This categorization of art=higher quality and artisan/manufactured=lower quality meant that cave paintings sucked up a lot of attention. Jewelry, not so much. This was further problematic given that those who chose to don scarabs, ankhs, lions, eagle claws, or any manner of fertility figurines were also looking to the gods for a little extra support. People buried with such personal ornamentation hoped to take all that symbolism with them into the afterlife. But it was until the 1970s that time was spent on interpreting the meaning of manufactured art.

Now, it’s fairly routine for personal ornamentation to undergo the same interpretation as a painted symbol on the wall or cloth. It’s also clear that jewelry began before the Ice Age. People fashioned things to wear to make themselves feel favored by the gods, to take on the positive qualities of the natural world around them, and to signal their superiority to others. Those are obvious useful purposes that jewelry can have. It can also simply be attractive to others and make the wearer feel better. Need there be more “purpose” than that?

Wearing Signs

Had the scratched clam shell above been perforated, it would have been called a pendant, rather than simply art. Early humans certainly wore their share of shells with holes in them. Typically, they would be strung with animal sinew or vines, which would decay in the centuries before shell or bone. Some of the oldest personal ornaments ever found were shells with holes in them, discovered in 2006 in Qafzeh Cave, Israel, and dated back to 80-130,000 ya. Many of the shells had smeared colors on them, ochre smeared from stones which were also placed around buried bones. Thus, it’s thought the colored stones were favored by those who were buried or part of a sacred burial rite. These were the earliest of Homo sapiens.

A similar find, from a different type of hominid is even more curious. A set of eagle claws, individually perforated and arranged by size, was found in another 130,000-year-old site in Croatia. This burial ground was for Homo neanderthalis; thus, Neanderthals may have fashioned some of the first jewelry. The find was so surprising that some of the initial researchers insisted the site was misdated, thinking that Neanderthals were not capable of symbolic thought. Radiocarbon dating proved them wrong and showed that Neanderthals were also interested in capturing the ferocity and strength of the animals around them.

Others might wish to capture a different sensibility. In one of the oldest human-shaped figurines ever found, the Venus of Hohle Fels in Germany is @42,000 years old. Clearly a fertility symbol, its shoulders are topped by a notched hole. This symbol of female essence was meant to be worn as a necklace.

Precious Means Both Shiny and Rare, Which Makes the Wearer….

If humans were fashioning necklaces and amulets almost before they were weaving clothes, forming pots, and definitely before they were planting crops, imagine what they could make after agriculture, population growth, cities. Once they started building stone towers and ziggurats, then the necklaces and amulets would began to contain precious metals and gems. In the earliest site where gold was found, Varna Necropolis @4600 BCE, those who were buried with gold were the wealthy, the leaders, based on other signs. From early on, gold was associated with the elite.

Even 6000 years ago, gold was considered precious because it’s malleable, free of tarnish, and shiny. It’s also rare. As soon as one fellow became jealous of That Guy’s necklace and could not easily make is own, the price of gold was set high. In similar fashion, stones and metals like lapis lazuli, copper, emerald, or silver were valued both because the cost to acquire them was high and because they were what the elite wore. Valuable means you have it and I don’t.

Far from being less valued than painted art, in fact, jewelry arguably was seen by the ancients as symbolic of value itself. The Mycenaens — Agamemnon and Achilles — went to Troy allegedly to get Helen back. But really, they went for the treasure. Whether it was from Troy or some other conquest, the Mycenaeans, the early Greeks, had enough gold to make funeral masks out of it. The famous one allegedly is of Agamemnon himself, although the 1650 BCE date precedes the supposed date of the Trojan War by centuries. Jewelry was also a way for treasure to take a specific form. A jeweled pendant for Tutankhamen is more interesting than lumps of gold and stacks of beads and gems.

The most common form jewelry found in museums–the end state for archaeological finds–is necklaces, although there are also belts, brooches, crowns, diadems, and occasionally earrings. Earrings were avoided in some cultures, but the Egyptians and Mesopotamians were big fans. These earrings were a gift from King Shulgi, the dude we saw yesterday who had made the first icehouse in Year 13.

Whatever You Prefer is the Most Valued

The Chinese, on the other hand, were not keen on earrings. Even today, some Chinese video sites blur the ears of those with adornments, particularly men. The Chinese did appreciate silver, even more so than gold. Their most valued gemstone was jade, to which they had access but still prized. Jade was hard and durable, so wearing it might convey those qualities, in the same way that the eagle claws might have made early humans fierce. The necklaces formed from Chinese milling machines of the Zhou and Han Dynasty were, however, spectacularly more sophisticated than their ancient Neanderthal cousins.

Last but not least, we can look at the delicate carving on this turtle necklace from Mesoamerica. Remember that these folks migrated 30,000 years earlier. and aside from meeting an occasional stray Pacific Islander, the Olmecs, Mayan, and Aztecs were isolated from Europe and Asia. Their ideas for jewelry were independently created, even though their carvings were as just as delicate, durable, intricate, and pleasing to the wearer.

I still have a pendant I bought at a summer Finn Camp rummage sale @1972. It’s a spiral, which has mystical meanings for some, which I wasn’t aware of when I was 11 but have appreciated ever since. I know it was made by a little old lady or man in their basement with pliers and a torch, but it feels more ancient to me. I’m quite fond of it and wear it often for good luck.

I’ll probably be buried in it, which is, in part, what jewelry is for.