Glass Beads along the Early Maritime Silk Route: A View from Southeast China

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

From the fifth century BCE to the early centuries CE, glass beads played an important role as trade goods along the Maritime Silk Route, with large numbers found at coastal and inland sites in South, Southeast, and East Asia. Archaeology and compositional analysis have identified distinct glass recipes and likely manufacturing sites throughout the maritime region. In southeast China’s Lingnan region (present-day Guangxi and Guangdong provinces), earlier glass beads made in China were complemented—during the first century BCE of the Western Han period—by beads produced in India and Southeast Asia. At the coastal site of Hepu (Guangxi), a few hundred burials dating from the first century BCE to the third century CE contained over 30,000 glass beads, with large numbers also found in Han period burials in Guangzhou and Guigang county. This burial data is used to comment on the timing of arrival of glass beads, their spatial distribution in the region, their association with funerary measures of status, and possible routes of redistribution within the region itself.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35763.0