Gold Coil Necklaces

Grouping of gold coil necklaces

Original Gold Grave (M1 – A620)

Gold Grave (M7 nos.14-A623)

101.6g (net), 1.92mm - 2.03mm

These gold coil necklaces are important from an indigenous and technological point of view. The manufacture of gold wire and jewellery is largely unresearched in southern Africa, and is probably a borrowed innovation of earlier iron wire technology that was fabricated using a strip twisting or a drawing technique. A thin strip was cut from the edge of a sheet of gold, and used to make necklaces by spiralling the gold wire strip into a coiled form around a bundle of fibres, so that it forms a canular coil or hollow tube. The innovation of gold wire making by hand, as opposed to using a draw plate, could be the earliest practice of its kind in southern Africa.