Venetian beads in Alaska
Type:
Jewelry
Date:
Possibly as early as 1397–1488
Location or Findspot (Modern-Day Country):
United States
Medium:
Glass
Description:
These late medieval or early modern Venetian beads were discovered during excavations of three arctic sites in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska. Comparative Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) allowed researchers to quantify the relative amounts of chemical elements in the beads and identify them as soda glass, typical of fifteenth-century Venetian and later European beads. The Alaskan find also included locally made copper bangles to which the beads would have been attached. Radiocarbon analysis of vegetal twine attached to a bangle (used to help fasten it) indicated a date of 1397–1488, a period during which Venice was an important center of glass manufacturing (although other researchers have disputed this early date, proposing the sixteenth or seventeenth century instead). Traders did not transport the beads to Alaska across the Atlantic but rather along the Silk Routes to northeast Asia and then across the Bering Strait.
Relevant Textbook Chapter(s):
10
Image Credits:
Images reproduced with permission from Michael L. Kunz of the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks and Robin O. Mills of the Bureau of Land Management
