Glass Bead Dating

Although much of the evidence is sporadic and anecdotal, no one makes the effort to obtain a good sense of the magnitude of problems Africans face when they migrate to other countries. The most significant influx of Ghanaians emigrating to the United States has been in the four decades since independence. While many long-time Ghanaian American immigrants in the United States came as students, many of the immigrants of 1980s and 1990s came seeking business opportunities as well as specialized experience and training. Even though, times of economic hardship in Ghana have affected the number that emigrate little or less is imagined of the socio-cultural, economic and political challenges that await their emigration to the United States.

Echter een gedegen inventaris en onderzoek van glaskralen die in archeologische contexten zijn aangetroffen en waarbij gesynthetiseerd wordt over een groter gebied is er niet. Het doel van dit onderzoek is dan ook een degelijk inventaris van uitsluitend glaskralen uit

Drawing primarily on data from excavations at Elmina, Ghana, this report examines the potential use of beads as temporal markers in West African archaeology.  It is argued that although beads from West African contexts are difficult to date, they provide more information than has previously been suggested.  The Elmina beads are of particular interest as they can be closely dated by the associated European trade materials.  Preliminary results from the analysis of the more than 30,000 locally-made and European glass beads recovered are discussed and findings from other West African sites evaluated.

The purpose of this paper is to clear up fallacies about the distinctive glass beads known as Nueva Cadiz beads. Among topics covered are place of manufacture (NOT Nueva Cadiz!), how date ranges were
worked out, various varieties, how they were made, regional variations, and archaeological occurrences. In addition, anomalous similar-but-later beads will be discussed (red ones in the Northeast and huge ones
produced in the nineteeth century). The fact that Nueva Cadiz and other sixteenth-century glass beads are being looted on a massive scale in Peru and widely sold means we must be especially careful about interpreting unprovenienced collections.

Among the earliest European beads to reach North America is a distinctive group generally referred to in the archaeological literature as frit-core or frit-cored, so called because their interiors consist of sintered sand rather than solid glass. Likely produced in France, they are restricted to northeastern North America and have short temporal ranges, making them ideal chronological indicators for the latter part of the 16th century and the very early 17th century.

The paper examines possible links between the southern African practices of ‘traditional healing’, especially the material culture associated with this, and trance and healing in southern India. Evidence for an early link is developed by examining the ‘mace’, ‘axe’, ‘spear’ (umkhonto, imkhali) of the sangoma (southern African traditional healer) and the iconography of Ganesha and Hanuman in particular. The role of beads, espeically colours, the Indian Ocean trade in beads, and possible manufacturing methods are included in the analysis. The material culture, espeically the ‘weapons’ of the sangoma, and the beads, show strong similarities with southern Indian ritual and religious material culture that suggest more than trade was involved in early links between the southern Indian region and the southern African region.

Les perles en faïence et en verre de l'âge du Bronze découvertes en Bretagne : nouvelles données, nouvelles approches Étude typo-chronologique, composition, provenance Anne-Françoise Cherel et Bernard Gratuze, avec la collaboration de Patrick Simon Résumé : L'essor de l'archéologie préventive, corrélé aux progrès notables des méthodes d'analyses chimiques, a permis de reconsidérer notre approche analytique de la parure en faïence et en verre. D'importants programmes de recherche portant sur la circulation de ces éléments de parure, associant les études typo-chronologiques aux analyses chimiques, ont été développés. L'un d'eux est en cours de réalisation, pour les périodes de l'âge du Bronze et de l'âge du Fer en France (Billaud et Gratuze, 2002). L'étude des perles en faïence et en verre découvertes en Bretagne à l'âge du Bronze s'inscrit dans cette démarche, et vient compléter la synthèse réalisée sur les perles du premier âge du Fer et du début du second âge du Fer (Cherel et Gratuze, 2018). Depuis l'étude de J. Briard (1984) sur les perles en faïence, aucune synthèse consacrée aux perles en verre bretonnes de l'âge du Bronze n'avait été menée. Au total, 9 perles en faïence (dont 8 analysées) et 15 perles en verre (dont 13 analysées) ont été étudiées, soit un total de 24 perles de l'âge du Bronze. Les perles en faïence du Bronze ancien proviennent majoritairement de sépultures. Leur étude typo-chrono-logique corrélée à celle de leur composition indique l'origine nord-italique de plusieurs d'entre elles. Au Bronze final, cette tendance se confirme puisque 9 perles en verre proviennent d'ateliers nord-italiques auxquelles il faut ajouter, au Bonze moyen/final, 5 perles en verre égyptien et 1 perle en verre mésopotamien. Les découvertes sont fréquentes en prospections, on les trouve ponctuellement sur des sites gaulois ou antiques attestant de leur valeur. Peu d'entre elles ont été mises en jour en contexte d'habitat. Sur ces deniers (Brandivy, Cesson-Sévigné), de la céramique du Bronze final de tradition continentale était présente, aux côtés de perles originaires d'ateliers nord-italiques. Au Bronze final, la Bretagne se situe au coeur de relations profondes entre le monde méditerranéen (complexe nord-italien) et, via les circuits d'échanges, le domaine continental (complexe nord-alpin), puis le complexe atlantique (Irlande et Grande-Bretagne ?). La circulation des objets de parure en verre illustre bien l'itinéraire emprunté par la fameuse « route de l'étain ». Mots-clés : perles en faïence et en verre, âge du Bronze, Bretagne, inventaire, typo-chronologie, analyses chimiques, composition, ateliers de verriers nord-italiques, verre brut mésopotamien et égyptien, échanges commerciaux.

Abstract: During the last decades, with the rise of preventive archaeology, the discovery of protohistoric glass beads has increased in different regions of France. In the same time, advances in analytical methods gave the possibility to characterize these ornaments, which are fragile and often badly altered, while respecting their integrity. This combination of factors has led to undertake major research programmes on the circulation of these objects by combining typo-chronological approaches with chemical analyses. It is within this context of research that an exhaustive inventory of protohistoric faïence and glass beads (Bronze Age and Iron Age) discovered in France has been carried out (Billaud and Gratuze, 2002; Plouin et al., 2012; Gratuze and Billaud, 2014). Thanks to a fruitful collaboration, with both museums and preventive archaeology operators a corpus of more than two thousand objects from several hundred archaeological sites (habitats and burials) has been collected. For Brittany, more than a hundred objects, beads and bracelets were analysed among approximatively 200 protohistor-ical ornaments recorded. Up to now, for this area, the only available synthetic study on the subject was that of J. Briard, published in 1984, which dealt exclusively with earthenware beads from the Bronze Age. The aim of this paper is therefore to draw up an updated assessment of the data available for the Bronze Age in Brittany. It completes the publication of the beads found in the Hallstattian context (Cherel and Gratuze, 2018) and the research carried out for the La Tène period (Cherel and Gratuze, in progress). Article reçu le 11 décembre 2017, accepté le 23 mars 2018, publié le 30 juin 2018.

""The ‘big bang’ theory - best articulated by Ivor Wilks in the late 1970s and recently revisited - is a complex heuristic monument that must be carefully deconstructed. Its claim that before the integration of forested West Africa into the European bullion market and the opening of the Atlantic trade, the forest dwellers of Ghana were hunters and gatherers has been convincingly disproved by archaeological findings during the last 15 years. Indeed, history as a discipline contains limitations that were too often underestimated in reconstructing fragments of the early history of forested Ghana, especially with regards to the ‘origins’ of an agrarian order.
However, we also observe that large-scale, deep change definitely took place before and during the Atlantic era, which echoes significantly with sections of Wilks’ theory. Some parts of the ‘Big Bang’ paradigm are therefore still useful as encapsulating genuine historical information and thought-provoking hypotheses, which, if adequately recontextualized, may help to open a new page of early African history.""""

Two Early Avar period graves discovered from the end of the 7th century. One of the two excavated shaft graves is a double child-grave, while the other one was made for a woman with a few grave goods. The date of the burials was determined by early Avarian type silver earrings with bead pendant made of shett, the four or five pcs glass opaque beads, with one-two levelled aplique, the tube for amulettes worn on the necklace, the 8-shaped chain links and the nicked band-bracelet. 

Early Avarian graves of Oroshaza Bonum.

"Tumulus 2 of Meshalä Maryam (Mänz)
Around twenty tumuli-like monuments were identified in 1997-1999 on the site of Meshalä Maryam, known as having been an important site of the Christian kingdom during the XVth century. One of these monuments, the tumulus 2, has proved to be a funeral monument. It has the aspect of a stone heap which bore at its summit, before the archaeological excavation, a crater that lets one imagine an initially corbelled roof above a round chamber. This chamber had been plundered before the excavation, but this had not disturbed deep archaeological levels. The archaeological excavation of this tumulus revealed the existence of two well distinguished levels inside the funeral chamber. The higher level contained many human bones, certain of which, found alongside the walls, seemed to have retained their anatomic connexions. Many animal bones were also present. The sifted sediments delivered several hundred beads. The bottom level, about 30 cm thick, undisturbed, contained around thirty whole ceramics which were set in a bed of alternating ash and sediments. We were able to reconstitute the different phases of the monument’s use: they enable us to imagine the existence, associated to the original monument, of a first stage corresponding to the burial of an individual (or of a small number of individuals) together with an important storing of ceramics ; followed by successive burials, as deaths occurred,  of individuals making up a group whose composition evokes family like ties. The minimum number of individuals buried in this monument is 19.
"

This study reports upon the compositional analysis of early Anglo-Saxon (5th-7th centuries AD) glass beads from the cemetery complex at RAF Lakenheath (Eriswell), Suffolk. Major element analysis was undertaken using energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometry in the scanning electron microscope (SEM-EDS) on 537 samples from a total of 380 monochrome and polychrome beads. Trace element analysis was undertaken by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LAICP- MS) on 75 different samples from 65 of these beads. SEM-EDS analyses are also reported for a small number of glass beads from the early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Spong Hill, Bergh Apton and Morning Thorpe in Norfolk. The beads analysed were produced from soda-lime-silica glass, which was originally made in the Near East from a mixture of a natron and calcareous quartz-rich sand. They have been grouped and compared according to the base glass types represented and their colourant technology. These groups have been systematically compared to a well-established typology and chronology for these beads. The results demonstrate that the Anglo-Saxon glass bead industry was dependent upon the recycling of Roman material during the 5th and 6th centuries, but there is no evidence to suggest continuity in the glass industry from the preceding Roman period. Imported bead types were probably manufactured using a fresh supply of raw glass imported from the Near East. At some point in the latter half of the 6th century there appears to have been a drastic and rapid change in beadmaking practices. The Anglo-Saxon beadmaking industry in England appears to have largely collapsed, except for the production of a few crude bead types produced in the 7th century. Imported bead types come to dominate, but natron glass appears to have been in short supply by this time;

Interfacial reactions during Si die attachment with Zn-Al-Mg-Ga high-temperature lead (Pb)-free solder on bare Cu lead-frame (Tamac 4) and Ni metallized Cu lead-frame were investigated using an optical microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive x-ray (EDX). Die attachment was performed in an automatic die attach machine in a forming gas environment at temperature 380C. The back side of the die was metallized with Ti/Ni/Ag layers. Comparative studies of die attach properties such as wetting, void and die shear strength on bare and Ni metallized Cu lead-frame was made. Cross sectional microstructural investigation revealed that as many as three intermetallic compound (IMCs) layers form at the solder/lead-frame interface for bare Cu lead-frame. A CuZn intermetallic layer forms close to copper, a scallop shaped CuZn 4 forms at the solder side, while Cu 5Zn 8 forms at the middle. At the interface with Si die, IMC layer could not be detected by SEM. With Ni metallized Cu lead-frame, no IMC layer was observed at the solder/lead-frame as well as Si die/solder interface by SEM. Wetting on Ni metallized Cu lead-frame was found to be lower as compared to that at bare Cu lead-frame. Die shear strength was found to be higher on bare Cu lead-frame (24.2 MPa) as compared to Ni metallized Cu lead-frame (20.5 MPa). Die shear strength of standard Pb-5Sn solder was also measured for comparison and found to be 28.2 MPa.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5746721

This study reports upon the compositional analysis of early Anglo-Saxon (5th-7th centuries AD) glass beads from the cemetery complex at RAF Lakenheath (Eriswell), Suffolk. Major element analysis was undertaken using energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometry in the scanning electron microscope (SEM-EDS) on 537 samples from a total of 380 monochrome and polychrome beads. Trace element analysis was undertaken by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) on 75 different samples from 65 of these beads. SEM-EDS analyses are also reported for a small number of glass beads from the early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Spong Hill, Bergh Apton and Morning Thorpe in Norfolk.

The beads analysed were produced from soda-lime-silica glass, which was originally made in the Near East from a mixture of a natron and calcareous quartz-rich sand. They have been grouped and compared according to the base glass types represented and their colourant technology. These groups have been systematically compared to a well-established typology and chronology for these beads.

The results demonstrate that the Anglo-Saxon glass bead industry was dependent upon the recycling of Roman material during the 5th and 6th centuries, but there is no evidence to suggest continuity in the glass industry from the preceding Roman period. Imported bead types were probably manufactured using a fresh supply of raw glass imported from the Near East. At some point in the latter half of the 6th century there appears to have been a drastic and rapid change in beadmaking practices. The Anglo-Saxon beadmaking industry in England appears to have largely collapsed, except for the production of a few crude bead types produced in the 7th century. Imported bead types come to dominate, but natron glass appears to have been in short supply by this time; some it was adulterated with potassium-rich plant ash, probably as an extender.

Protein foaming-consolidation method is a facile technique for production of porous materials using egg yolk as pore creating agent. Usage of the yolk in the process offers a number of advantages over other proteins such as egg white and bovine serum albumin (BSA). Various materials were successfully fabricated using this technique. The present paper gives a brief review of the preparation and characterization of the materials through protein foaming-consolidation technique for biomedical application.

http://www.scientific.net/AMR.622-623.1759