Horizons of Color, Shape, and Size: A Stratigraphic Analysis of Glass Beads in Fur Trade-Era Onöndowa’ga:’ (Seneca) Towns

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

George Hamell’s 1992 paper “The Iroquois and the World’s Rim: Speculations on Color, Culture, and Contact” considers color symbolism in the Seneca (Onöndowa’ga:’) context to contemplate the metaphysics of the colors red, black, and white in Seneca cosmology and material culture. While widely cited within archaeological scholarship, Hamell’s work has its limitations; however, considering broad color categories in archaeological analyses of glass beads can be more suitable than the fine-grained specificity of the Kidd and Kidd (1979) typology. As such, archaeological scholarship of glass beads has begun to implement these broad color categories to examine entire assemblages and to compare multiple assemblages. This paper applies this emerging research and methodology to a smaller scale: within individual features. This paper examines glass bead color, as well as shape and size, in fire-related pit features in the Seneca towns of Ganondagan (ca. 1670–1687) and White Springs (ca, 1680–1715). This holistic approach has several outcomes: to establish a depositional chronology of features within each site, to understand the activities and daily lives of people who resided these towns, and to identify dynamic, generational trends in Seneca glass bead use.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Research on Glass Beads and Ornaments in North America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36652.0