"A Thousand Beads to Each Nation:" A social interpretation of glass trade bead distribution in the Upper Great Lakes region of North America
Author(s): Heather Walder
Year: 2015
Summary
Through LA-ICP-MS elemental analyses of 874 glass trade beads from 31 early colonial-era archaeological sites in the Upper Great Lakes region of North America, and from late 17th century contexts historically associated with French exploration of the Gulf Coast of Texas, I identify patterning in the spatial and temporal distribution of European glass-bead recipe groups. Trading relationships among Indigenous peoples and outsiders in this French "Upper Country" took place on a complex "middle ground" organized and navigated by an "Infinity of Nations" (White 1991; Witgen 2012), who maintained social and political autonomy through gift-giving and forging fictive kinships. Therefore, patterning of glass recipe groups may reflect: socially-structured exchange networks circulating goods across a diverse ethnic landscape, dynamic population movements, and groups’ changing access to materials over time. In this case study, archaeometric analysis of glass beads supplements standard archaeological methods, like stylistic analyses of ceramics and other "Native-made" artifacts, to clarify ethnic groups’ interactions and boundaries as reflected in material culture. This regional examination of glass bead exchange highlights the usefulness of investigating archaeological glass recipes beyond simple chronology-building or clarifying historical manufacturing processes, demonstrating potential for illuminating social connections of ethnic groups interacting on a dynamic past landscape.
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Cite this Record
"A Thousand Beads to Each Nation:" A social interpretation of glass trade bead distribution in the Upper Great Lakes region of North America. Heather Walder. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 396444) ; doi:10.6067/XCV8TD9ZGQ
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
Ethnicity
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Glass Analyses
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Interaction
Geographic Keywords
Great Lakes
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North America - Midwest
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Wisconsin
Temporal Keywords
17th & 18th Centuries
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Historic
Spatial Coverage
min long: -92.944; min lat: 40.044 ; max long: -82.485; max lat: 47.577 ;
File Information
| Name | Size | Creation Date | Date Uploaded | Access | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walder-SAA-2015.pdf | 5.22mb | Apr 20, 2015 | Apr 20, 2015 5:08:02 PM | Public | |
| Slides presented showing two case examples, including distinctive glass beads from the Hanson site, WI, and a discussion of the possibility of tracing beads associated with French explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, in the Upper Great Lakes and in the Gulf of Mexico. | |||||