Shell Beads in the Sixteenth Century Northeast

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples in northeastern North America had been modifying marine shell for cultural use. However, the circulation of marine shell expanded and contracted over time. Few to no shell artifacts are recovered from fourteenth and fifteenth century sites in the Northeast, suggesting a gap in the cultural use of shell materials during this period; but over the course of the sixteenth century, shell artifacts reappear and increase in frequency. Marine shell was widespread yet inconsistently distributed across the Northeast during the sixteenth century; the most common marine shell artifacts are discoidal beads, tubular beads, and pendants. For this project, I conduct new archeological analyses of shell beads currently housed in museum collections and also draw on published literature. Through the use of macroscopic assessments (such as determining striping patterns) and digital radiograph imaging, I analyze regional sources of raw materials and manufacturing methods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• 2020 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 818