What Did Native Americans Use As Money
past Jim Logan, UC Santa Barbara
As one of the most experienced archaeologists studying California'southward Native Americans, Lynn Gamble knew the Chumash Indians of Cardinal California had been using beat out beads as coin for at least 800 years.
Merely an exhaustive review of some of the shell bead record led UC Santa Barbara professor emerita of anthropology to an astonishing conclusion: The hunter-gatherers centered on the Southcentral Coast of Santa Barbara were using highly worked shells as currency as long equally 2,000 years ago.
"If the Chumash were using beads equally coin 2,000 years ago," Gamble said, "this changes our thinking of hunter-gatherers and sociopolitical and economic complexity. This may exist the outset case of the use of money anywhere in the Americas at this fourth dimension."
Although Take chances has been studying California'southward indigenous people since the late 1970s, the inspiration for her research on shell bead money came from far afield: the University of Tübingen in Germany. At a symposium there some years ago, nigh of the presenters discussed coins and other non-crush forms of coin. Some, she said, were surprised by the assumptions of California archaeologists about what constituted coin.
Intrigued, she reviewed the definitions and identifications of money in California and questioned some of the long-held behavior. Her inquiry led to "The origin and employ of shell bead money in California" in the Journal of Anthropological Archæology.
Gamble argues that archaeologists should use 4 criteria in assessing whether beads were used for currency versus beautification: Shell chaplet used every bit currency should be more labor-intensive than those for decorative purposes; highly standardized beads are probable currency; bigger, eye-catching beads were more than likely used as decoration; and currency chaplet are widely distributed.
"I and then compared the trounce chaplet that had been accepted equally a money dewdrop for over forty years by California archaeologists to another type that was widely distributed," she said. "For example, tens of thousands were establish with just i individual up in the San Francisco Bay Area. This bead blazon, known every bit a saucer bead, was produced due south of Signal Conception and probably on the northern [Santa Barbara] Channel Islands, co-ordinate to multiple sources of data, at least most, if non all of them.
"These earlier beads were simply as standardized, if non more then, than those that came 1,000 years subsequently," Take a chance connected. "They too were traded throughout California and across. Through sleuthing, measurements and comparing of standardizations among the dissimilar bead types, it became clear that these were probably money beads and occurred much earlier than we previously thought."
Every bit Gamble notes, shell beads have been used for over x,000 years in California, and there is extensive bear witness for the production of some of these beads. The beads were common in the last 3,000 to 4,000 years on the northern Aqueduct Islands, including Santa Cruz Island, site of the NRS'south Santa Cruz Island Reserve. The testify includes vanquish dewdrop-making tools, such as drills, and massive amounts of shell $.25 — detritus — that littered the surface of archaeological sites on the islands.
In addition, specialists take noted that the isotopic signature of the vanquish chaplet plant in the San Francisco Bay Expanse betoken that the shells are from due south of Indicate Formulation.
"We know that right around early European contact," Adventure said, "the California Indians were trading for many types of goods, including perishable foods. The use of beat chaplet no doubt greatly facilitated this wide network of exchange."
Gamble's research not merely resets the origins of money in the Americas, it calls into question what constitutes "sophisticated" societies in prehistory. Because the Chumash were non-agriculturists — hunter-gatherers — information technology was long held that they wouldn't need coin, even though early Spanish colonizers marveled at all-encompassing Chumash trading networks and commerce.
Recent research(link is external) on money in Europe during the Bronze Age suggests information technology was used there some iii,500 years ago. For Gamble, that and the Chumash case are significant because they claiming a persistent perspective among economists and some archaeologists that so-called "primitive" societies could non have had "commercial" economies.
"Both the terms 'complex' and 'primitive' are highly charged, but it is difficult to address this bailiwick without avoiding those terms," she said. "In the instance of both the Chumash and the Bronze Historic period case, standardization is a key in terms of identifying money. My article on the origin of money in California is non but pushing the engagement for the use of money back 1,000 years in California, and peradventure the Americas, it provides evidence that money was used by not-state level societies, normally identified as 'civilizations.' "
Source: https://ucnrs.org/shell-currency-was-part-of-an-ancient-economy-in-the-channel-islands/
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