Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Glass beads and ornaments in North America have long been used as markers of contact between Indigenous and European communities as well as chronological markers. However, more recent work has expanded research questions to explore how glass ornaments can bring more nuanced understandings of exchange, connectivity, and identity by the diverse peoples who traded, modified, and used these objects. The papers in this session examine glass beads and ornaments from across North America and use a variety of approaches to examine these topics—from the use of compositional techniques to explore the origins and exchange of glass beads—to typological studies that consider how particular types and colors of beads were selected and used.
Other Keywords
Historic •
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: Glass Analysis •
Historical Archaeology •
Trade and exchange •
contact period •
Trade Beads •
Glass Beads •
Woodland •
Material Culture and Technology •
Ritual and Symbolism
Geographic Keywords
North America: Northeast and Midatlantic •
United States of America (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
North America •
United Mexican States (Country) •
Delaware (State / Territory) •
Georgia (State / Territory) •
Mississippi (State / Territory) •
Department of Martinique (Country) •
Tennessee (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Comparisons and Connections between Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Glass Bead Assemblages in Paugvik, AK, and Beatty Curve, OR (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers two collections of glass beads excavated from residential contexts in Paugvik, Alaska (nineteenth century CE) and Beatty Curve, Oregon (nineteenth–twentieth centuries CE), and housed in the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Using LA-ICP-MS analysis, around 30 beads from each...
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Compositional Analysis of Prosser Molded Beads Found in Southeast Idaho (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. n 1864, a factory in Briare, France, began producing Prosser Molded beads for African and North American trade. The beads were made using a novel process combining milk as a binding agent to powdered feldspar, calcium fluoride, silica sand, and coloring elements to create a paste that was pressed into molds, then fired in a...
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Horizons of Color, Shape, and Size: A Stratigraphic Analysis of Glass Beads in Fur Trade-Era Onöndowa’ga:’ (Seneca) Towns (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. George Hamell’s 1992 paper “The Iroquois and the World’s Rim: Speculations on Color, Culture, and Contact” considers color symbolism in the Seneca (Onöndowa’ga:’) context to contemplate the metaphysics of the colors red, black, and white in Seneca cosmology and material culture. While widely cited within archaeological...
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Investigating Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Wendat Local Interactions Using Glass Bead Chemistry (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass trade beads are one of the earliest forms of European material culture to be integrated into Wendat daily lives in the early colonization period in the eastern Great Lakes region. From the late sixteenth century, Wendat and other Indigenous people traded, modified, and circulated these small durable possessions among...
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Personal Practice: Adornment and Personal Goods from the St. Amelia Plantation (16SJ80), St. James Parish, Louisiana (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The material traces of those within certain spaces, such as the “Big Houses” of southern Louisiana’s plantations, are not restricted to the wealthy. Enslaved peoples, wage-laborers, and many others labored throughout the home. Here we utilize personal artifacts from Phase III data recovery excavations at the St. Amelia...
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The Trade Bead Assemblage from the Chinook Middle Village at the Station Camp Site: Western Terminus of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Pacific County, Washington (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation discusses a trade bead assemblage excavated from the Chinook Middle Village at the Station Camp/McGowan Site (45PC106), a location that can be considered the western terminus of the historic Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803–1806. The camp was situated at the likely site of a seasonally occupied Chinook...
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Why These Beads? Color Symbolism and Colonialism in the Mohawk Valley (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholarship has long recognized the significance of glass beads in postcolumbian North America. For northeastern Native Americans, beads were relationally entangled within sociopolitical relationships and the spiritual world. In the Mohawk Valley, bead types and colors have been useful temporal markers, but their social and...