Jewelry

Personal adornments worn since prehistoric times by men and women of all cultures as ornaments, as badges of social or official rank, and as emblems of religious or superstitious belief constitute jewelry. In its widest sense the term jewelry encompasses objects made of many kinds of organic and inorganic materials such as hair, feathers, leather, scales, bones, shells, wood, ceramics, metals, and minerals. More narrowly the term refers to mounted precious and semiprecious stones, and to objects made of valuable or attractive metals such as gold, silver, platinum and sometimes rhodium, titanium, copper iridium and palladium. Jewelry has been worn on the head as crowns, diadems, tiaras, aigrettes, hairpins, hat ornaments, earrings, nose rings, ear plugs and lip rings, on the neck as collars, necklaces and pendants, on the breast as pectorals, brooches, clasps and buttons, on the limbs as rings, bracelets, armlets, and anklets, on the waist as belts and girdles with pendants such as chatelains, scent cases, and rosaries, and on every other area of the body imaginable. Much present knowledge of jewelry is derived from the preservation of personal objects in tombs. Information about the jewelry of cultures that did not bury valuables with the dead comes from portraits in surviving in painting and sculpture.