About 33,000 years ago, ostrich eggshell beads were traded over distances up to 1,000 km in south Africa. Image by John Klausmeyer.
An article on the discovery of late Middle Stone Age ostrich eggshell bead trading and its social networking implications has landed University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology curator Brian Stewart, graduate student Yuchao Zhao, and their colleagues in the headlines. After the article appeared in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), several news outlets picked it up, including CNN, Science, Smithsonian Magazine, Daily Mail and others. It also appeared in Michigan News. All the stories feature images of the beads created by the Museum’s illustrator, John Klausmeyer.
Read more here: Brian A. Stewart el al., "Ostrich eggshell bead strontium isotopes reveal persistent macroscale social networking across late Quaternary southern Africa," PNAS (2020). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1921037117
