Vintage Venetian Red Skunk West African Trade Beads

Vintage old eye red skunk trade beads. These beads have traveled at least three continents and were originally traded in the 1800's. Each bead is unique and may vary in condition, color, pattern of dots, and size. A few beads have chips or scratches due to age. 3 beads approximately 12mm each HISTORY OF TRADE BEADS Made to facilitate trade, beads in various forms have been used by explorers and then traders mainly across the African continent. Ancient trade beads were also in wide use amongst the Native tribes of the United States and Canada, and throughout Latin America.  Bead designs were highly varied and often based on local sources of shells, stone, bone and other organic materials including ostrich eggshells and were valued based on the scarcity as well as the particular colour, size and form of each type of bead. Bone, ostrich-shell and metal beads have been recovered from late Stone Age and Iron Age sites in Africa. Stone beads were also used to trade in western Sudan in the first millennium A.D. Venetian glass trade beads had been found at three prehistoric Eskimo sites in Alaska, including Punyik Point. The area was on ancient trade routes from the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean and archaeologists estimated their arrival on the continent to sometime between 1440 and 1480, predating Christopher Columbus.