Featured Bet you’ve not seen one quite like this!? (Maybe for good reason) What are the beads?

This came from an online estate auction a cpl years ago. Guy was a jewelry maker and I believe professor. His thing was mixing old and ancient with new. I bought a few handfuls of things including some nice Lampwork beads I posted here quite a while back. Other than those glass beads everything has been put away since. I was unsure of most of it and haven’t gotten around to the research. Some of his stuff was called pretty Columbian and certainly some of his collection/inventory was or was trying to be at least. Some appears to be Neolithic Chinese or similar. Some possibly Roman. Hard for me to say especially when I knew less a couple years ago and have a poor memory. I wish I could recall his name. Anyways the box this was in was stored separately from the rest. Happened upon it today and figured I’d get some opinions. Looks more like turquoise to me than anything else but I’ve personally not seen turquoise beads in these longer tubes. Im certainly not convinced that’s what it is. Could also be a type of marble I guess? Hoping someone can help there. The pendant is an old smaller size crotal bell. Hard for me to say when or where on the bell. They’ve been used for thousands of years as far as I know without too many drastic changes. Shape may help someone ID it as it’s not just a sphere. Anyways here it is on a semi modern chain.

edit: the beads do look old to me but all stone is old so that could be it. Someone will know more by looking at the holes I assume.

 

Old as literally dirt. I'm trying to dredge up where these were from, they were sold here as necklaces by a company called Ancient Arts. I think perhaps Mesopotamia. About four thousand years old.

 

I'd say african, maybe Nigeria...

 

Lol. Old as dirt I say!

 

Beads, bell, or both?

 

I'm just getting an all around african vibe....
the tube remind me of Bauxite tubes.....but wrong color..

 

I was assuming he married the beads and bell and put them together on the chain. I guess they could have come together before he or someone re-strung them though. The components could be African or the they could have come together from Africa too. It will be interesting to see what others say.

 

Either older than dirt or they sure want to be.

 

Nice, I would have bought it, had I come across it.

It also has an African vibe to me, and old. The stone could be amazonite, which is used in Morocco and in Saharan countries like Mali and Niger. They are found in some other countries through trade.
Whatever the stone, what you have has quite a value imo.

 

The beads are certainly ancient. As in thousands. The bell might be a bit newer, maybe a few hundred years old. I can't decide on that.

 

Absolutely, wherever they are from.
Evidence of Saharan, Sahelan and Sub-Saharan material culture goes back some 130,000-150,000 years, so if African, we've got some wiggle room.
Some ancient stone beads from Mali that are offered for sale are said to be 4000 yrs old. There seems to be a lot of looting going on there though.

The bell is nice and a proper antique, but it has no business being on that necklace.

 

Glad you would have bought it too and glad it has some value. I honestly didn’t know if it was worth $50 or $500. I did find a strand of very similar stone beads on eBay that were called pre-Colombian. They sold for $200 in auction format so that’s encouraging. Of course now that I know they very well may be ancient I’ll end up wanting to keep them.