African jewelry is seldom just ornamental; religion, rituals, and ceremonies play a large part.
Tribal African jewelry is dependent upon three things:
- What is available locally.
- What has been traded and bartered for over the centuries.
- What the customs and traditions are in the different cultures.
Traditionally, African jewelry has been used to adorn necks, ears, arms, legs, toes, hair, and waists and can be pierced, strapped, or sewn on.
The oldest African jewelry ever discovered was recently found (2004) in the Blombos cave on the southern tip of South Africa.
They are estimated at being over 75,000 years old and are pea-sized, mollusk shell beads that had been pierced.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
Blombos Cave Entrance
Berber Jewelry: A Historical Perspective
Jewelry of the Berber cultures (Tamazight language: iqchochne imagine, ⵉⵇⵇⵛⵓⵛⵏ ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵏ) is a historical style of traditional jewelry that was worn by women mainly in rural areas of the Maghreb region in North Africa and inhabited by Indigenous Berber people (in the Berber language Tamazight: Amazigh (sg.), Imazighen, pl).
Following long social and cultural traditions, Berber or other silversmiths in Morocco, Algeria, and neighboring countries created intricate jewelry with distinct regional variations.
Handing their jewelry on from generation to generation, as a visual element of the Berber ethnic identity, women maintained this characteristic cultural tradition as part of their gender-specific adornments.
Berber communities exist in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and other locations, such as Libya.
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
Berber jewelry was usually made of silver and included elaborate triangular plates and pins, originally used as clasps for garments, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and similar items.
During the second part of the 20th century, the tradition of Berber jewelry was gradually abandoned in favor of different styles of jewelry made of gold.
In their documented history going as far back to prehistoric times, the different indigenous Berber peoples of North Africa, ranging from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco and Mauritania, and historically including the Guanches of the Canary Islands, have undergone constant changes in lifestyles and culture.
Most notably, the Arab conquest brought about important changes from the late 7th century onwards.
Over time, the different Berber groups of the vast area that is North Africa adapted to external influences and their cultures, living partially as rural, but also as urban populations.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
In rural areas, Berbers were traditionally farmers, living in mountains, plains, or an oasis, such as the Siwa oasis in Egypt; but others, like the Tuareg and Zenata of the southern Sahara, were almost wholly nomadic.
While sedentary life had flourished since prehistorical times, survival in the drier regions, and especially in the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas mountains, was only possible if people moved with their cattle to the higher mountain regions, where grass, herbs, and above all water were still available in sufficient quantity.
As they did not return to their villages until late autumn, their winter harvests were stored in a fortified communal granary, called agadir, and protected against other nomads and hostile neighboring villages by guards, who stayed there at all times.
This regime was also followed in the Aures region of Algeria, where local clans stored grains in fortified granaries.
Jewelry is easy to transport, and the women could take it along on the annual migrations.
In a traditional world that functioned completely or largely without money, jewelry also played a role as a means of savings for emergencies.
Thus, official coins were often used to adorn headgear, necklaces, etc.
While the Arabized and urban inhabitants of North Africa preferred jewelry made of gold, the rural Berbers held on to silver jewelry for centuries.
This provided the economic basis for the silversmiths in medium-sized towns, such as Tiznit or Sefrou in Morocco or in the Kabylia mountains in Algeria, which were often run by Jewish silversmiths.
In Algeria, important centers of jewelry production and usage were the villages of the Beni Yenni district and the town of Ouadhiya in the Great Kabylia mountains east of Algiers.
Jewelry made of silver, colored glass, or iron is also a special tradition of the Tuareg people.
They belong to the Berber peoples and mostly still live as semi-nomads in parts of the Sahara in the Hoggar region of modern-day Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso.
Their jewelry is remarkable for the so-called Cross of Agadez, even though only a few of these pieces resemble a cross.
Most are worn as pendants with varied shapes that either resemble a cross or have the shape of a plate or shield.
Historically, the oldest known specimens were made of stone or copper, but subsequently, the Tuareg blacksmiths also used iron and silver made in the lost-wax casting technique.
Traditional Berber jewelry consists mainly of silver, cast in a mold and afterwards finished by hand.
Depending on the region as well as the type of jewelry, enameling, corals, beads of Amber and colored glass or rarely semi-precious stones were applied.
According to art historians, the art of enameling using the cloisonné technique was introduced by Sephardi Jewish goldsmiths, who in turn had inherited this skill from their forefathers in Moorish Al-Andalus.
Another method used in the Maghreb is called filigrané, as thin silver filigree wire was used for intricate, mesh-like designs, to mark the boundaries of inserted beads or the areas for each color of enameled space in the typical shades of yellow, green, and blue, before the melted glass powder was applied.
In addition to ornamental bracelets, anklets, pendants, rings, and chains for necklaces or headgear, characteristic fibula or penannular brooches, composed of a symmetrical pair of triangular plates with pins, called tizerzaï, were used virtually with the pins perforating the women's unsown outer garments and pointing straight up to keep draped garments in place.
In some cases, these Amazigh brooches were rather large and heavy, as they had to hold up long pieces of textile, made of cotton or wool, and loosely draped around the body.
A chain or beaded necklace often was attached to the two brooches, fixed to a ring at the bottom of the brooches.
Typical basic forms of jewelry are triangles and almond shapes, as well as the so-called khmissa (local pronunciation of the Arabic word khamsa for the number five), which is called as in the Berber language (Tamazight).
This form represents the five fingers of the hand and is traditionally believed both by Muslims as well as Jewish people to protect against the Evil Eye.
Apart from these, geometrical, floral, animal, and "cosmic" forms such as solar discs or crescents were used according to regional traditions.
The geometric shapes of jewelry can also be found in the ornaments of Berber mud-brick or stone buildings and on their traditional clothes and carpets.
In the southern parts of Morocco, especially in today's regions of Drâa-Tafilalet and Sous with the important marketplace Tiznit, Jewish Berbers, who had lived there since at least the second century BCE until their emigration in the late 1950s, were renowned silversmiths for their Berber jewelry.
Pieces of jewelry were valued objects and worn for important celebrations, such as weddings, and religious and social gatherings like country fairs (moussem).
They constituted the most important part of a husband's wedding gifts and a woman's dowry, which remained her personal property even in case of a divorce, and were passed on from one generation to the next.
Due to changes in generations, taste, and wealth, they were often changed and reworked.
In the second half of the 20th century, the traditional lifestyles of the rural Berbers underwent important changes.
Notwithstanding the constant modernization in the rural regions of the Maghreb, migration from the countryside to the cities and other countries has been increasing steadily.
According to most authors, however, contemporary Berber women have abandoned the use of traditional jewelry in favor of modern urban styles made of gold.
Manillas: From Currency to Cultural Symbol
Most people refer to them as ‘bangles’ however, historically they are known as manillas or okpoho/Okombo/abi.
Once a form of currency for West African peoples, manillas would become one of the main currencies of choice during the slave trade to the Americas.
While there are many theories surrounding the origin of manillas, it is known that it was worn by women along the West African coast as a symbol of their husband’s wealth.
