Indian Ocean Glass Beads from Miyoba Mound in the Kafue River Floodplain, Zambia

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.

This paper reports on an assemblage of Indian Ocean glass beads excavated from the Middle Iron Age mound of Miyoba in western Zambia, at the hook of the Kafue River. Miyoba was a long-occupied settlement during the late first and early second millennium CE represented by approximately 5 m of occupation debris that includes house floors, midden deposits, and iron smithing debris. The assemblage contains 115 glass beads; most are beads with finished ends, with a small number of wound beads. The deepest stratigraphic glass bead is a garden roller, likely imported from K2 in South Africa—this is the northernmost find of a garden roller to date. We will describe the assemblage, examine the chemical signature of a sample of these beads and their connections to previously established bead series, and discuss the implications of the trade in Indian Ocean beads in the far inland for early second millennium Zambia.

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): 35906.0