Pendant of agate

This ring-shaped pendant of cut agate was used by Tuareg women as a hair ornament and as a pendant for a necklace. Necklaces could have one or more pendants. Jewellery made of agate was a precious possession and passed from mother to daughter as heirlooms. In the early 20th century, Western anthropologists described the pendants as magical objects and fertility symbols, because of their shape and their preference for the colour red (Seligman and Loughran 2006: 257, Spittler 2002: 49). During research in Timia (Niger) in the 1980s and 1990s, Tuareg women rejected such interpretations (Spittler 2002: 51). Married women there said they wore the pendants because of their aesthetics. This pendant was collected in Libya in 1956. According to the collectors, the ornament was braided into the hair by women at the back of the head.Although the pendant is typical of the Tuareg culture, the Tuareg did not make them themselves. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the pendants were made in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, from agate imported from Brazil, through the port of Rotterdam. The German agate industry then discovered a new process for dyeing agate. Iron nitrate was used to obtain a deep red colour. From Germany the pendants were exported to Africa or, in the second half of the 20th century, sold directly in Europe as 'authentic' Tuareg jewellery. In West Africa, too, the pendants became a popular souvenir for tourists and development workers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, and possibly even before, the pendants were manufactured in Cambay, India, and came to the African market via pilgrim caravans from Mecca (Seligman and Loughran 2006: 256, Spittler 2002: 46). After the Second World War Cambay again gained ground on the Germans and in the 1990s agave exports to Africa from Idar-Oberstein largely came to a halt (Spittler 2002: 48).