The pursuit of higher social rank by possessing artefacts of rare skill or distant origin is a familiar principle (Binford 1962; Helms 1993). Signes de richesse (‘Signs of wealth’) is an exhibition of evidence for this practice during the Neolithic period in France. It opened in June 2015 at the French National Museum of Prehistory, Les Eyzies, where the usual fare is Palaeolithic archaeology (Chancerel et al. 2015: 13). The exhibition's main concepts and some of its data spring from the great ‘Jade Project’ on the acquisition, manufacture and distribution of ‘big axes’ (Pétrequin et al. 2012). The display is alluring, but the underlying argument is flimsy because the conceptual principles remain implicit. For whom, then, was Signes designed?