the enlarged black beads gazed back to me!
It seemed each bead consisted of a pair of big facetted insect eyes.
The black beads turned out to be the heads of edible grubs of the sagopalm beetle (Rhynchophorus) or a longhorn (Capricorn) beetle.
The string of beads was collected in the Asmat area on the Indonesian part of New Guinea.
There, the grubs were eaten as a highlight by big collective meals. Maybe the necklace was made after such a collective feast meal. The necklace consists of about a thousand insect heads!
Bon appetit.

Hi Hans,
what an interesting necklace! I like it a lot. In my collection I have just a necklace made of insect parts. It is made by the thoracic segment of stag beetles called prothorax and is from Yuat River region, Papua NG. I bought two in Cairns, N. Queensland, thirty years ago. I gave one to a friend: it was eaten in few days possibly by carpet beetles. Mine is still safe in an entomological box with a small amount of natural camphor.
Giorgio

Enclosed is a picture of a female individual of stag beetle (don't know which species). The prothorax is the part circled in blue.
Giorgio

Enclosed is a picture of a female individual of stag beetle (don't know which species). The prothorax is the part circled in blue.
Giorgio

Every new collected organically piece I put well packed for two weeks in the freezer and after a month another two weeks. And in the storage box some camphor like stuff.
Nice piece you showed. Sometimes these coupled brestparts of insects are mistaken as being one insect, a millipede!