1769-1850 (Temporal Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lee Panich. Rebecca Allen.

Recent excavations at Mission San José (ca. 1797-1840s) in central California unearthed over 3,000 glass beads. Such items are commonly recovered from Spanish colonial missions and contemporaneous sites on the Pacific Coast of North America, yet they have proven difficult to interpret beyond their assumed role as trade beads. We believe there is great potential for the humble glass bead to serve as the reference point against which to understand the complex social relationships that constituted...