A four-thousand-year-old burial site may change our notions about that most ubiquitous of status symbols: gold. The oldest-yet find of gold beads in the Americas shows that even people in small communities could show off a little bling.

One theory is that complicated gold working is exclusive to stratified societies with elites rich enough to support it, says Mark Aldenderfer, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

So Aldenderfer was surprised to find the metal in a small grave at a site of hunter-gatherers in southern Peru. The hamlet, consisting of a handful of dwellings, was probably settled around 2300 BC by former nomads. Carbon dating of wood from the grave puts it sometime between 2155 and 1936 BC, at least 400 years earlier than the previous oldest example of worked gold in the Americas.