Cowrie shells were an important object of exchange in West Africa. They were largely sourced from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and brought to West Africa by the trans-Saharan trade as well as European merchants. Cowries were regularly used in low value transactions, but could also be assembled in great quantities - in the tens and hundreds of thousands - for major transactions. They circulated alongside other forms of money, such as coins, and were a central currency of the transatlantic slave trade.
