Archaeological jewellery

Bodemjuweeltjes/Gems Unearthed

Published July 4, 2025

Humans have been making and wearing jewellery for thousands of years. In fact, the first non-utilitarian objects ever created by humans were items of personal adornment. When you have been following this blog, you know jewellery is more than decoration—it’s a genuine historical source. Each excavated piece gives us a new perspective on our past and ourselves. It reveals trade routes, cultural connections, social hierarchy, and spiritual beliefs. Bodemjuweeltjes/Gems Unearthed is an exhibition in the Zeeuws Museum, The Netherlands, that discusses precisely these themes – so I had to go and see!

Gems Unearthed: the theme of the exhibition

Gems Unearthed invites visitors to think about these meanings while appreciating the objects themselves—pendants, chains, rings, bracelets, brooches, buckles, and hairpins, some several thousand years old. I appreicated that the introduction included an explanation of what we miss: only what has survived is on display. Metals like bronze and gold, glass, and gemstones have endured, while organic materials such as textiles and plant fibres have largely decayed.

The exhibition also features a strong selection of pieces from the early Middle Ages (my favourite!), a time when it was common to bury people in their finest clothes and jewellery. The exhibition fills three rooms in the museum – so let me walk you through!

Gems Unearthed: archeological jewellery

The first room focuses on archaeological jewellery. One thing I appreciated was the way the pieces were displayed at different levels, corresponding to their age: older items at the bottom, newer ones higher up – just like archaeological layers. You can see what I mean in the photos above: click to enlarge them to take in the details. It’s a great way to show development over time, and I thought it was well designed. The display levels even use different earthy tones to enhance the layered effect.

However, I’m not sure all visitors will pick up on this… because the room is very dark. Like, well and truly dark. While the jewellery itself is well lit and stands out, the overall lighting (or should I say lack of it) makes it hard to read the explanatory texts on the brochure that visitors receive. The texts on the sides of the showcases, indicating which level corresponds to which time period, are also hard to read.

This room opens with one of the oldest known pieces from the Netherlands: a boar’s tooth pendant dating from around 9000–4000 BCE. The showcases are organised by jewellery type, so you’ll find showcases dedicated to pendants, rings, necklaces, bracelets…I like how the chronological layout helps place them in context, so even when you’re just admiring the pieces, you’ll get a sense of their relative age and development.

Gems Unearthed: production and craftmanship

The next room is dedicated to jewellery production, and it’s much brighter. I found this section especially interesting because it explains how these items were made, showing techniques and tools that help you understand the craftsmanship involved. It shows moulds and half products, and touches on recycling: this happened quite often in the past. Just one example is a fibula (a clothing pin) made with an Arab coin which was found in the province of Friesland.

There is a selection of stones and gems, including a practice stone for intaglio cutting – every craft needs practising, and this is a piece I love! A beautiful set of chunky amber beads, along with garnets, Meerschaum, jet and more illustrates the range of materials used.

A separate showcase deals with the production of beads: Roman mosaic glass inlays, recycled for their glass in the early Middle Ages, 17^th century glass beads known as chevron beads, consisting of multiple layers of glass (and a few misfits), a piece of bone used to cut out small beads in a monastery…while small, this room manages to pack in quite a few techniques and materials!

Gems Unearthed: traditional Zeeland jewellery

The third and final room is even brighter and focuses on traditional jewellery from the museum’s own region. I really enjoyed this part! It features a careful selection of local gold and silver jewellery, jewellers’ drawings, and images of people wearing these pieces. There’s also a section on filigree, which played an important role in local traditions. In this way, the last room ties together what you’ve seen earlier: design patterns that go back centuries and a continuing story of skilled production.

Gems Unearthed: an overview of archaeological and traditional jewellery

This is a lovely exhibition: small, but with a lot of beautiful items presented in a coherent manner! The publication accompanying the exhibition is also a delight: a magazine-style publication, offering more insights on some of the pieces shown as well as personal insights by collectors and curators alike on a really wide variety of jewellery-related topics.

The exhibition texts are available in both Dutch and English, so you’ll be able to enjoy the full range of information.

All in all, should you find yourself in The Netherlands, this exhibition is definitely worth a trip to Zeeland!

More on the exhibition is on the website of the Zeeuws Museum.

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