Necklaces are known in a wide range of styles, shapes, and materials from many parts of the Precolumbian world from at least the third millennium B.C. Among the Tairona, whose culture flourished in the Caribbean coastal plain and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia, necklaces seem to have been of particular cultural importance, since millions of finely made beads of gold, semiprecious stone, and shell have been recovered from elite burials.

The fifty-four beads illustrated here are hollow cast of a gold-and-copper alloy known as tumbaga by the lost-wax method, a technique favored by Tairona goldsmiths over hammering; core material remains in most of the beads. The curved, pointed shape of the beads has been compared to animal teeth or claws. A curious, yet little understood, feature is the projecting knob on top of each bead; these knobs may be ornamental or, perhaps, may have had additional decorations such as colorful feathers or threads tied around them. Abrasions on the sides of the beads suggest that stone beads, about 1.5 centimeters in diameter, were once placed between the gold ones. They could have been made of carnelian, jasper, or agate, all abundant in burials. The arrangement of the beads here is conjectural.