Developing a Methodology for the Identification of Shell Bead Money in the Archaeological Record

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There is evidence for the use of shell bead money by hunter-gatherer communities dating back at least 2000 years, yet there has been little research done on this topic. In her recent paper, Dr. Lynn H Gamble (2020) draws from anthropological theory about money, ethnographic records, and bead morphology from Chumash sites in southern California to develop a methodological framework, including four criteria, to identify shell bead money in the archaeological record. Drawing from Gamble’s methodology, an analysis was conducted on the criteria for two case study sites. In order to form a baseline, the criteria were tested on the Yurok culture, a proximity site in Northern California. The test was then expanded to Sub-Saharan Africa and the recent studies by Jennifer Miller (2021) on the 50,000-year-old tradition of ostrich eggshell bead use. Testing the criteria through these two case studies provides new ways of thinking about shell bead money and may suggest a need to change or further develop Gamble’s criteria. Developing this methodology not only assists in the identification of new shell bead money sites, but opens the door for more in depth research on trade, sociality, and other aspects related to the use of shell money.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53612