Jewellery is one of the oldest types of archaeological artefact – with 100,000-year-old beads made from Nassarius shells thought to be the oldest known jewellery.[1] The basic forms of jewellery vary between cultures but are often extremely long-lived; in European cultures the most common forms of jewellery listed above have persisted since ancient times, while other forms such as adornments for the nose or ankle, important in other cultures, are much less common.