Beadcoll

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As collecting beads without restriction leads to a never ending story, I specialised in early trade beads from Mali (West-Africa), I divided the examples of my collection shown here in three groups:

An exception being the head pendant and the bead next to it, which were not found in Mali

1 The early period (Persian, Phoenician, Egyptian, 600.BC -100 AD;

1.1. Persian eye beads

1.2. Egyptian mosaic beads

1.3. Egyptian stratified eye beads

1.4. Egyptian sandwich beads

1.5. Roman S-Beads

2     Egyptian? Islamic? Venetian? (300BC?- 1700AD?)

          2.1.        Composite

          2.2.        Mille fiori beads

          2.3.         Faience melon beads

3 Islamic glass beads (700-1400 AD);

3.1. Combed & folded beads

3.2. Eye beads

3.1. Mamaluk glass beads

Although the origin of the beads found in Mali is still under discussion, in particular the so-called Egyptian-Roman eye beads (one stream of thinking attributes them to the Arab period or even to the early Venetian epoch). Some of the beads found in Mali are unmistakably Egyptian stratified eye- Mosaic and Persian beads. In fact, in various literature they are attributed to the period from 600 BC until 100 AD. Trans-saharan trade has been proved to exist well before our era, supporting the likelihood of finding beads dating from before AD in Mali.

Remarks, observations and enquiries are welcome on

Ó None of the above should be copied in any way without written authorisation from the author

Last revised 26.04.98