Shell money
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Shell money is a medium of exchange that was once common. It consisted either of whole sea shells or pieces of them which were worked into beads or otherwise artificially shaped. The use of shells in trade began as direct commodity exchange, the shells having value as body ornamentation. The distinction between beads as commodities and beads as money has been the subject of debate among economic anthropologists.[1]
Shell money was not restricted to any one quarter of the globe, but in some form or other appears to have been found on every continent: America, Asia, Africa and Australia. The shell most widely-used worldwide as currency has always been the shell of the cowry species Cypraea moneta, the money cowry. It is most abundant in the Indian Ocean, and was collected in the Maldive Islands, in Sri Lanka, along the Malabar coast, in Borneo and on other East Indian islands, and in various parts of the African coast from Ras Hafun to Mozambique. Cowry shell money was important at one time or another in the trade networks of Africa, South Asia, and East Asia.
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[edit] African shell money
In western Africa, shell money was usual tender up until the middle of the 19th century. Before the abolition of the slave trade there were large shipments of cowry shells to some of the English ports for reshipment to the slave coast. It was also common in West Central Africa as the currency of the Kingdom of Kongo called locally nzimbu.
As the value of the cowry was much greater in West Africa than in the regions from which the supply was obtained, the trade was extremely lucrative. In some cases the gains are said to have been 500%. The use of the cowry currency gradually spread inland in Africa. By about 1850 Heinrich Barth found it fairly widespread in Kano, Kuka, Gando, and even Timbuktu. Barth relates that in Muniyoma, one of the ancient divisions of Bornu, the king's revenue was estimated at 30,000,000 shells, with every adult male being required to pay annually 1000 shells for himself, 1000 for every pack-ox, and 2000 for every slave in his possession.
In the countries on the coast, the shells were fastened together in strings of 40 or 100 each, so that fifty or twenty strings represented a dollar; but in the interior they were laboriously counted one by one, or, if the trader were expert, five by five. The districts mentioned above received their supply of kurdi, as they were called, from the west coast; but the regions to the north of Unyamwezi, where they were in use under the name of simbi, were dependent on Muslem traders from Zanzibar. The shells were used in the remoter parts of Africa until the early 20th century, but gave way to modern currencies. The shell of the land snail, Achatina monetaria, cut into circles with an open center was also used as coin in Benguella, Portuguese West Africa.
[edit] East and South Asia
In China, cowries were so important that all characters relating to money contain the character for cowry: 貝. Starting over three thousand years ago, cowry shells, or copies of the shells, were used as Chinese currency[2]. The Classical Chinese character for "money" originated as a stylized drawing of a cowrie shell.
Cowries were formerly used as means of exchange in India. In Bengal, where it required 3840 to make a rupee, the annual importation was valued at about 30,000 rupees.
[edit] Oceania and Australia
In northern Australia, different shells were used by different tribes, one tribe's shell often being quite worthless in the eyes of another tribe.
In the islands north of New Guinea the shells were broken into flakes. Holes are bored through these flakes, which are then valued by length, as in the case of the American tuskshell, the measuring, however, being done between the nipples of the breasts instead of by the finger joints. Two shells are used by these Pacific islanders, one a cowry found on the New Guinea coast, and the other the common pearl shell, broken into flakes.
In the South Pacific Islands the Oliva carneola was commonly used to create shell money. As late as 1882 local trade in the Solomon Islands was carried on by means of a coinage of shell beads, small shells laboriously ground down to the required size by the women. No more than were actually needed were made, and as the process was difficult, the value of the coinage was satisfactorily maintained.
[edit] North American shell money
The shell most valued by the Native American tribes of the Pacific Coast from Alaska to northwest California was Dentalium pretiosum, a species of long narrow marine shelled mollusk, a tusk shell or scaphopod. The tusk shell is naturally open at both ends, and can easily be strung on a thread. This shell money was valued by its length rather than the exact number of shells; the "ligua", the highest denomination in their currency, was a length of about 6 feet.
Farther south, in central California and southern California, the shell of the olive snail Olivella biplicata was used to make beads for at least the past 9,000 years. The small numbers recovered in older archaeological site components suggest that they were initially used as ornamentation, rather than as money.[3] Beginning shortly before 1,000 years ago, Chumash specialists on the islands of California's Santa Barbara Channel began chipping beads from olive shells in such quantities that they left meter-deep piles of manufacturing residue in their wake; the resulting circular beads were used as money throughout the area that is now southern California.[4]. Starting at about AD 1500, and continuing into the late nineteenth century, the Coast Miwok, Ohlone, Patwin, Pomo, and Wappo peoples of central California used the marine bivalve Saxidomus sp. to make shell money.[5]
On the east coast of North America, the Algonquin tribes used elaborate belts of beads called wampum which was cut from the purple part of the shell of the marine bivalve Mercenaria mercenaria, more commonly known as the hard clam, quahog, or when young, the littleneck clam.
[edit] West and Southwest Asia
In parts of Asia Cyproeci annulus, the ring cowry, so-called from the bright orange-colored ring on the back or upper side of the shell, was commonly used. Many specimens were found by Sir Henry Layard in his excavations at Nimrud in 1845-1851.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Arnold, J. E. and A.P. Graesch. 2001. The Evolution of Specialized Shellworking among the Island Chumash. In The Origins of a Pacific Coast Chiefdom: The Chumash of the Channel Islands., J.E. Arnold, ed., pp. 71-112. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
- Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1970. Ecological and Adaptive Aspects of California Shell Money. Annual Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey 12:1-25. University of California at Los Angeles.
- Davies, Glyn. 1994. A History of Money, from Ancient Times to the Present Day. University of Wales.
- Hughes, Richard D. and Randall Milliken 2007. Prehistoric Material Conveyance. In California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar, eds. pp. 259-272. New York and London: Altamira Press. ISBN 13:978-0-7591-0872-1.
- Mauss, Marcel. 1950. The Gift. English translation in 1990 by W.W. North.
- Milliken, Randall, Richard T. Fitzgerald, Mark G. Hylkema, Randy Groza, Tom Origer, David G. Bieling, Alan Leventhal, Randy S. Wiberg, Andrew Gottsfield, Donna Gillete, Viviana Bellifemine, Eric Strother, Robert Cartier, and David A. Fredrickson. 2007. "Punctuated Culture Change in the San Francisco Bay Area." In California Prehistory: Colonization, Culture, and Complexity Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar, eds. pp. 99-124. New York and London: Altamira Press. ISBN 13:978-0-7591-0872-1.
- Trubitt, M.B.D. 2003. The Production and Exchange of Marine Shell Prestige Goods. Journal of Archaeological Research 11:243-277.
- Vayda, Andrew. 1967. Pomo Trade Feasts. In Tribal and Peasant Economies, G. Dalton, ed., pp. 494-500. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
