Origin and Use of Shell Bead Money in Southern California

Summary

The Chumash Indians of southern California made and used beads of stone, bone, and a variety of species of shell for over 8,000 years. A noted shift in shell beads occurred about 800 years ago with the appearance of a new bead type, cupped beads, made from the thick callus of the Callianax biplicata, a portion of the shell that had previously not been used. These types of beads were common throughout the Chumash region and elsewhere during the Late period and have been identified as money beads on the basis of their distributions in cemeteries and other contexts. They are more widely distributed than other bead types, indicating that most individuals had access to them, although certain individuals were buried with hundreds or thousands of cupped beads while others had significantly fewer. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts document that shell bead money was used for many types of transactions, including the purchase of subsistence items such as fish, acorns, seeds, and otter skins; most manufactured goods, including steatite ollas and digging stick weights; and some services, such as transporting people or goods in plank canoes between the islands and the mainland.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18829