Jewellery
Jewellery is one of the oldest types of archaeological artefact, and the oldest known examples are 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells. Long before written language, a perforated shell strung on animal sinew could carry meaning. In the absence of writing, adornment became a way to communicate, signalling status, belief, and belonging. The word itself traces back to the Latin jocale, meaning plaything, anglicised through the Old French jouel. How did a plaything become a marker of power, a store of wealth, and a profession that one Austrian grave forced archaeologists to reconsider entirely? Why do the same basic forms, the ring, the necklace, the brooch, persist across thousands of years, while a nose ornament or an ankle adornment thrives in one culture and vanishes in another? This is the story of why humans cover their bodies in metal and stone, and what those choices reveal.
A wedding ring marks social and personal status, and that single function hints at how many purposes jewellery can serve. Humans have worn it to fix clothing or hair in place, to signal ethnic or religious affiliation, to display art, and to carry personal meaning such as love, mourning, or luck. Many also treated it as a sound investment, or wore it out of superstition.
Amulets and devotional medals appear across cultures to provide protection or ward off evil. These take the form of symbols like the ankh, or stones, plants, animals, and body parts such as the Khamsa. Some carry glyphs, including stylised versions of the Throne Verse in Islamic art.
Most cultures have at some point stored large amounts of wealth in the form of jewellery. Numerous societies kept wedding dowries this way, or fashioned jewellery to store and display coins. Jewellery has even functioned as currency itself, as in the use of slave beads to buy and sell.
Brooches and buckles began as purely functional items, then evolved into decorative ones as their practical need diminished. Tiffany and Co. extended that same craftsmanship into objects beyond the body, producing inkwells in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that combined enamel and fine metals. Those inkwells were practical and artistic at once, a reminder that the line between tool and ornament has always been thin.
Diamonds were first mined in India, with some mines dating back to 296 BC, and the use of diamonds in jewellery dates to the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in 1477. Pliny may have referred to them under the name Adamas, though the exact stone he meant is debated. The British crown jewels contain the Cullinan Diamond, part of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found in 1905, weighing 3,106.75 carats. There is a darker side to the trade. Diamonds mined during recent civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and other nations have been labelled blood diamonds when sold to finance an insurgency.
Amber must be at least one million years old to be classified as such, and some amber reaches up to 120 million years old. It belongs to a small group of organic gemstones, produced by living organisms, alongside pearls and coral. The rest are inorganic, arising from minerals.
In Sanskrit, the word for ruby is ratnaraj, meaning king of precious stones, a fitting name for one of the most highly valued gems. Emeralds rank among the three main precious gemstones with rubies and sapphires, and some historians report that the Egyptians mined emeralds as early as 3500 BC. Sapphires offer a counterpoint. In the United States, blue sapphire tends to be the most affordable of the three major precious gemstones.
Turquoise is found in only a few places on Earth, and the world's largest turquoise-producing region is the southwest United States. Gemstones are selected not only for colour but for rarity, hardness on the Mohs scale, and optical properties such as refractive index. Some, like amethyst, have become less valued as extraction methods improved, and man-made stones such as cubic zirconia can now stand in for diamonds.
Gold is the only noble metal that is coloured; all the others are silvery. Its softness is corrected by alloying, which is why tradition focuses on carat, a measure of gold content in an alloy. Platinum alloys for jewellery range from 900, meaning 90 percent pure, to 950. The silver is usually sterling silver, at 92.5 percent fine.
Silversmiths, goldsmiths, and lapidaries shape these materials through forging, casting, soldering or welding, cutting, carving, and cold-joining with adhesives, staples, and rivets. Finishes follow. High-polish gives a reflective shine, satin or matte reduces it to accentuate diamonds, brushed leaves visible strokes, and hammered creates a wavy texture from a rounded steel hammer.
Beads run through this craft constantly, made of glass, gemstones, metal, wood, shells, and clay. The smallest, called seed beads, are used for the woven style and for an embroidery technique where they are sewn onto fabric to form broad collar pieces. Bead embroidery was popular during the Victorian era and is enjoying a renaissance today.
The British Assay office, which gives UK jewellery its Hallmark, holds the right to destroy any piece containing lead or lead solder, though it very rarely does so. Hemp and other twines have also found a place, giving certain jewellery a more natural feel.
In ancient Rome, only certain ranks could wear rings, and sumptuary laws later dictated who could wear what, based on a citizen's rank. Cultural rules shaped behaviour just as firmly. Earrings on Western men were considered effeminate in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The industry in the early 20th century launched a campaign to popularise wedding rings for men, even inventing a false history that claimed medieval roots. The campaign worked for wedding rings but failed for men's engagement rings. By the mid-1940s, 85 percent of US weddings featured a double-ring ceremony, up from 15 percent in the 1920s.
Islam considers the wearing of gold by men as Haraam. The majority of Islamic jewellery took the form of bridal dowries and was not handed down across generations. On a woman's death it was sold at the souk and recycled, which is why Islamic jewellery from before the 19th century is exceedingly rare.
Hip hop culture popularised the slang term bling-bling for ostentatious display. The same culture later gave rise to grills, a type of jewellery worn over the teeth, carrying the link between adornment and identity into the early 21st century.
The earliest known jewellery was not created by modern humans but by hominin precursors living in Europe and North Africa. Perforated shell beads found in 2019 in the Bizmoune cave near Essaouira, Morocco, are dated to about 142,000 years, and a reproduction is displayed at the National Jewellery Museum of Morocco in Rabat. The perforations indicate purposeful processing that may have been a token of identity.
Neanderthals made perforated beads from small seashells around 115,000 years ago, found in the Cueva de los Aviones along the southeast coast of Spain. Later, at Enkapune Ya Muto in Kenya, beads of perforated ostrich eggshell have been dated to more than 40,000 years ago. In Russia, a stone bracelet and marble ring are attributed to a similar age.
The Star Carr Pendant, an engraved piece dating to around 11,000 BC, is thought to be the oldest Mesolithic art in Britain, found at Star Carr in North Yorkshire in 2015. The Venus of Hohle Fels carries a perforation at its top, showing it was meant to be worn. Copper jewellery first appeared around seven thousand years ago.
In October 2012, the Museum of Ancient History in Lower Austria revealed a grave that appeared to be that of a female fine metal worker. The discovery forced archaeologists to take a fresh look at prehistoric gender roles, since that profession was previously thought to have been carried out exclusively by men.
The oldest gold in the world dates from 4,600 BC to 4,200 BC and was discovered at the Varna Necropolis near the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria. In Mesopotamia, the Royal Cemetery of Ur yielded hundreds of burials dating from 2900 to 2300 BC. The tomb of Puabi held lapis lazuli crowns embellished with gold figurines, close-fitting collar necklaces, and jewel-headed pins. One record from the Mari royal archives even lists the exact composition of a necklace, down to 34 flat speckled chalcedony beads and 35 gold fluted beads in groups of five.
Egyptians preferred the luxury and workability of gold, and placed jewellery among grave goods so the wealthy could wear it in death as in life. Colour carried meaning, with green symbolising fertility, while lapis lazuli and silver had to be imported. Egyptian designs were most common in Phoenician jewellery, and ancient Turkish designs in Persian jewellery hint at regular trade between the Middle East and Europe.
The Greeks began using gold and gems around 1600 BC, and by 300 BC had mastered coloured jewellery using amethysts, pearl, and emeralds. The Gold Olive Wreath of the 4th century BC was modelled on prizes given to winners at competitions like the Olympic Games. Jewellery in Greece was hardly worn day to day, reserved for public appearances and given as gifts to show wealth and status.
When the Romans conquered Europe, the brooch became their most common artefact, used to secure clothing. As early as 2,000 years ago they imported Sri Lankan sapphires and Indian diamonds. Roman men and women wore rings with an engraved gem, used with wax to seal documents, a practice that continued into medieval times when kings and noblemen sealed papers the same way.
The Indian subcontinent holds the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making anywhere, stretching back more than 5,000 years. In the Indus Valley, the largest jewellery trade before 2100 BC was the bead trade, where a rough stone was heated in an oven until it turned deep red, a colour highly prized, then chipped and bored with primitive drills. Hindu tradition associates gold with immortality, since pure gold does not corrode, and the Navaratna amulet combines nine gems, each linked to a celestial deity. The largest single order ever made to Cartier came in 1925 from the Maharaja of Patiala, for the Patiala Necklace.
The Chinese used silver more than gold and revered jade above any other stone for its hardness, durability, and beauty. Jade rings from between the 4th and 7th centuries BC show evidence of a compound milling machine, used hundreds of years before such equipment was first mentioned in the west. The earring remains culturally taboo for men, and in 2019 the streaming service iQiyi began blurring the ears of male actors wearing them.
With the Moche culture, goldwork flourished into masterful pieces inlaid with turquoise, mother of pearl, spondylus shell, and amethyst. Northern Andean cultures worked platinum, a metal with a far higher melting point, sintering it with gold long before Europe recognised it as a separate element. Among the Aztecs, only nobility wore gold jewellery, and much of it was crafted by Mixtec artisans, though jade, turquoise, and certain feathers were valued above gold itself.
In the Pacific, jewellery arrived later because of recent human settlement, and early pieces of bone and wood have not survived. The New Zealand Maori traditionally carved the hei-tiki by hand from bone, nephrite, or bowenite. Australia is now the number one supplier of opals in the world, a market that became predominant in the late 19th century and remains one of the most profitable stones in the Pacific.
Common questions
What is the oldest known jewellery in the world?
The oldest known jewellery is 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells. The earliest examples were created by hominin precursors of modern humans, including perforated shell beads found in the Bizmoune cave near Essaouira, Morocco, dated to about 142,000 years.
Where does the word jewellery come from?
The word jewellery derives from jewel, which was anglicised from the Old French jouel, and beyond that from the Latin word jocale, meaning plaything. It is spelled jewellery in British, Indian, and several other forms of English, and jewelry in American English.
When were diamonds first used in jewellery?
The use of diamonds in jewellery dates back to the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in 1477. Diamonds were first mined in India, with some mines dating back to 296 BC.
What is the largest diamond in the British crown jewels?
The British crown jewels contain the Cullinan Diamond, part of the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found in 1905, at 3,106.75 carats. It is one of the most significant gemstones in the royal collection.
Why do men in Islam not wear gold jewellery?
Islam considers the wearing of gold by men as Haraam. Most Islamic jewellery took the form of bridal dowries and was sold at the souk and recycled after a woman's death, which is why Islamic jewellery from before the 19th century is exceedingly rare.
Which region has the longest history of jewellery making?
The Indian subcontinent holds the longest continuous legacy of jewellery making anywhere, with a history stretching back more than 5,000 years. India prospered financially through the export and exchange of precious metals and gems.