Author(s): Costa, Mafalda ; Barrulas, Pedro ; Lopes, Maria da Conceição ; Barreira, João ; de Jesus, Maria da Piedade ; da Silva Domingos, Sónia ; Vandenabeele, Peter ; Mirão, José
Date: 2023
Persistent ID: https://hdl.handle.net/10316/113814
Origin: Estudo Geral - Universidade de Coimbra
Subject(s): Talc bead; Personal adornment; Kongo kingdom; Trace elements; LA-ICP-MS
A mustard-gold-colored talc bead was recovered during the 2014 excavation campaign carried out in Lumbu (Mbanza Kongo, Angola) together with the nineteenth-century glass trade beads imported from Bohemia and Venice. Results from this multianalytical and minimally invasive study suggest that this bead may have been brought to the kingdom’s capital by means of an established intra-kingdom trade network or as an offering intended for the king or a member of the nobility. However, it was undoubtedly manufactured within the Kongo kingdom using talc sources known by the local population. As such, this talc bead constitutes the first evidence of local production of personal adornment objects in the Kongo kingdom and one of the first examples of craft specialization for personal adornment purposes in central and southern Africa since pre-historic times.
This study was funded bya Concerted Research Action of Ghent University (B/13340/02).
