Fish vertebrae / trade bead necklace

[alexlenehan]

My dad gave me this when I was small telling me that it was an ‘old tribal necklace made from human spines’

Now I’m older and wiser I suspect it is fish vertebrae and trade beads but it really isn’t my area of expertise. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

It is about 8 feet long.

Thanks,
Alex

 

[monsterrack]

From what I can tell from your photo, to me the vert's look like Tuna and the beads look like Pony beads. The close up of the beads show that they have some age to them. What part of the country do they come from, I'm guessing west coast. Your are right on saying fish vert's due to the hole in the center of them, that's where the spinal cord runs. Cool string of beads!!!!!!!

 

[alexlenehan]

Thanks so much Monsterrack. I’m actually from England so I have no idea where he got them from! This was about 30 years ago now.

 

[rginn]

Yeah pretty cool. Those are what we call 'pony beads' and an older type. You can do some research on those as there's a lot of info out there, and possibly get a reasonable date for them.

 

[alexlenehan]

Thanks so much to all of your help with this. I’ll be taking it somewhere for advice and will post the results on here when I have them.

I know many people use this site as a reference so I’m posting some better pictures for posterity.

Thanks again,
Alex