Swiss Neolithic copper beads: Currency, ornament or prestige items?

Abstract

The Cortaillod culture, settled around the lakes of west Switzerland, is the only culture in this part of Europe of its time (mid‐fourth millennium B.C.) known to have accumulated copper beads, although it did not itself work copper, unlike the contemporaneous Pfyn culture of nothern Switzerland. The possibility that these beads were a form of currency or basis of exchange is examined in the light of several ethnographic examples. Using the detailed excavation results from the settlement at Burgäschisee‐Süd, a model of the economic relationships of the Cortaillod village is proposed in which the beads might have been used for social exchange or functioned as a special purpose money.

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