Liberia 



Roman energy carry Roman commerce beyond the southern 

 Hmits of modern Morocco ? How did the Agri beads reach 

 Liberia ^ and the Gold Coast ? 



The Agri beads are undoubtedly of Mediterranean origin. 

 In appearance they are most diverse. Some are of the chevron 

 pattern, in layers of blue, v^hite, red glass ; others are round, 

 four-sided, or cylindrical beads of blue, red, or amber glass, or 

 are of a mixture of glass and porcelain (or clay), with spots or 



dashes of different colours. With one 

 notable exception, no bead has yet been 

 discovered on the West African coast 

 which need be older than the thirteenth 

 century a.d., or which might not be 

 of Italian manufacture. This exception 

 is the component beads of a necklace 

 long buried in the grave of a Gold 

 Coast chief, about forty miles inland 

 from Elmina (on the road to Kumasi). 

 The glass beads of this necklace are 

 undoubtedly of " classical " times (^i.e. 

 antecedent to the Renaissance), and 

 resemble very closely beads of the Greek 

 Islands of perhaps five hundred years before Christ {vide article 

 and illustration by Mr. C. H. Read in Man of January, 1905). 

 So far as native tradition goes, these Agri beads are declared 

 to be much older than the glass beads manufactured at Venice 



17. AGRI BEAD FROM PUTU, 

 EASTERN LIBERIA (PROBABLY 

 VENETIAN) 



^ Writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries mention Agri beads 

 as being found on the Kru coast of Liberia. Mr. Braham has recently discovered 

 them to exist in the Putu country behind the Kru coast. Here they are of dull blue 

 glass, long, and four-sided. The illustration given is of a Putu Agri bead now in 

 the British Museum. This Putu bead is pronounced by Mr. C. H. Read to be of 

 no earlier date than five hundred years ago, and to be of Venetian make. It may 

 of course be much later in origin. 



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