ON NUEVA CADIZ BEADS

ON NUEVA CADIZ BEADS Jeffrey M. Mitchem Arkansas Archeological Survey [email protected] A Paper presented at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Augusta, Georgia, November 16, 2018.  On Nueva Cadiz Beads Jeffrey M. Mitchem When University of Florida archaeologist John M. Goggin died in 1963, one of several unfinished manuscripts he left behind was a study of beads from Spanish Colonial sites. Based on his many excavations in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Florida, along with extensive museum studies, he had developed a basic typology of glass beads with names for the various types. He had also made considerable progress in assigning date ranges to the different types based on the sites where they were found. Although his colleagues had hoped the manuscript could be published, it was just too incomplete. One of the most distinctive bead types had a unique square cross section and was often made of a cobalt blue or brilliant turquoise outer layer, underlain by a thin white layer and a translucent core. Some of these were twisted during manufacture, resulting in a unique spiral shape. Goggin recognized that these were the earliest glass beads he was finding, and he named them after the Spanish settlement of Nueva Cadiz, a pearl fishing settlement on the island of Cubagua off the coast of Venezuela. Nueva Cadiz was founded in 1515 and was quite prosperous, even though there was no source of drinking water on the island. A devastating earthquake in 1541 destroyed the town, and rather than rebuild, the Spaniards chose to abandon it. The 26-year span of occupation is valuable for learning what artifacts were brought during that short part of the early sixteenth century. Other excavated sites in the Caribbean were also occupied for short, well-documented intervals, and they have likewise been useful in putting together a chronology. Goggin and others carried out excavations at Nueva Cadiz and at other early Spanish-contact sites in the Caribbean and nearby areas, repeatedly finding that the Nueva Cadiz beads were present only in the earliest deposits. It became apparent that the contexts predated 1550, and this hypothesis has been repeatedly tested over the years and is valid in the Caribbean and Latin America. I would also add that the early dating also holds true in African sites of early Portuguese contact. My purpose in presenting this paper is to discuss some misconceptions and points of confusion that have arisen about this particular bead type over the years, especially recently. Some things that have shown up in print need to be corrected before they are perpetuated, needlessly confusing researchers. It also turns out that the story is not as cut-and-dried as we thought. The first thing I want to make very clear is that they were NOT manufacturing these beads at the site of Nueva Cadiz. I don’t think any archaeologists have said this, but I’ve seen it twice in publications dealing with the Hernando de Soto expedition. The best candidate for place of manufacture is Venice, specifically the island of Murano. The uncertainty is due to the fact that, for the most part, anything dating more recent than Roman in Europe is considered modern trash and is not of interest to European archaeologists. Although Goggin argued that the beads were being made in Spain, he could find none in museum collections there. I know of only one Nueva Cadiz bead found in Sevilla, at one of the few sites where late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century deposits were excavated. Interestingly, it was in the area where merchants were outfitting ships heading out to the New World. Although we have no descriptions of the manufacture of Nueva Cadiz beads specifically, it is clear that the process was somewhat complicated and required speed and precision. The initial hypothesis held that the different colors of molten glass were layered into a mass, called a gather. This was done on the end of a blowpipe or other rod. A worker with paddle-like tools called marvers worked it into a square shape and also made a perforation through the gather. A rod called a pontil (pronounced “punty”) was attached to the outside edge, and a worker or apprentice ran with that pontil, pulling the glass away from the main blowpipe. One of the fascinating things is that molten glass will retain its marvered shape as it is drawn out this way, while the diameter of the mass of glass and its perforation will shrink as it is pulled out. Problems with this hypothesis were pointed out by various workers and researchers, and it is now thought that the gather of molten glass was probably inserted into or blown into a square-shaped mold, which would probably allow it to maintain its shape longer. I hope we can someday persuade some modern glass artisans to carry out some replicative experiments. When pulled out as far as wanted, it would be carefully laid down and allowed to cool before being cut or snapped into rods, which would then be cut into individual beads of varying lengths. Some were faceted on the ends to highlight the layering of glass. If they were making Nueva Cadiz Twisted beads, they had to perform all of these steps, while also rotating the pontil. The beads do not show evidence of being marvered after they were drawn out. Nueva Cadiz beads are typically between 3 and 7 mm on a side. Most of the larger ones are of three layers of glass, with the middle layer being white. Many of the smallest ones are a single layer, usually translucent cobalt blue. Lengths vary, and in some cases the end users probably broke or cut the beads they were given into shorter lengths. Marvin Smith and Mary Elizabeth Good studied a truly remarkable collection of early sixteenth-century glass beads from Peru and Bolivia in the 1970s and 80s. This assemblage, the Jones-Avent collection, is housed at the Museum of the Mississippi Delta in Greenwood, Mississippi. The museum was formerly known as the Cottonlandia Museum. Even though all of the beads were looted from burials and archaeological sites, they appear to clearly date to the early sixteenth century. The researchers were able to develop a typology based on the beads in the collection along with others in museum and private collections. A book with color illustrations was produced, which has become an indispensable reference for scholars studying early Spanish beads. Thought to be out of print, the Museum of the Mississippi Delta recently discovered a supply of the books in pristine condition, and they plan to make them available again. All square cross-section beads are not early sixteenth century, and all should not necessarily be classified as Nueva Cadiz beads. Specifically, there are brick red or redwood-colored ones from Huron sites in Canada and Susquehannock sites in Pennsylvania that are products of a much later revival of the technique of making square cross-section beads. These specific types are never found on Spanish contact sites in the southern United States or in Latin America or the Caribbean, and they should not be called Nueva Cadiz beads. They were brought by Dutch traders much later. Another confusing type are these very thick square beads. This one measures 13 mm on a side. These are another example of the revival of the style, and these date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most were probably made in Africa. I had an encounter with some of these earlier this year. I was shown some photographs of what looked like Nueva Cadiz beads and a crossbow bolt tip found by collectors on a site in southwest Florida. The photos were all of separate artifacts with no scales. I was intrigued because it was apparently a site not far from the presumed Soto route, plus the crossbow tip was very different from what we usually see in sixteenth-century examples. In June, I had a chance to see the items in person, and I immediately realized we had very late beads due to their size. Although I still don’t have a good explanation for that bolt tip, I know that it’s not an early contact site. I want to finish with three other cases. First is the Luna Settlement at Pensacola, the site you will hear about in just a few minutes. This fascinating site was occupied from 1559-1561. Their supplies were in disarray or lost after a hurricane sunk their fleet. So far the excavations have yielded seven Nueva Cadiz beads, one of which is twisted. Since Nueva Cadiz beads are only supposed to date 1550 or earlier, there is a problem. Do we need to change the chronology? I don’t think so. As I’ve mentioned to John Worth before, I strongly suspect that those beads, and perhaps all the beads they brought along, were what is sometimes called “new old stock.” Luna and his expedition came from Mexico, and I wonder if the beads they got for taking with them had been imported to Mexico a decade or more earlier, and had not sold yet. Perhaps Luna got a good deal from the seller. Of course, this is just speculation, but there could be documentary evidence to support it in the Mexican archives. Assuming some of those beads got carried along and exchanged with Native groups as Luna moved inland, archaeologists working in those areas will have to be wary of archaeological occurrences of Nueva Cadiz beads, because they could be later than the norm. After all, there has even been one Nueva Cadiz bead found in St. Augustine! No typology or chronology is perfect, and researchers should look for other types of corroborating evidence if they are carrying out research in areas where we suspect Luna headed inland. We are always faced with the prospect of curation or heirlooming of beads before they end up in the ground. A similar situation can occur when there are undocumented contacts, like so many of the discoveries in peninsular Florida. A good example of this is in the Seneca sites in New York. Out of hundreds of thousands of beads, there are 10 Nueva Cadiz beads from seven sites investigated by the Rochester Museum and Science Center. These are typical Nueva Cadiz Plain beads, and must have come from a Spanish source, but the sites all date between 1580 and 1625. All of the other glass beads are clearly later types, and there are no indications of other Spanish trade goods. We know that there were cursory explorations along the coast in that region by Spaniards, and they were likely the source of those few beads. I have saved the most bizarre case for last. It is Jamestown. This is a baffling case. They report on their website that they have recovered hundreds of Nueva Cadiz beads, all of only two distinct varieties. They also have a lot of other beads that would look perfectly normal in a Spanish assemblage. The problem is that the James Fort site dates from 1607-1623. Could it be another case of “new old stock”? Also, from what I’ve been able to find, not many of these are recovered in aboriginal sites in the region. Figuring this one out will require both documentary research and chemical analysis. What ties together everything in this discussion is the importance of context. Depending on where Nueva Cadiz beads are found, interpretations of their origin and dating may vary, and in some cases they are not the solid, reliable chronological indicators that we thought. We have to be especially cautious when collectors or others show up with beads that they claim to have recovered from a site. Looting is still going on at a rapid pace in Peru and other parts of Latin America, and beads and other artifacts are offered for sale on many different websites. 1 7