Several years ago, archaeologists recovered more than 2,500 stone and shell beads from a child’s burial at the Neolithic village of Ba’ja in southern Jordan. Most of the beads were found still in place on the neck and chest of an eight-year-old girl, who was interred in a fetal position 9,000 years ago. Although some beads had shifted due to the body’s placement, it was clear to archaeologist Hala Alarashi of the Spanish National Research Council that they had once been part of a magnificent necklace that fell apart as its connecting strings disintegrated.
Based on the position of individual beads on the skeleton and repeating patterns of different bead types, Alarashi and her colleagues have reconstructed the necklace. At the top, they connected strings of mostly red, black, and white beads to a hematite pendant found beneath the girl’s neck. At the bottom, they attached the strands to an engraved mother-of-pearl ring that was found on the body. Using geochemical analysis, the researchers also identified the materials that ancient artisans used to fashion the beads. Many were crafted from hematite, calcite, and mollusk shells, which were readily available in the area surrounding Ba’ja. A few, however, were made of more exotic materials, such as turquoise and amber, which the Ba’ja elite would have imported from far-flung locales throughout the Levant.
