Investigating 17th Century Wendat Patterns of Interactions in Global Contexts – Contributions from Glass Bead Studies

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Tracing Wendat patterns of interaction in the 17th century AD is a long-standing research topic in Ontario and the broader Great Lakes region. To address this, new research employing both historical documentation and composition of the glass trade beads is beginning to untangle the networks of cross-Atlantic exchange that moved European-made materials into Indigenous contexts. Glass bead studies in Ontario have long included non-destructive chemical analysis by INAA. Through use of the minimally destructive LA-ICP-MS, we analysed 350 polychrome and monochrome beads from legacy collections from 13 Wendat sites attributed to the four Nations of the Wendat confederacy. We also provide additional new data from a Dutch workshop context. Our focus is on variation in base glass composition and trace elements in silica sources to examine whether there are noticeable differences between sites of different Nations, ages, and settlement sizes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Glass Beads: Global Artefacts, Local Perspectives   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow