Shuar Armlets

The elytra of the shining leaf chafer beetle (Chrysophora chrysochlora) is sometimes used in jewelry and other crafts made by indigenous people of the Amazon. Pictured is a pair of armlets from the Shuar of Peru comprised of monkey teeth, seeds, shining leaf chafer elytra, and fiber string. It was collected for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago by W. E. Safford who was contracted by Frederick Ward Putnam, Head of Harvard University's Peabody Museum. Putnam was hired to supervise the development of the anthropology exhibitions at the World's Fair.