Bead in the form of a shell, Egypt, 2040-1648 BCE (Cleveland Museum of Art) 

Wearing jewelry makes us human. Across time, every culture has developed the tradition of adornment. This universal human practice is linked to our desire to understand, reflect, and honor the beauty of the natural world around us. Adornment may also reflect a desire to distinguish ourselves from other animals—and from each other. Part of the power of jewelry is that it reflects the unique story of the person who wears it, while at the same time connecting us all as humans.

Before the invention of metalsmithing, humans wore jewelry made from simple organic materials. Shells, seeds, flowers, and berries, as well as fossils, bones, and teeth, were strung together with twine or sinew. The universal attraction of beads made from (or made to resemble) organic elements found in nature spans cultures and millennia. 

The oldest piece of jewelry ever found is a necklace made of mollusc shells, strung together by humans during the Stone Age 75,000 years ago. The shells were selected for their size, transported over long distances, and embellished with red ochre. Archaeologists have found even earlier groups of pierced shells dating from 142,000-150,000 years ago. They theorize that these early strands of shells may represent the first evidence of artistic creativity, language, and even symbolism among early humans. For the first time, humans began communicating complex meaning through objects—specifically, through jewelry and the practice of adornment.

Shell beads from Cro-Magnon, France, 30,000 years old (Smithsonian Museum)

What makes jewelry symbolic? Like all art, the meaning of jewelry is constructed through its context. We wear jewelry not only for its beauty, but also for its ability to carry meaning, to evoke a feeling or a memory, to communicate an idea or affiliation, or to commemorate a place, an event, or a person. In these ways, wearing jewelry can be thought of as one of the earliest and most enduring forms of communication.

Shell necklace, Egypt, 3850-2960 BCE (Museum of Fine Arts Boston)

Over time, jewelry began to incorporate more unusual and rarer materials. Its value was increasingly derived not only from its beauty, but from the uniqueness of its components. This included metal, first and foremost gold, as well as stones and materials found in only a few locations or in faraway lands, such as cowrie shells, obsidian, lapis, or amber, which once was so rare and valuable it was traded at a higher price than gold. 

Cowrie Shell Girdle of Sithathoryunet, Middle Kingdom, Egypt, ca. 1887–1813 BCE (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Jewelry can communicate volumes about the individuals who wore it and the social and cultural contexts in which they lived. This is one of the reasons jewelry has been sought and studied by archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians since the dawn of these fields. While jewelry can be used as a measure of wealth and status, it can also indicate an individual’s beliefs and the traditions they practice, their connections to family and other groups, and what they fear and what they hope for, among other things. Although a piece of jewelry is valued for its intrinsic beauty and as an art form in its own right, it can also be considered as a powerful object charged with meaning.