The production sequence for Aurignacian ivory and stone beads varies both intra- and inter-regionally. In France, the most common form, represented by more than 1000 specimens, is what has been called basket-shaped beads (Figure 3). Found in large quantities early in this century at Abri Blanchard (Didon 1911, 1912), Abri Castanet (Peyrony 1935), Abri de la Souquette (Delage 1938), Isturitz (Passemard 1944) and Saint Jean de Verges (Vézian and Vézian 1966), these have now been radiocarbon dated by Delporte and Buisson (1991) at Brassempouy to between 33- and 32,000 B.P.
Fig. 3: Some ivory and steatite basket-shaped beads from Abri Blanchard.
Fig. 4: Schematic representation of the production sequence for manufacturing French Aurignacian basket-shaped beads
Fig. 5: I to III: Unfinished production debris from Brassempouy showing creation of a "stem" by bilateral thinning of an ivory blank. At right note the first stages of the gouging of the hole and polishing of the distal end.IV: Unfinished bead from Abri Blanchard showing extensive gouging, a completed perforation and distal polishing (Photo courtesy Anibal Rodriguez)
Fig. 6: SEM photograph of a French Aurignacian basket-shaped steatite and ivory beads. I: Portion of steatite bead showing clear traces of rotational drilling at upper left and polishing striae at right, II: Heavily worn hole of basket-shaped steatite bead. Note worn notch at upper left and rotational drilling traces at lower right, III: Ivory basket shaped bead showing gouged hole whose margins are truncated by a grinding facet, IV: Highly magnified (ca. 100x) surface of ivory basket-shaped bead showing polishing striae and particle of red ochre.
These beads were created from pencil-like rods of ivory. Rough-outs for the rods were probably split from dessicated laminae, or carved from amorphous chunks af steatite, before being scraped and smoothed into long cylinders. These rods were then circumincised and snapped (Figures 4,5) into cylindrical blanks from one to two centimeters in length. These were then bilaterally thinned at one end to form a sort of stem. A perforation was then created at the junction of the stem and the unaltered end. This was usually done by gouging (Figure 5:IV) from each side, rather than by rotational drilling. These rough-outs were then ground and polished into their final basket-shaped form (Figure 6) using coarse, then fine abrasives in the presence of water. I have shown elsewhere (White 1989) that this production sequence produces a remarkable degree of metric and morphological standardization, an observation confirmed by McLean (1991). Experiments at NYU suggest that from one to three hours of labor per bead are required by this process.