NAVIGATION

Beads were and are worn to communicate status all over the world, and mirroring the culture of which they are a part can reveal a great deal about the social, political and religious lives of the people who have made them. Beads have frequently been used as symbolic repositories of sacred knowledge, deemed to have curative powers and used as prompters to insure the proper conduct of ritual and prayer. Beads have often also been a medium of exchange; from the early 17th century Europeans exchanged glass beads for skins and pelts in Canada and North America, for spices in Indonesia and for gold, ivory and slaves in Africa.