cowries (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marissa G Triola.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Maritime Archaeology in West Africa", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Manillas and cowry shells served as alternative currencies in the trans-Atlantic trade in West Africa. Cowries are marine snails native to the Indian Ocean whose shells were brought into West Africa by trans-Saharan traders and adopted as an everyday alternative currency exchangeable for anything from food to slaves. Manillas are brass...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Heath.

 The commoditization of cowrie shells in the 17th and 18th centuries was central to the economics of the consumer revolution of the early modern world. Cowries drove the Africa trade that cemented economic relationships between rulers, investors, merchants, and planters in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. From their origins in the Pacific, to the markets of India, from Europe to West Africa, and from West Africa to the New World, cowries played a central role as both commodities and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara Heath.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond Ornamentation: New Approaches to Adornment and Colonialism" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Indo-Pacific cowrie shells entered North America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as part of colonial expansion reliant on a global network of trade that commoditized both people and animals. Over the course of the 19th century, Indigenous people of the mid-west and Great Plains incorporated these...