Quirpas and Mostacillas: The Evolution of

Shell Beads as a Medium of Exchange

in Northern South America
Rafael A. Gassn, Instituto Venezolano de
Investigaciones Cientcas

Abstract. This article examines the evolution of quirpa, a primitive valuable from
the Orinoco Basin, from a world-systems perspective. This process must be understood as a result of the economic and symbolic uses given to beads by dierent social actors based on their ethnic and sociopolitical backgrounds through time. The
history of this primitive valuable illustrates how some aboriginal economic institutions evolved as a result of exchange among Amerindian and European economies
and societies, not merely as the product of the imposition of Western economic
rationality.

This article takes a biographical approach (Kopyto : ) to develop a brief sketch of the rise and fall of shell beads as a medium of exchange in relation to the processes of economic and sociopolitical evolution
in the Amerindian and colonial societies of the Orinoco Basin in northern
South America (Figure ). The study spans the late pre-Hispanic period to
the colonial contact and expansion of the European world-system. There
are two main reasons for doing this study. First, although in the literature
of aboriginal exchange in northern South America there are several references to and hypotheses about the Orinocan shell beads, there is not a
specic interpretative study of that topic. South American examples have
been recognized as potentially important to the study of primitive economy
and social organization (Sahlins : ). Second, earlier attempts to
classify these objects as primitive money or even true money have failed,
since none of these categories can give a complete account of their shifting
and evasive characteristics.
The failure of these attempts to provide a full account of the characteristics and importance of the shell beads within the political economy of the
Ethnohistory : (summerfall )
Copyright by the American Society for Ethnohistory.

Figure . Northern South America.

The Evolution of Shell Beads

Orinoco Basin may be traced to two related problems. The rst problem is
that most of the studies on trade and exchange in northern South America
do not emphasize cross-cultural and evolutionary perspectives. Instead, the
exchange and trade of goods have been seen as relatively static economic
institutions managed by egalitarian political structures later disrupted by
colonial states. Because of this, these studies are unable to observe the processes of economic and sociopolitical change as a continuum within that
region, therefore limiting their interpretative capabilities. The second problem is the excessive attention on the objects rather than on the web of social relations in which they circulated. We should change our focus from
the positivist perspective, centered on classifying and describing the beads
themselves, to the study of their meaning and importance to the social and
economic interactions among the peoples that inhabited the Orinoco Basin
through time. In doing so, I propose a cross-cultural perspective to the
study of these commodities within the framework of the growing economy
of the early modern world. I argue that the creation of the global economy
included not only the passive assimilation of aboriginal institutions but also
bargaining, negotiation, and continuity or t of economic institutions between colonizers and colonized. I use archaeological, ethnohistorical, and
ethnographic data to document the social history of the Orinoco shell and
glass beads within the world-systems perspective (Sanderson ; Wallerstein ). The cross-cultural and historical approach of world-systems
theory is useful in studying a problem that is not limited to a single people,
region, or time.
The study of beads in anthropology has evolved from the initial view
of these objects as curiosities or culture traits to broader considerations of
their importance as sensitive markers for social, political, and economic
processes. Beads tend to be closely tied to economic institutions, they are
common exchange items, and they sometimes have served as primitive currencies. In general, beads are characterized by a hole used in stringing and
by their simplicity of form. They are also much more abundant than other
strung ornaments, usually being exchanged by units of length. Since they
represent a large labor investment, their exchange value tends to be greater
than their use value (Ceci : ; Grierson : ; Hammet and Sizemore : ). A primitive currency or medium of exchange can be dened as a certain barter item that becomes more popular than others and
acquires a greater acceptability in exchange (Yerkes : ). In other
words its essential quality is that it gives its possesor purchasing power
(Douglas : ). Although the process that transforms an item of barter
into a form of primitive money is clear enough, the critical question is when
these favored items became a medium of exchange (Yerkes : ).

Rafael A. Gassn

Quirpa was a general denomination for a special class of small beads

consisting of small shell disks. In earlier colonial times they were also called
quitero, particularly in Western Venezuela (e.g., Carvajal []: ;
Castellanos : ). Cuentas, piedras, abalorios, and chquiras were also
common names used by the Europeans. Shell beads were manufactured and
traded by many groups with dierent degrees of social complexity, including the Achagua, Arawak, Barmiagoto, Caberre, Caribe, Guahibo, Maiba,
Parmiagoto, Tivitive, Otomaco, and Yaruro, (Alvarado []: ;
Rivero : ; Mercado []: ; Rosenblat : ).
According to historical sources, quirpa was originally made only from
the apex of an unidentied species of freshwater shell called nemu or memu;
the rest of the shell was ground and used with yopo, a common hallucinogenic drug (Gilij []: ; Mercado []: ; Rosenblat
: ).1 Later on, with the increasing demand, the Amerindians cut
the entire shell into pieces to maximize the use of raw materials. After the
seventeenth century marine shells and silver were also used in the lowlands
(Bueno : ; Matos Arvelo : ). Because shell beads were produced in great quantities, it is not surprising that they were sold in strings
of denite length (e.g., Bueno : ; Gilij []: ; Neukomm
[]: ).
The shell beads had an ample distribution throughout the Orinoco
Basin, and people from all over the area used and traded them through extensive exchange networks that connected regions as far apart as the eastern Llanos of Colombia, Trinidad, and the Guianas. Many classic scholars tried to elucidate the nature and functions of shell beads and other
objects through dierent approaches. For instance, in Adolfo Ernst
(c []: ) recognized quirpa as a shell money similar to the
North American wampum. In Julio Csar Salas (: ) proposed
that the shell disks were some sort of pre-Hispanic monetary system; but
other scholars, like Amlcar Fonseca () and Americo Briceo Valero
(), said that aboriginal monetary systems of the Venezuelan Andes and
the llanos were introduced subsequent to (and in emulation of) the Spanish currency (Briceo Iragorry : ). In a rare and interesting paper
Mario Briceo Iragorry () supported the pre-Hispanic origin of the
shell money based on linguistic, archaeological, and historical data. Later
on, Antonio Arellano Moreno (: ) proposed that dierent preHispanic itemslike salt, pearls, gold, and shell beadswere used as commodity money; he claimed that shell beads were not a universal medium of
exchange, however, because their demand was limited by their use value.
As a result of new research, the study of primitive valuables has shifted
from the study of their material and economic characteristics to the study

The Evolution of Shell Beads

of their role in the Amerindian and colonial economies. For northern South
America the initial impulse for this shift was provided by the ethnohistorical study of Nancy and Robert Morey (Morey ; Morey and Morey
), centered on the Llanos of Colombia and Venezuela. This area was
considered as an integrated whole of dierent tribal groups with wholly or
partially specialized economic activities based on the ecological diversity
of the Orinoco Basin. The connection of dierent environments by means
of exchange networks played a critical role in the development of tribal
specialization. According to this proposition, the Amerindian societies developed a complex system of mutual dependence as a result of the uneven
distribution of resources (Morey and Morey : ). This mutual dependence precluded social inequality, and reciprocity was the norm. Different forms of political structures existed, but since they were not highly
developed, tribal formations were predominant (ibid.). These authors recognized the importance of shell beads as an all purpose money. Moreover, they considered the shell beads a cultural resource that allowed the
inhabitants of the Orinoco to overcome the marginal position of the region (ibid.: ).
Nelly Arvelo-Jimnez and Horacio Biord Castillo () and Filadelfo Morales () expanded this approach, proposing the existence of
a System of Orinoco Regional Interdependence based on tribal peer-polity
exchange, a system that characterized the Amazonian civilization until its
disruption by the arrival of the colonizers (Morales ; Morales and
Arvelo-Jimnez ). Within that perspective, Mara de la Guia Gonzlez
(: ) proposed that the market economy introduced by the Europeans
probably motivated the generalization of shell beads as money, particularly
in the transactions between the Amerindians and the Europeans.
The Shell Beads in the Archaeological Record
What does the material evidence tell us about these primitive valuables?
Despite some isolated claims, quirpa beads or strings have never been
rmly identied in either museums or archaeological contexts; we have
only objects that resemble the shell currency (Ernst c []: ;
Morey : ; Salas : ). Given the diculties involved in such an
identication, it is better to answer the question in terms of the valuable
goods that have been recovered in archaeological excavations. Despite the
relatively intense archaeological work that has been done in the Orinoco
Basin, the amount of valuable goods like shell and stone artifacts seems extremely low and sparse over time. In particular, shell beads have been rather
rare in the lowlands, being reported mainly in Andean and sub-Andean

Rafael A. Gassn

Figure . Shell beads necklace from the Andean region. Source: Wagner :
g. .

ceremonial and high-status contexts. Those associations point to the potential importance of social complexity and inequality to explain the origins
and distribution of such valuables. For instance, shell objects such as batwing pendants and beads mainly from caves and funerary contexts of the
Venezuelan Andes have been known since the nineteenth century (Figure )
(Briceo Iragorry []: ; Ernst b []: ; Salas : ;
Wagner : , : , : ). In the Escuque region the Cuica had
a sanctuary devoted to a female deity called Icaque. Among the oerings
kept in this temple were many strings of cay, that is, shell disks, that they
had for money (Castellanos : ; Salas : ).
In the Lake Valencia region, shell beads have been reported from
the well-known mounded and burial sites related to the Valencioid series,
which have been related to a chiefdom level of social development (Cruxent and Rouse : ; Vargas et al. : ). At La Mata small
and medium shell disks were the most abundant classes of shell artifacts.
They were associated with direct, extended burials and with urn burials
(Bennett : , table ). At La Cabrera Pennsula discoidal beads were

The Evolution of Shell Beads

the most common type of shell artifacts, found in many burials in varying
numbers (Kidder : ). In Tocorn more than a thousand small disk
beads, which apparently were part of two necklaces, were found at the clay
core of mound six (Osgood : ).
In the Qubor Valley considerable amounts of shell artifacts were
placed as oerings in large cemeteries. According to Iraida Vargas et al.
() the high degree of specialization in the manufacture of such artifacts, as well as their great quantities, implies the existence of permanent
exchange networks, specialists attached to high-ranking people, and the
ritual consumption of labor. Those features are indicative of a chiey
way of life (ibid.: ). However, the degree of social complexity of
this regions ancient inhabitants is now a matter of controversy (Arvelo
: ). The recognition of prehistoric social complexity and political
inequality in the lowlands is one of the most important insights provided
by new research. The early ethnohistory and the archaeology of the Amazon and Orinoco oodplains provide ample evidence for the existence of
prehistoric chiefdoms (Roosevelt : ). In the western llanos of Venezuela, Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond (: ) have traced the development of chiefdoms nearly one thousand years before the arrival of the
Europeans. Those chiefdoms developed complex social relations with their
neighbors, including long-distance exchange of primitive valuables, interpolity war, and competitive feasting (Gassn ; Redmond et al. in press;
Spencer ).
For South America and the Caribbean areas, bead necklaces and
adornments may have been the most common items of elite status (Helms
: ). In a ne study of the primitive valuables of northeastern South
America, Arie Boomert (: ) considered the shell beads as primitive
valuables used in the sphere of ceremonial exchange, which later evolved
into a commodity money as a result of the introduction of European standards of value. Boomert (ibid.) points to the possible existence of two independent spheres of exchange, one located in the East, based in greenpolished stones, and the other in the Northwest, based on shell beads.
Perhaps this dichotomy was not so rigid, however. The already mentioned
Cuica of the Andean region used strings of quitero, that are beads of
many colors; and colored bones, particularly green stones (Simn :
). Briceo Iragorry (: ) reported a string of quitero that included green stone beads. At the regional center of Cedral, located next to
the Gavn region, I collected what seems to be a small amphibian or reptile made of green stone. In addition, I collected eleven fragments of shell
beads made of Pomacea sp., a very common mollusk in the western Venezuelan savannas (Figure ) (Gassn ; Gil ). Absolute dates for the

Rafael A. Gassn

Figure . Greenstone pendant and shell beads from the regional center in Cedral,
Barinas.

Cedral site range between and .. (Gassn : ;

Redmond et al. : ).
The nature of these archaeological remains, their small quantity, and
their pervasive relationship with high-status contexts point to the possible
existence of prestige-good systems controlled by complex societies, as described by Susan Frankenstein and Michael Rowlands (: ):
The specic economic characteristics of a prestige-good system are
dominated by the political advantage gained through exercising control over access to resources that can only be obtained through external trade. However, these are not the resources required for general
material well-being or for the manufacture of tools and other utilitarian items. Instead emphasis is placed on controlling the acquisition of
wealth objects needed in social transactions, and the payment of social debts. Groups are linked to each other through the competitive
exchange of wealth objects as gifts and feasting in continuous cycles
of status rivalry.
The Shell Beads in the Historical Reports
The rst account about beads and other prestige goods used by the Amerindians in the continental New World was reported by Columbus in his

The Evolution of Shell Beads

third voyage. According to the admiral, the men and women of what is
now known as Venezuelas east coast met the explorers dressed in full regalia, which included important amounts of beads, pearls, and guann gold
adornments (Coln : ). Coincidentally, the earliest references to the
use of shell beads as a medium of exchange in the American continent were
given in .2 That year, the French mariner and explorer Jacques Cartier
reported the use of esnoguy (possibly wampum) as money among the Huron
of North Americas East Coast. Cartiers observations have been traditionally regarded as the rst reference to the shell currencies in America (Saul
: ; Smith : ). Nonetheless, Titus Neukomm ( []:
), who traveled with Nicols Federmann to South America during the
same year, unequivocally described the monetary use of shell beads among
the Caqueto of Venezuelas west coast: This is their money after gold.
Furthermore, shell beads were appreciated by the Caqueto as tokens of
wealth and status, for social dierences were expressed by wearing diverse
amounts of quirpa (Morey : ; Morey and Morey : ). In
addition, during Federmanns ( []: ) expedition glass beads
were probably introduced for the rst time in the llanos of Venezuela, when
he gave to the Cuyba some gifts of knives and rosary glass beads, that they
appreciate very much.
Quirpa was also important in ceremonial and social transactions
among many groups from the highlands and the lowlands. The earlier reports indicate that shell beads were used as bride-price among the tribes
of the Orinoco Basin, as reported by Gaspar Poeck ( []: ):
The husband pays for his wife to the parents by giving them some snails
or pieces of bone. Nevertheless, as indicated by George R. Hamell (:
), this wealth should not be understood only in terms of the potential exchange value of the beads but also in terms of their symbolic value. Because
of their color, shell beads would have had masculine associations. In many
South American mythologies the color white is associated with the jaguar,
hardness, the sun, and the daylightall related to the male principle. In
fact, the manufacture of quirpa was a male task (Boomert : ; Roe
: , , ; Rosenblat : ).
The historical accounts also indicate an important nexus among longdistance exchange, trade, social complexity, and the development and
transformation of primitive valuables. Neil L. Whitehead applied the concept of chiefdom to the analysis of written documents about ancient interpolity relationships in northeastern South America. He concluded that
chiey authority was apparently based on control of long-distance trade in
valuables as well as in local goods. Later, after contact with the Europeans,
new political structures emerged from less stratied societies (Whitehead
: ).

Rafael A. Gassn

By the sixteenth century the colonial powers were engaged in dierent

conicts for controlling the mainland. In such disputes the Amerindians
were not merely passive participants who ended up being destroyed; rather,
they played important roles as soldiers, laborers, and traders. The introduction of Western products drastically altered the traditional patterns of
Amerindian trade and war, because the new commoditieslike iron tools,
weapons, clothes, alcoholic beverages, and glass beadschanged the equilibrium of power among the dierent polities. The control of such commodities was very desirable for the local elites and for everyone seeking
prestige, because these new commodities were, in a certain way, the ultimate in prestige goods. This striking feature of the consumerism of the
Amerindians is a well-known phenomenon (Hugh-Jones : ). The
special nature of the Western commodities came from their superior technological quality, their implicit prestige, and their potential supernatural
power. Gaining such control was not an easy task, however, because it
simultaneously demanded an increased rate of conict among neighboring
groups and a good relationship with the foreigners. Whitehead (: )
has summarized the general nature of this process: There are many indications that the Orinoco once formed the backbone of a vast and highly
developed trading system. . . . With the arrival of the Europeans, however,
the coastal region assumed a greater signicance as the entrept for metal
tools and other European manufactures, while the coastal trading groups,
principally Carib and Arawak, carefully controlled or denied access to the
upland trade.
At the beginnings of the colonial era, the Arawak of the Orinoco
and the east coast became trade partners of the Spaniards because of their
knowledge of the mainland and their exchange items such as gold, pearls,
cotton items, women, and food (Navarrete : ). Around , Arawak trade was mostly focused on Margarita Island, a Spanish possession
(Boomert : ). Actually, as a result of the Spanish presence in Margarita, the Arawak changed the direction and content of their trade routes
(ibid.: ). By the s the Arawak-Spanish trade became a pact of
mutual assistance: the Arawak supplied the citizens of Margarita with provisions and Indian slaves, whereas the Spaniards, in turn, provided them
with iron tools and weapons and assisted the Arawak in raiding the villages
of hostile Indian tribes (ibid.: ). These activities allowed the development of political complexity among some Arawak groups. For example,
one Carapana, an ordinary Indian before becoming a trade entrepreneur,
became a big man, although according to very early accounts, the Arawak already had cultural traits related to political centralization and social
complexity. The Aruacay village in the lower Orinoco had nearly two hun-

The Evolution of Shell Beads

dred big houses ruled by nine chiefs under one principal chief with
political and religious duties (ibid.: , ). At the end the capture of
Arawak slaves and the colonization of Amerindian lands eroded the peaceful Spanish-Arawak relationship because of the increasing Spanish desire
for prot and the pressure of other colonial powers (ibid.: ).
The Carib oer a dierent example. Most scholars agree that the
Carib played a key role in trade during postcontact times. Carib political
structures ranged from local village chiefs with no coercive authority
to loosely dened federations of villages under a War Chief, whose
authority was only valid in wartime (Morales and Arvelo-Jimnez :
). With that level of social complexity it seems very unlikely that
the Carib could dominate and control trade networks of several hundred
kilometers. They accomplished that thanks to a series of political and geographical circumstances. First, they were located in an ethnic and political frontier between the Amerindian world and the emerging colonies. The
mainland Carib lived in an optimal geographical position, at the mouths
of the uvial systems along the Atlantic coast of the Guianas, where the
French, English, and Dutch settled, building fortied trading posts (Goslinga : ). In contrast, the Spanish settled rst mainly in the eastern coast of Venezuela, to exploit the pearls sheries, gold, and other resources. Second, from the early sixteenth century on the Carib and the
Dutch became partners in the slave trade and allies against the Spaniards
(Civrieux : ). The alliance with the Dutch is one of the most important elements for understanding the processes of change in Carib polities. This relation aorded the Carib a privileged access to Western goods
obtained as payment for hunting Amerindian slaves, as payment for the
control and repression of black slaves in the Dutch colonies, and as regular payment of gifts as tokens of friendship by the colonizers (Meneses
). According to Whitehead (: ), the control of the circulation
and the consumption of Western commodities are the most important criteria by which to study the transformation of their political structures. Yet
an analysis of the accumulation of wealth and its consequences to the Carib
political structures must consider the entire cycle of production, distribution, and consumption of goods. Indeed, the Carib controlled the circulation of goods within the Amerindian world, but they could not create such
goods by themselves.
Through the establishment of a debt-peonage system (Hugh-Jones
), the Carib developed a growing relation of economic and political
dependence with the Europeans, who constantly increased the amount of
goods and loans, thus forcing the Caribs to trade and raid continuously
to pay the debts (Gumilla : ). Since the Dutch were famil-

Rafael A. Gassn

iar with such primitive shell currencies as the cowries (Cypraea) from the
Indian Ocean (Moreno Feliu : ); they knew very well the importance and rationale behind a commodity like quirpa. Thus, by maintaining a constant ow of valuable goods in circulation by trade and credit,
inequality and political complexity developed; but a dynamic of dependence was also established. In this way the Carib became workers and intermediaries of a peripheral world-system. As Stephen Hugh-Jones (: )
stated, in practice and at a local level, there is continuity or t between
capitalist institutions and Indian exchange practices. How this t works
out in practice depends on factors such as the power dierential between
the individuals and groups involved, and the nature and intensity of contact
between them.
During colonial times the Carib developed several strategies to carry
on long-distance trade activities, including war and trade expeditions, barter and credit granted to inland chiey elites, and warfare and coercion with
weaker groups (Gumilla ). The Dutch played a key role in helping the
Carib to organize and manage the complex information and administrative
processes related to long-distance trade networks and provided new military skills and weaponry. Even more, the Dutch did not indulge in compulsory indoctrination nor dispute the land of the Amerindians (Goslinga
: ). So it is not surprising that they gained great support from the
Carib, who saw their relationship with the Dutch as based on mutual benet, not on exploitation, for they were their friends, relatives and inlaws
(Garriga : ).
It is clear that the economic structure so developed was not purely
Amerindian or European; it was not an aboriginal system of long-distance
exchange nor an international market. Rather, it was an original economic institution that resulted from the colonial encounter; however, its
rationale was the result of the expansion of the European world-system. In
this way a vast trade network was established under Carib and Dutch control. In fact, much scholarship about northeastern South American trade
and exchange networks may refer to this specic network, which was perhaps one of the biggest economic structures ever created in this part of
America during that time (Gassn : ; Zucchi and Gassn n.d.).
This network was characterized by () an increasing trend toward social
complexity and political centralization, () more aggressive and competitive relationships among groups to control the sources of valuable goods,
and () a growing dependency on political and military alliances with the
foreigners.
The Achagua-Carib trade partnership is a good example of the tendencies previously discussed. There are many indications that the Achagua

The Evolution of Shell Beads

from the eastern llanos of Colombia and the Apure region of Venezuela had
an important degree of social complexity, including a hierarchical settlement pattern, dierential burial practices, chiefs who inherited their
oce, and specialists in production and trade of primitive valuables. The
Achagua served as middlemen in long-distance exchange among the
Muisca and the peoples of the lowland llanos (Cassani []: ;
Mercado []: ; Morey : ; Langebaek : ;
Rivero : ). From all reports it seems that the old Achagua town
of San Salvador del Puerto de Casanare was a very ancient and important
trade center (Rivero : ). The trade of shell beads was so important to the Achagua that they even had artisans (ocials) and traders specialized in producing and trading quirpa. The Achagua Indians called it
chucuchucu (Mercado []: ). In addition, the Achagua obtained
beads from other groups in exchange for agricultural products. The beads
were used on ceremonial occasions; later, they were used to obtain Western
commodities, particularly iron tools and rearms from the Carib (Cassani
[]: ; Mercado []: ; Rivero : ).
After the slave-hunting raids were intensied throughout the Orinoco River region, so the Carib-Dutch trade network increased. The incorporation of the Amerindian networks into the incipient international
market expanded and redened in many important ways the Orinocan exchange. During the following years, the Dutch-Carib trade was so important that in they were considered the owners of the Orinoco River
by the Spanish colonial authorities (Civrieux : , ; Goslinga :
). After the seventeenth century the Arawak trade reached San Salvador de Casanare, where they brought iron tools and hammocks used only
by chiefs and principal people in exchange for quirpa (Bueno : ;
Mercado []: ; Rivero : ; Simn : ).
The quirpa strings were regarded as one of the most important
commodities for both Indians and Europeans. One of the many problems
suered by the local population during the process of colonization of the
Orinoco Basin (including Indians and Europeans) was the shortage of currency, particularly of coins of low exchange value, which was a perennial
economic problem in colonial South America (Arellano Moreno : ;
Osorio : ). In Venezuela, in comparison with other colonial possessions, this problem was particularly critical because of its condition as a
poor colony. The huge quantities of gold and silver that characterized the
viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru were absent in Venezuela, making it necessary to import coins from abroad. To make things worse, the few coins
that reached the Spanish colonies were systematically redirected to the foreign colonies and smelted again, because their gold content was higher than

Rafael A. Gassn

their ocial value (Sosa Llanos ). Moreover, the missionaries and colonizers used to save the coins as a strategy to cope with the uncertainties of
the colonial life, thus further aggravating the situation. Eugenio de Alvarado ( []: ) stated that everyday exchange was carried out by
using quirpa, not money; if by chance a coin arrived at the missions, it was
immediately taken out of circulation and saved at the missions oce.
Finally, in everyday transactions the scarce supply of coins in circulation possessed an enormous value, making it almost obligatory to buy more
than was necessary to use their exchange value, thus causing many problems and annoyances. The colonial administration never had a systematic
policy in this regard, so currency shortages and the routine witholding of
coins was an important limitation to the colonial economy (Arellano Moreno : , ). The colonizers used several strategies to overcome
this problem: bartering other objects such as gold, cocoa beans, and pearls;
producing their own coins; or using the native mediums of exchange. For
many of the inhabitants of the mainland (particularly the poorest ones: soldiers, peasants, slaves, Indians) the option was simple: they found in the
aboriginal shell beads an alternative to the shortage of currency. The consequence was an increase in the production and use of shell beads in everyday
transactions.
Quirpa strings were also used to pay debts and taxes under a xed
rate, which amounted to another use unknown during the pre-Hispanic
period. In Father Mateo Mimbela ( []: ) described how
the Achagua had to pay four pesos a year in quirpa as tax to the colonial
authorities of San Salvador de Casanare and twenty-ve pesos in quirpa to
Don Alonso de Abila, the local encomendero, or colonizer. For these reasons
the shell beads became synonymous with money and certainly acquired
the characteristic of contemporary currencies (e.g., they had value standards, were kept as savings, and were used to pay taxes and debts). So basic
was quirpa for commercial transactions that in Joseph Cassani (
[]: ) wrote: and whomever had quirpas in quantity was considered rich, because certainly at any time it was possibly to buy whatever was
necessary; and from this came the name, or the meaning of money, to the
quirpa because with it, like with money, it was possible to nd anything
desired; and until those days this shell money circulates on the Casanare,
Meta, and Orinoco Rivers, as esteemed by Spaniards as by Indians.
In the Spanish administration took military actions aimed at
limiting Dutch and Carib activities in the Orinoco region. Despite that, by
the Carib trade networks had extended as far as the Guaviare and
Meta Rivers in the Achagua territory. By , however, Felipe Salvador
Gilij ( []) found San Salvador de Casanare to be decimated by

The Evolution of Shell Beads

illnesses, which caused the decline of the Achagua as manufacturers and

traders of shell disks. Finally, the Spaniards began to expell their competitors from the area, helped by people like the Otomac (independent) and
the Caberre (Arawak), traditional enemies of the Carib (Civrieux :
; Rosenblat : ). In Spain announced the elimination of the
Dutch colonies of the East. With the retreat of the Dutch trading posts, the
Carib long-distance trade networks were dismantled and reduced to local,
limited networks.
After the demise of the Achagua-Carib partnership, the production
and trade of shell disks was taken over by the Otomac of the middle Orinoco. Contrary to other groups of the region, the Otomac never were controlled by the Carib (Gilij []: ), perhaps because of their impressive social and political organization (Gumilla : , ). Like
the Achagua the Otomac showed many traits related to an important degree of social complexity, including chiefs, collective organization and division of work, and important public ceremonies, including ballgames and
bloodletting (Morey : ; Zucchi : ; Rosenblat :
). Similar to many other groups of the llanos, the Otomac esteemed the
quirpa as a symbol of wealth and power. Tavacare, the powerful Otomac
chief, wore many strings of quirpa on his neck and forearms; his sister was
also dressed in a similar fashion (Carvajal []: ).
According to Alberta Zucchi (: ), the Otomac are the most
likely descendants of the forebearers of one of the late Arauquinoid subseries of the middle Orinoco (Arauquinan, Matraqueran, and Camorucan). In that area prehistoric demography and settlement-pattern analysis
indicate that complex societies of the chiefdom level appeared during the
Camoruco III phase, some four hundred years before the European contact (Roosevelt : ; Spencer : ). The Otomac had an important trade and production center located in Uruana, where people from all
over the llanos met to barter because they were the only people who make
quirpas (Alvarado []: ). At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the Arawak still came to Uruana to buy quirpa, to sell it later to
the neighboring colonies and to the forest Indians (Bueno : ).
The Shell Beads in the Ethnographic Record
With the consolidation of the Spanish Crown in what is now Colombia and
Venezuela, the importance of shell beads declined slowly because of the diminishing demand, the low prices, and the introduction of abundant and
cheap glass beads, or mostacillas. Glass beads came from dierent sources,
including Spain, Italy, France, and Holland, although they were relatively

Rafael A. Gassn

scarce until about (Deagan : ). The glass beads were obtained

from the Spaniards settled in the llanos of Caracas, the western and central
savannas of Venezuela (Bueno : ). It is very likely that they were also
obtained from Dutch and French traders who had settled in the Guianas.
It is important to note that the Dutch bead industry was particularly successful in the New World and that Dutch glass beads in the Spanish colonies are more abundant than currently recognized (Deagan : ).
Czech glass beads from Bohemia were introduced after in the Caribbean area by the Jesuit missionary Miguel Sabel. After the middle of the
nineteenth century Czech mold-pressed beads became much more important in the world market (Polysenky , quoted in Vrz []: ;
Sprague : ).
To increase the production and trade of beads, the Otomac people
introduced new raw materials, like marine shells and silver, improved the
techniques of production by using iron tools, and popularized the use of
glass beads. The early data indicate that in the aboriginal economy, the
bead strings did not have xed prices because barter was the usual mechanism of exchange (Cassani [] ). In the transactions between Indians and colonizers, however, quirpa strings had prices. For instance, by Father Pedro de Mercado ( []: ) indicated that
in the llanos, the quirpa string was valued in two reales de plata, four in
the city of Guayana, and up to eight in Trinidad. As a consequence of the
abundance of shell beads and the introduction of glass beads, prices started
to drop. By the cost of a quirpa string was two silver reales, but a
century later the same string was valued at half that (Bueno : ). By
the end of the colonial period the shell beads, the glass beads, and Western
coins were circulating simultaneously. In the aboriginal economies barter
continued to be the usual way to carry out transactions. Gilij ( []:
) narrates how on one occasion he intended to pay with money for some
peppers. He was rejected and asked to pay with glass beads, even when the
beads were of less value than the money itself.
It seems that during the nineteenth century, glass beads completely
overshadowed the shell beads as a medium of change in the Amerindian
economies. For instance, among the contemporary Piaroa (Uwotjuja) and
other groups of southeastern Venezuela, glass beads were until quite recently basic elements of the intertribal trade. For the Piaroa mostacillas
were good to think items, being symbols of wisdom and ritual singing (Overing and Kaplan : ). Alexander Mansutti () believes
that glass beads acted in a similar fashion as shell beads did in the past,
for aboriginal groups generalized their use in commercial exchange. The
Yekuana people of the Caura-Paragua region acted as middlemen in the

The Evolution of Shell Beads

exchange of glass beads between the Pemn and the Piaroa. So abundant
was the Yekuana provision of beads that, according to the Piaroa, they
were the owners of a big mine of mostacillas (Coppens : ; Mansutti
: ).
Despite the growing importance and inuence of the foreign glass
beads, other people continued to use objects strikingly similar to the old
shell beads. During the second decade of the twentieth century Theodore
Koch-Grnberg () reported that the Guina, the Taulipang, and the
Makushi of the highlands of Guiana used to wear entire loads of beads,
including small white shirt buttons from Europe. Those buttons were obtained through exchange from other tribes and were highly popular (ibid.:
). Before the introduction of synthetic materials, shirt buttons were
made mostly of bone, shell, and porcelain. The production of shell buttons
reached its height during the mid-nineteenth century (Hume : ; Saul
: )
At the same time the monetary economy slowly continued to nd its
way into the aboriginal economies and practices. In , during a visit to
Guagnungomo (possibly Yekuana) of the Caura River region, Jean Chaffanjon (: ) observed a bracelet made with small coins, including a
French coin. In Enrique Stanko Vrz ( []: ) paid
for some Yekuana ethnographic objects with one kilogram of glass beads
and two silver dollars. In Martn Matos Arvelo (: ) reported
that the Yekuana, Piaroa, Mako, and other groups of the Upper Orinoco
had necklaces and bracelets made of pierced silver coins. More recently,
Audrey Butt-Colson () reported that in the northern Pakaraima and
the Gran Sabana region there was no money or substitute for money before
the s, for barter was still the common way to make commercial transactions. None of the traditional items she reported (including glass beads)
was used as a medium of exchange (ibid.: ).
These regional variations were almost surely the result of the disruption of the exchange networks and the dierent roles played by dierent
groups. The disappearance of traditional ways and mediums of exchange
was aggravated by the growing inuence of the modern state in the aboriginal economies. In the market economy typical of national states, the main
way to acquire Western goods and money is wage labor; within that system barter occupies a secondary position. For that reason the glass beads
were reduced to certain spheres of exchange, which show the changing balance between the barter and monetary systems that coexisted in the past.
For example, David Thomas () indicates that among the Pemn of the
Guiana Shield, mostacillas can only be changed by certain goods, being
therefore limited to specic spheres of exchange. It means that glass beads

Rafael A. Gassn

do not act as an standard of value, and therefore they are not a universal
medium of exchange (ibid.: ). After the s even the most isolated
settlements of the northern Pakaraima and the Gran Sabana region were
using cash (Butt-Colson : ). Among the Piaroa, where glass beads
are not limited to spheres of exchange as in the Pemn case, the increasing
use of wage labor and cash in daily transactions is starting to disrupt traditional exchange patterns (Mansutti : ). Thus in the end the beads
became completely obsolete and were replaced by modern currency. Nowadays some references to the use of beads as money (koma) still persist in
the oral tradition of the Wakunay of the upper Orinoco (Lpez Pequeira
et al. : ).
Discussion
What follows is an evolution or biography of shell beads as a medium
of exchange in the Orinoco Basin. The archaeological record and early historical references seem to indicate that quirpa strings were used as objects during the pre-Hispanic period in both ceremonial transactions and,
to a lesser degree, in barter among the Indians. Many groups with dierent levels of social organization were involved in the manufacture and exchange of beads, but it seems likely that those primitive valuables were
manipulated and exchanged principally (albeit not exclusively) by chiey
elites. Marshall Sahlins (: ) stated that primitive money tends to
appear in the peripheral social sector of societies at the tribal level in conjunction with an unusual level of balanced reciprocity. The characteristics
of the societies of the Orinoco Basin, howeverstrongly integrated but
with dierent sociopolitical structuressuggest that the emphasis should
be not on the type of social organization, but on the level of social and
economic integration between communities with dierent degrees of social
complexity. In such a system of social and economic relations the meaning
and importance of beads was a shifting one, depending on the situation in
which they were used and the political status of the individuals and groups
who manipulated them. Within communities quirpa, like North American wampum, initially was not a commercial currency but a primitive valuable that was used primarily in important transactions that established and
maintained political and kinship relations (Douglas : ; Smith :
; Yerkes : ).
The relationship between social complexity and the manipulation and
control of primitive valuables tends to be more clearly dened during historical times. After the contact period the paramount producers of shell
disks were the Achagua of Casanare, and after them, the Otomac of the

The Evolution of Shell Beads

middle Orinoco. Both societies could be considered as chiey societies, if

not true or maximal chiefdoms. It is likely that these peoples, already on
the path to social complexity at the end of the pre-Hispanic period, took
advantage of the new opportunities oered by the colonial encounter, including an attempt to increase and control the production of shell beads.
By controlling the production and trade on shell beads, those groups attempted to gain a privileged access to Western commodities and political power. Obviously, this universal usage of the shell beads in a growing international market oered new opportunities to the aboriginal
entrepreneur with chiey aspirations, but it also oered new dangers. The
Carib-Achagua case illustrates nicely the statement made by Rita Kipp and
Edward Schortman (: ): when luxury goods are available through
the market rather than by direct, chiey exchange, the elites power depends increasingly on economic exploitation and the control of arms. As
Carib chiefs and entrepreneurs became more and more successful, they also
became but more and more dependent on Dutch and Achagua commodities; when the trade networks were dismantled as the result of political and
demographic factors, the Carib power basis was destroyed. The Otomac
then stepped up and took advantage of the opportunity to control the production of quirpa. With the growing inuence of the colonial economy,
however, the bead strings continued to change in their nature and characteristics until they became obsolete. Both cases clearly illustrate the complex opportunities and risks involved in using luxury goods as one of the
sources of chiey power. Mary Douglas (: ) further examines this
point: In each case, leadership and the political structure of groups are not
set apart from the sphere of commerce; the rewards of the successful entrepreneur are the highest rewards of power and prestige which the society has
to oer; he cannot dominate the political situation without rst dominating the market. Since the native ability to do this is unenvenly distributed,
and since in competitive conditions the entrepreneur risks ups and downs
in his career and declines as he ages, in such systems leadership is open to
challenge and change and the political structure is unstable.
The growing circulation and the broadening of the functions (and later
the eventual decline of the shell beads) were therefore the result of the problems related to the creation of a global economy, the competition among
the European colonizers, and the introduction of the aboriginal economies
into the global market. This process was driven by the shortage of coined
money and the massive production of beads. The signicant amount of shell
beads circulating in the colonial economy of the Orinoco River made it
necessary to establish value standards based on the European currencies.
By the mid-seventeenth century the shell beads acquired all of the charac-

Rafael A. Gassn

teristics associated with Western currencies: they had standard prices, they
were used as a universal medium of exchange, they were used to pay taxes
and obligations, and they were kept as savings. The shell beads circulated
not only within the Spanish colonial economy, they were also accepted by
all of the colonial powers. In addition to their new characteristics and users,
the shell beads continued to carry their tradicional symbolic value. Gilij
( []: ) summarized this complex situation: No other Orinocan merchandise is sold more expensively, none is more sought after, as
much by the Indians as by strangers. The Dutch, who buy it, use the beads
. . . to embellish their female Indian servants. This moment can be dened
as the mercantile situation in the social life of the Orinocan shell beads,
because the exchangeability of quirpa became its socially relevant characteristic (Appadurai : ). Finally, with the political and economic
consolidation of Spain on the mainland, the neutralization of its competitors, and the massive introduction of glass beads, the bead currency slowly
lost its importance, being reduced again to the sphere of Amerindian exchange. As a result of the inuence of the capitalist economy of the modern
state, the use of beads as a medium of exchange disappeared in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
During the past several decades the substantivist and formalist schools
generated an important discussion regarding primitive money. The majority of these discussions were centered on the characteristics of true
money, that is, on the criteria used to dierentiate among money, objects
that acted as money, and primitive valuables. Such schemes were applied
to a multitude of cases to establish whether the objects in question were
money. This produced a predictable dichotomy in which two basic categories exist: true (or all-purpose) money and false (or special-purpose)
money. This is because money and currency have been considered universal categories, giving them attributes that are specic of our own monetary systems (Bloch and Parry : ; Moreno Feliu : ). However,
precapitalist societies did not establish clear distinctions among commodities, money, and items of social exchange. Establishing those distinctions is
not an easy task, even in modern society. As Maurice Godelier (: )
stated, Very often the precious objects we encounter in primitive societies
have a dual nature: they are goods and no-goods, money and gifts, according to whether they are bartered between groups or circulate within the
group.
Conclusions
Three conclusions are derived from the biography of the beads in the Orinoco Basin. First, the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic

The Evolution of Shell Beads

evidence indicates that the attributes of the shell beads were more the result of the perceptions of dierent social actors through time than inherent characteristics of these objects. Therefore, I suggest a possible alternative approach, a shift from the study of the characteristics of the beads
to the study of their social meaning as dynamic objects manipulated by
people with dierent ethnic and sociopolitical backgrounds. Second, the
aforementioned evidence indicates that the evolution of this medium of exchange was the result of mutual needs and continuity between European
and Amerindian economic institutions, not merely the result of the automatic imposition of the Western economic rationality, for quirpa eectively acted as a bridge between dierent economic systems. Although it is
impossible to say that this process was based on mutual benet, reducing
the role of the Amerindians to passive witnesses or victims will not broaden
understanding of the colonial encounter in the Americas; it will only perpetuate the crisis of representation in the discipline.
Finally, the examination of the biography of quirpas and mostacillas suggests that a historical anthropology informed by a world-system
perspective is a theoretical ground where archaeologists, ethnohistorians,
and ethnographers can meet around common problems and new prespectives (Orser : ). In this sense the assessment of the evolution,
extent, dierences, and coincidences between the possible prestige-good
systems indicated by the archaeological record, and the System of Orinoco
Regional Interdependence indicated by the ethnohistorical record will be
among the most important and dicult tasks of future interdisciplinary
studies (Arvelo-Jimnez and Biord Castillo : ; Lathrap : ;
Gassn : ; Zucchi and Gassn in press).
Notes
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Foro en Homenaje a Donald
Lathrap during the fortieth annual convention of AsoVAC in Cuman, Venezuela
(), and at the twenty-second annual Midwest Conference on Andean and Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory at the University of Michigan (). I would
like to thank Kay Tarble, Kathleen Allen, Andrew Strathern, Jonathan Hill, Stanford Zent, and Berta Prez for their useful comments, information, corrections, and
suggestions. I would also like to thank zooarchaeologist Edgar Gil, who made the
malacological identications, and Carlos Quintero, who provided the illustrations.
I am solely responsible for any errors the article may contain.
Ernst (a []: ) indicated that the Maiba could have used a large freshwater shell that he identied as Unio syrmatophora Gronov. This freshwater mussel is currently identied as Paxyodon syrmatophorus Meuschen, which has a wide
distribution in the lowland savannas of Venezuela and was the rst pelecypod
described in continental South America (Gil pers. com., ; Simpson ).

Rafael A. Gassn

In Ernst (d []: ) published some notes on the aboriginal population of Venezuela from a letter dated December , in which the use of
beads as money is already indicated. Unfortunately, no further information is
given.

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