For all the time that we spend on our appearance, the importance of jewellery is often underestimated, and the crucial role it plays in society is usually overlooked. In actuality, personal ornaments act beyond a simple aesthetic function; instead they tie together individuals and societies. It is also an important part of our communication repertoire, acting as a visual mechanism to convey information important to social relationships. Research by anthropologists and archeologists has shed light upon intricate relationship between jewellery and society in the present and past.
A piece of jewellery can mean just something material for
some people; but for majority of us, jewellery is something that we worked hard
on getting and it marks a specific time in our life. This is also the reason
why a ring is given by a man to a woman when he wants to marry her; it’s also
the reason why two people are bound together by similar rings on their wedding
day. Our brave soldiers wear a necklace that signifies what they fight for and
what they do for our country. For some, it may be something only material, but
there’s nothing more special than jewellery that tells and epic story.
One of the key reasons jewellery forms a fundamental part
of society is the role such adornments play as an alternative communication
medium alongside language and writing. In many societies, personal ornaments
act as an individual, social or ethnic marker, conveying information about the
status of the individual visually. From their jewellery, an individuals’ life
story can be read. In the Kenyan Masai, the division in subsistence strategy
between the agricultural and pastoral groups is reflected in the different
ornaments that each group wears.
It acts as a window to our part giving us a glimpse of
the minds of our earliest societies, the time people were wearing jewellery,
they were also communicating with speech.
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