Small Beads, Big Picture: Patterns of Interaction identified From Blue Glass Artifacts from the Upper Great Lakes Region

Summary

As European explorers and displaced Native newcomers entered the Upper Great Lakes region, they introduced unfamiliar material types, such as glass beads, which both local and non-local people incorporated into trade networks and technological systems as they confronted the social and economic challenges of interacting with Europeans and their objects. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Native Americans used glass beads as personal adornments and as raw material modified to produce new objects. Blue glass artifacts recovered from archaeologically documented habitation sites were chemically analyzed with the goal of clarifying the movement of Native peoples in this region and the entanglement of technology and identity. In beads, patterns of variation may reflect the timing and directions of trade among diverse social and ethnic groups, while refired glass pendant recipes similar to the composition of locally available glass trade beads may represent instances of on-site production.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Research in Material Culture Studies: Archaeological Science Applied to Objects and Contexts   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

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Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-43,02

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