Abstract
South African Stone Bead Industry THE relative scarcity of the stone bead throughout the world justifies a record of the discovery of serpentine beads by Harold S. Harger on sites in the western Transvaal (Trans. Roy. Soc. South Africa, 38, 2; 1940). From the collection as a whole it has been possible to describe the entire process of manufacture from beginning to end. The prime factor in the establishment of the industry was the occurrence of a serpentine dyke midway between the factories on Nooitgedacht and Winkelhaak. This region affords abundant evidence of settlements of primitive man of pre-Bantu tunes. The serpentine beads were found in cleared spaces where native kraals at one time had existed. Old furnace slags, an iron hammer, ornamental stone pendants, gold beads, a steatite mould, pottery, etc., combine to indicate that the industry was established by an early Bantu tribe in pre-European times. The greater part of the material consisted of 108 cylinders ready for boring, 15 were finished ready for use; and 15 beads of copper and 2 of gold were also found, the occurrence of the last named indicating a Bantu origin. Some much-corroded pieces of iron found on Winkelhaak, when fresh, might have been thin enough to perform the boring. One bead had been bent to take the palm of the hand and facilitate vertical pressure. The procedure adopted in manufacture was to trim the material into cylindrical shape and then saw it in sections-a method followed by Cro-Magnon man in the manufacture of stone beads. The segments were then drilled and smoothed, the ends being ground smooth on a stone to make them lie close. To avoid waste of labour owing to splitting in drilling, stones were sometimes drilled before shaping. While the industry is early and pre-European, it is Bantu and not, properly speaking, Stone Age, as usually understood.
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Research Items. Nature 146, 235–237 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146235a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146235a0