The jewel is a small object fraught with meaning, a significant bauble, a frivolity heavy with history. In the five thousand years during which jewelry has been created, it has acquired eleven major and discrete roles, a heavy burden indeed for something of such delicacy. Some of these roles remain constant. Others exist for periods of time and then cease to have meaning as society changes. Some continue but enjoy diminished significance. Yet fragile as it is, jewelry endures where architecture and civilizations may fade.
The roles that jewelry and gemstones have played through history are firstly as talismen, or magical charms, to avert evil and bring good fortune; secondly some gemstones are believed to possess healing properties; thirdly as a measure of wealth; fourth to demonstrate cultural and social status; fifth as a convertible and portable form of money in times of danger; sixth as an ornamentation; seventh as an art form; eighth as a depiction of history; ninth as the culture's medium of exchange, that is, money itself, tenth as a symbol of love; and finally as a symbol of religious affiliation. Some of these roles are inextricably intertwined. Because jewelry is a measure of wealth, it carries a measure of social status. It can also be used in times of danger to enable people to carry their resources with them.
The materials used to create jewelry reflect the values of the culture that wears and treasures it: Gold is the most pervasive and longstanding element used to make jewelry, treasured not only for its beauty but because it is at once the most malleable of metals and yet impervious to virtually all acids. Gold taken from tombs where it has been hidden for thousands of years remains as bright as the day it was made. Other societies treasured decorated glass beads made in Italy, considering them so valuable that they were used as a medium of exchange, to barter for human beings in the slave trade. These are aptly named "trading beads." Locally available resources, however, are rarely the determining factor. For example, although gold is known and mined in Kenya, there is no tradition among the African people for making it into jewelry. Instead, they fashion their jewelry from glass beads formerly imported from the East and now made only in Czechoslovakia.
Since early times, the wearing of jewelry was restricted to the nobility because of both the inequalities of social status and the inability of the common man to afford it. In the third century B.C., a newly rich merchant class also became clients of the goldsmiths. But in France, at the end of the thirteenth century, it became illegal for commoners to wear precious stones, pearls, or "circlets of gold and silver." And in the fourteenth century, Edward III forbade commoners to wear "any form of self adornment which contained gold, silver or precious stones." Even knights could not wear rings or brooches made of precious materials. Merchants who owned a certain amount of land were granted the only exception to the law. Also during this period, in Spain, only reigning monarchs and infantas could own gold, silver, and precious stones.
Only in the recent past has the acquisition of jewelry been extended throughout the various classes and economic levels of society. Those who can afford it wear "the real thing," jewelry made of diamonds, precious gemstones, and precious metals. Those who want the same look, but at a budget price, wear interpretations of these looks made of base metals and imitation stones. While ornamentation appears to be the
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