Body ornaments are powerful wordless means of communication. They integrate deep immaterial and intimate values and draw the vision of the world of the people who made and display them. Beyond the embellishing function, adorning the body with symbols materialized by beads, tattoos or garments is a strong action likely to reinforce social bonds, stimulate interactions and contribute even to forging individual and collective identities. Beads, pearls and jewels are in addition excellent stimuli for curiosity and have always been generator of knowledge.
Exploring the Neolithic to trace back the mechanisms by which human communities innovated their body ornamentations with new materials and types of beads is akin of affording new insights into how the vast knowledge and meticulous skills of modern jewelry have first germinated and then flourished. Accordingly, PRECIOUS explores the significance of the earliest semi-precious stones discovered in the Near East and the Nile Valley. These colorful and resistant varieties of stones such as carnelian, agate, turquoise, and amazonite were transformed into beads and pendants with which the Neolithic communities composed necklaces, bracelets, diadems, etc. and adorned their bodies.
The major aim is to understand the production and use systems of these prestigious beads that have emerged and developed in parallel with the establishment of fully farming communities in the Near East during the 8th millennium cal. BC and later in the Nile Valley during the 5th millennium.
How to explain the increased demand for highly prestigious goods in the light of the major socio-economic changes occurred during the Neolithic? Did semi-precious stone bead crafts require skillful artisans and a high level of know-how? Were there significant differences in the production and use systems of semi-precious beads between the earliest farming communities of the Near-Eastern and those emerged in the Nile Valley via dispersal outside the Near-eastern core?
To answer these questions, beads discovered in burials from major Near Eastern and Nubian archaeological sites are analyzed through a microwear quantitative approach. For the first time in the field of stone ornaments, high precision surface texture analysis is applied using the technique of the Confocal Scanning Microscopy (CSM) and metrology software. This method is chosen because it delivers quantitative data through measurements of surface micro-texture that can be processed statistically, thus providing a robust interpretative frame.
The documentation of the technical and use-wear traces observed on the Neolithic stone beads is the first step and objective of the project. Their interpretation will rely on the second objective which consists in the creation of a microwear referential for comparison based on the analyses of ethnographic and experimental beads. The ethnographic collection is composed from a series of carnelian and agate beads manufactured in traditional modern Indian and Yemeni workshops, while the experimental one will be created to document specific drilling techniques and different modalities of use. The final objective will build on the results obtained to reconstruct the cycle of transformation (manufacture, uses and eventual recycling events) of the Neolithic semi-precious beads, classify their qualities and interpret them in the light of the archaeological, chronological and the biological identities of the individuals with which they were associated.
