Ancient Beads from Southeast Asia at the Corning Museum of Glass

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 2026, the Corning Museum of Glass—a world-renowned institution for glass studies in upstate New York—will update its major permanent exhibit of historical glass, “35 Centuries of Glass.” This reinstallation is committed to telling a more global, inclusive, and contextualized history of glass that features little-known and understudied objects in its collection, including in particular over 25,000 beads from Southeast Asia. A substantial portion of these beads originate from archaeological sites in Malaysia, and are thus key to understanding the role and life histories of trading ports around the Indian Ocean. Were these beads produced at major manufacturing sites in India, like Arikamedu, and shipped to Malaysia for further distribution? Were industrious entrepreneurs in Malaysia recycling broken glass pieces into beads for resale? We submitted a sample of 150 beads for LA-ICP-MS analysis at the Field Museum and report on our initial results here. Findings will be incorporated into Corning’s new exhibit to tell a more complex, accurate, and holistic story of glass around the Indian Ocean in antiquity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Current Research on Ancient Glass around the Indian Ocean

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35680.0