Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2023
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
The archaeological study of glass beads first developed around Lake Ontario, where researchers used these artefacts to explore the impact of early European trade on Indigenous societies living far inland in North America. The construction of chrono-typologies made glass trade beads a go-to artefact for dating contexts of the 16th-19th centuries. However, as more archaeologists around the world began to study this period, they brought new data and new approaches to the study of glass beads. This symposium will explore global trade circuits, geochemical provenancing, glass beads in contexts other than the colonial trade, non-European manufacturing centres, Indigenous agency, beads and gender, and other themes that reflect the conceptual tension of globalisation and decolonisation in glass bead studies. Our goal is to foster dialogue among archaeologists who think about glass beads in different ways, depending on where they are on the planet and how they approach the early modern period.
Other Keywords
Beads •
Glass Beads •
Glass •
LA-ICP-MS •
Museum Collections •
Chemistry •
Cargo •
Shipwreck •
Colonial •
maritime cultural landscape
Geographic Keywords
Europe •
Northeastern North America •
Southeastern United States •
Ontario, Canada •
American West •
Central and South America •
New Spain •
Asia Pacific Region / Indian Ocean World •
North America Plains
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)
- Documents (11)
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Compositional Analysis of Prosser Molded Beads Found in Southeast Idaho (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Identifying the origin for Prosser beads may lead to a greater understanding of their distribution. In this study, x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis of a collection of 102 Prosser beads of various colors found in southeastern Idaho indicate dramatic variation between elemental composition of the beads. The variations are...
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Crossing the Line: Disciplinary Boundaries, Decolonization and Museum Collections (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the museum world, an invisible but firm boundary exists between ethnographic and archaeological collections. Ethnographic objects in general, and particularly those from other regions of the globe, are an underused resource in archaeological glass bead research, particularly within the U.S. In this study, beads that adorn...
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From Soto to Luna: Following a Mid-16th Century Trail of Glass Trade Beads in the Southeastern United States (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The University of West Florida has recovered at least 36 glass trade beads since the discovery of the Tristán de Luna y Arellano settlement in 2015. This paper compares the bead assemblage recovered from the Luna settlement site in Pensacola, Florida, with Soto's winter encampment, the Governor Martin site, in Tallahassee,...
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Glass Beads from the Gagliana Grossa : a Reference Collection for the Venitian Production at the End of the 16th Century (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. At the end of 1583, the Gagliana Grossa, a Venetian merchantman, sank near the small island of Gnalić at the south-western entrance of the Pašman Channel, Croatia. Heading to Constantinople from Venice, its cargo contains, amongst other goods, several barrels of glass beads manufactured in Venice. Recovered through several...
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Golden Glass Beads in New Spain and Local Productions (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper focuses on the analysis of a thype of golden glass beads that has been recovered in different archaeological excavations carried out by INAH in Mexico City, to question two widely held ideas about these objects in New Spain. First, it focuses on the contexts in which they have appeared to challenge the idea that...
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An Indigenous Glass Bead Industry In The Northern Plains Of North America (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the first half of the 19th century and perhaps slightly earlier, Indigenous individuals in the Plains region of North America began making their own glass beads by recycling beads obtained through trade. They crushed glass beads and reformed the crushed glass into different beads that are visually distinctive, fusing...
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Investigating 17th Century Wendat Patterns of Interactions in Global Contexts – Contributions from Glass Bead Studies (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Tracing Wendat patterns of interaction in the 17th century AD is a long-standing research topic in Ontario and the broader Great Lakes region. To address this, new research employing both historical documentation and composition of the glass trade beads is beginning to untangle the networks of cross-Atlantic exchange that...
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Mixed Cargos of Glass and Stone Beads of the Indian Ocean World Early Modern Period (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Most literature on beads in the IOW is from very early archaeological sites in South Asia dated to the BCE era. The Indian Ocean World (IOW) encompasses the overarching geographical boundaries of East Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. What does the literature indicate for the distribution of...
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Preliminary Micro Computed Tomodensitometry Of 16th and 17th Century Frit-core Glass Beads In North America (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores the potential of micro computed tomodensitometry (µCT) to contribute to the understanding of frit-core glass bead manufacture. µCT is a non-invasive technique that is used on a wide range of archaeological materials, including glass beads, to examine their manufacturing technology. In this preliminary...
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The provenance of Nueva Cadiz beads: a chemical approach (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. We conducted a chemical analysis of Nueva Cadiz from two 16th-century collections, originating from the namesake Nueva Cádiz site in Venezuela (1498–1543) and a pillaged site in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. The two collections yielded similar results and we may infer they came from the same production centre. Here we focus on their...
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Reporting New Collections of Glass Beads from France (16th - 19th Century): Typology and Chemical Composition (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. European glass beads were intensively used for trading in the colonies of Africa, Asia and the Americas from the 16th to the early 20th century. Although found in large amounts in colonial sites, our knowledge of their production and their use in Europe is very limited. In this presentation, we discuss seven new collections...