Welcome back and happy Easter! This month we’re heading over to Africa to look at the rich history of ceramic beadmaking in Burkina Faso and Mali! Particularly in the Iron Age (~1200 BCE – 500 BCE), societies across West Africa had abundant clay crafts as well as robust inter-regional trade. Sonja Magnavita’s “The Beads of Kissi, Burkina Faso” (2003) details the contents of an excavated cemetery in Kissi, including more that 4,500 beads made from shells, bone, glass, quartz, carnelian, and–yes–ceramic. It seemed that ceramic beads from before the 9th century came in barrel and cylinder shapes whereas after they commonly took the form of segmented units of 3-8 beads (figures 5-6 shown below).
While archeologists know that ceramic beads were used frequently in necklaces, anklets, and waist beads, Magnativa’s team had no luck finding any ceramic jewelry in situ–that roughly means “as it was left” in latin. I found it very interesting that glass beads seemed to be a marker of wealth in Burkina Faso, as Magnavita notes that glass beads were only found in graves with additional “exotic” crafts/items. Some of the glass beads from the Kissi site can be seen below:
With all of this written information gathered, I’ve also collected a handful of images from both Mali and Burkina Faso (very close together, luckily for me) for reference and inspiration. Not only can you find the images in this months Gallery tab, but I actually encourage you to go look at them! While I definitely won’t be able to replicate the intricately beaded cuff of a royal Xhosa woman, I will certainly be drawing inspiration from these images.
That’s all for now, and I’ll see you later this week (hopefully!!) with the Komboloi bead results. Cheers!