Ostrich eggshell beads

[3] Archaeologists have traced their origins back to the Late Pleistocene, with evidence suggesting they were crafted as early as 75,000 years ago in Africa.

[3] They can be useful to archaeologists as a way to study symbolic meanings, the creation and maintenance of social identities, exchange, and can even be used to radiocarbon date sites.

[7] It may have been a seasonal process and regarded as a social event in some areas, with bead manufacturing occurring more frequently in large camps.

[9] In southern Africa, historical ethnographic data all point to the use of iron tools for perforating the ostrich eggshell beads.

[10] Collins et al. argue that there were heat alterations to the ostrich eggshell beads found at a site called Grassridge Rockshelter in South Africa.

[2] However, in a 2019 study by Miller and Sawchuk, the diameter size of ostrich eggshell beads did not appear to change during the period of the arrival of herding in eastern Africa.

[12] Data derived from studying some modern African populations suggests that these beads hold symbolic meaning as personal adornment.

[3] The ethnographic data also show that individual beads can be used as a means to display social information, such as details about group norms.

They further suggest that the differences that emerged in style of the beads after this period indicate that the regional exchange network seemed to have broken down after 33 thousand years ago.

[11] Jacobson suggests that social identity might have been established by the size of ostrich eggshell beads, differentiating the hunter-gatherers and the herders in an area where there would have been a lot of economic contact between the groups.