Analysis of Glass Beads and Glass Recovered from an Early 17th-Century Glassmaking House in Amsterdam

Abstract

A variegated sample of two hundred and ninety glass beads and glass fragments recovered from the wasters of a glassmaking house in Amsterdam have been analysed by instrumental neutron activation analysis to determine their bulk elemental compositions. Since the archaeological context reveals that the material was deposited between 1601 and 1610, the recovered data provide a chronological anchor for beads of the same chemistry on archaeological sites in North America. Hence, knowledge of these Dutch bead chemistries is significant not only in determining the source of glass trade beads found in North America, and perhaps elsewhere in the world, but also in establishing the temporal locus of early archaeological sites with limited European artifacts save glass beads.