I have shown this photo in the Pyu essay posted here. These were brough to the US out of Burma, in the first wave of Pyu beads to depart that country in 1988.

JDA.

In this detail of the same image, just the blue group is shown. Most of these are translucent.

JDA.

This is an image from my book, Magical Ancient Beads, showing Ulrich Beck's necklace of extraordinary Indo-Pacific beads, of the type called "mutisalah." Unlike many beads, these were not excavated or recovered recently, but rather have been passed down through several generations. They have an amazing patina that can only be appreciated when you see and handle them.

The necklace is strung with coins, a nice gold bead, flanked by two 16th C. Venetian chevron beads.

JDA.

These Indo-Pacific beads were bought in Thailand. They may have been made there or in Vietnam (not too far away). These strands demonstrate the typical range of colors.

The strand in the middle consists of Ban Chiang beads. These are opaque orange disks. Their manufacture is not entirely clear, in part because they have been milled or cut to be regular cylindrical disks. The interior is swirly. These are often mistaken for "ceramic" beads.

Photographed in 1985.

JDA.

Boy. I'm tired....

These are the first "nila" beads I was able to handle and shoot. The lower group is in great condition. The upper beads behind them are the same color(s), but have decayed to white. Photographed in 1987.

Note that the beads are generally convex on one end (the top surface when they were manufactured); and are flat on their lower surface. This is a natural result of slumping.

JDA.

These are also recovered in Mali from early occupation sites, but they are European beads. I would guess they are Venetian, from the late 16th to early 17th Cs. However I could not rule out a possible Dutch origin. They are about the size of modern pony beads, and were likewise shaped via the en masse heat-rounding method, that in the 20th C. became hot-tumbling (but was formerly called "ferrata").

The beads are a muddy (brownish) translucent violet. They are shown with two larger beads from Mali of the same vintage and origin (I believe), of similar violet glass. Clearly, these are related to the so-called "Nueva Cádiz" beads (except being monochromatic, and lacking an internal white layer. They are square in cross section and twisted.

Because of their context—being recovered from early sites in Mali, these beads are often presumed to be "ancient"—and might be confused with either Indo-Pacific beads, or imported Middle Eastern beads (such as are also found in Mali).

JDA.

This is the collection of a friend of mine. On the left are unrelated ceramic beads, recovered in Mali. (That these are "ancient" has been challenged; though I am not doubtful.) Then, the right beads are "nila" beads again.

The three groups between them are hanks of Venetian (most likely, but surely European) seedbeads—similar in size, shapes, and vintage as the previous. They are opaque white, a gray that is probably induced from glass decay, and a translucent dark blue. I have the gray and white ones in my collection as well.

A few years ago, I wrote an article about these beads, suggesting that Venetians developed seedbead-making to fill a market where Indo-Pacific beads were popular, but no longer made. I still think this is a reasonable proposition. You can read the paper in The Bead Museum Quarterly. The similarity between early European glass seedbeads and both Indo-Pacific and Middle Eastern beads is strong enough that confusion is understandable.

JDA.

These two strands came from Cambodia, probably 300BCE to 500AD:

1. dark blue and teal-y blue (translucent);

2. brick (opaque) and dark blue (translucent).

Somewhere, I have some chunks of raw blue and teal glass, which come from the shoreline at Klong Tom on the Andaman sea south of Krabi. Even a couple of millennia ago it would have been an important transshipment point across the isthmus to the Gulf of Thailand, thereby cutting out the dangerous sea journey down through the Strait of Malacca. Unfortunately there are no reliable archaeological dates for that site; if there were, it might help us to determine when these beads started to be made from imported Indian glass in SE Asia. It must have been by 500BCE, when production of the unique biconal Ban Chiang beads began (they're found nowhere else).

I've also seen some large (about 10 kilo) ingots (is that the right word?) of similar blue glass that were said to be from Ban Chiang (though I doubted most of what that dealer said, and didn't buy them).

Strangely, I've never seen any red or yellow glass, though the red is the commonest variety of all.

Best regards,

Will

Hi Will,

Tubes of glass were made from very early times. However, the manufacture of canes expressly for beadmaking was much later. Later than 500 BCE. A comfortable date is around 100 BCE, but perhaps a bit earlier. Peter used to be in a race with himself to set the date farther and farther back in time. Last I'm aware, he was trying to make a case for ca. 300 BCE (which is still pretty early).

The curious thing is that drawn beads were developed almost simultaneously in Europe (the Mediterranean) and India. I think Peter would have liked for India to be the ultimate source. Early writings about Arikamedu (where Indo-Pacifi beads may have first been devised) suggested that, because it was a Roman outpost and entrepot, the Indians probably learned this beadmaking from them. Peter thinks it went the other way. It might just be simultaneous. The beads themselves are pretty different. Or at least some are.

The problem with assigning dates to beads based on the culture they derive from is the (understandable) human tendency to want to use the earliest date possible—even when there is no real evidence for it.

Take the instance of beads from Ban Chiang. When I went to the University of Pennsylvania Museum in 1983, they showed me the Ban Chiang beads they had scientifically excavated and dated. These were the opaque orange disks I mentioned above. I was told that at that time there was ZERO evidence that the (mainly) blue truncated bicone beads were from the Ban Chiang culture—because they had not been scientifically recovered. Some years later, I read that, in fact, they WERE Ban Chiang beads. BUT, they are LATE. Much later than you suppose.

Trade between Persia and China developed at about 500 BCE. At that time, is was essentially the exchange of goods between rulers. Perhaps there was also some "trickle down" happening too. At least soon thereafter. This was the beginning of the Silk Route. And the Silk Route itself encouraged the development of merchant exchanges. It was a while before sea routes were used instead of the Silk Route.

I have some good books on this topic, and I summarized all this in an article I composed on Javanese beads, in 1989. It was never published (because Peter nixed it to the publisher).

Jamey

Now I wish I had it here at home - I am so stuck on pretty pictures (sorry, it's just the way it is) that I never bought this important book with not a lot of pictures. Today I had a bit of time to look at it -and a good portion of it is research on these very beads. He documented 10 specific places where Indo-Pacific beads were produced - from the east coast of India all around the Bay of Bengal and a bit beyond, including Burma, Thailand, Vietnam. Some gathered on the shores of Sri Lanka....I've gotta get the dang book.

As far as I know, Peter's book is still in print. At least, I still have some copies for sale.

Hi Jamey,

Yes, you're right to point out the human tendency to try to push dates of origin ever earlier. I have to plead guilty to doing it myself. But Peter's dating may prove to be quite realistic, even cautious. The earliest date so far for glass beads in S-E Asia seems to be from a Sa Huynh culture site near what is now Ho Chi Minh City, where several radiocarbon dates of around 400BCE have been established. The beads were found in association with a lot of carnelian, agate, jade, garnet and rock crystal beads that appears to be largely exotic, though the lead archaeologist Nguyen Kim Dung argues that a substantial number (not the glass ones) may have been manufactured locally. His findings were published in 1995 in Vietnamese, and later on there was an English summary in the Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association.

Further inland, away from the sea routes that went around the south-eastern tip of Asia, there are more and more dates for glass beads around the 300 BCE time slot (including at Ban Chiang - I was wrong about 500 BCE). That coincides with the onset of the Iron Age in SE Asia, which produced huge social changes in the distribution of power and the concentration of wealth and occupations, enabling certain people to invest in ostentatious jewellery. The same old story!

A date for the beginnings of glass bead manufacture in the area still seems to be elusive, and one of the problems is that none of the main archaeologists working there seem to be primarily interested in beads. Unlike, say, Kenoyer in the Indus Valley.

Incidentally, I'm so sorry to hear that Peter stood in the way of the publication of your work on Javanese beads. That's disgusting. Is it available now? Would it be possible to link it to the articles section of the Forum? I'd very much like to read it, and I'm sure others would, too.

Best regards,

Will

Hi Will,

If Persia was sending glass beads to China as early as ca 500 BCE, it should be no surprise that glass beads were recovered in Eastern or SE Asia from 400 BCE. Finding beads is not proof of making beads. Not by a long shot.

I don't know what the conservative date for glassworking and/or glassmaking may have been in Eastern Asia and SE Asia. But that is not the point.

We are talking about DRAWN glass beads. These are a LATE development. My comments (unless specifically otherwise) were confined to this issue.

I'm not sure how anyone could affirm that '300 BCE is not too early,' when it would make the beads 100 to 200 years earlier than any beads conventionally believed to be ancient at this time. Pushing the development of a technical process back a century or two is sort of a big deal in historical archaeology....

Some months ago, I heard from a contact of mine that ideas about glassworking in SE Asia were in need of some revision. There was even a suggestion that maybe India learned drawn beadmaking from those folks—making SEA the home of this technique. Right now, I have no idea how far-fetched this idea may be, or if it is even based on anything sound. But when the proposition is made, it doesn't automatically become "true" overnight. It will, no doubt, be controversial for a while, in all likelihood. And after a while it might be dismissed as untenable.

Regarding Peter, at the time, I considered his actions despicable and self-serving—because I had quite a few ideas about Javanese beads that were at odds with Peter's ideas, and he was just temporarily protecting his stake. It turns out, I was on the right track, and he was not. Nevertheless, my paper did include some mistakes that I am glad (in retrospect) were not published. I would have included a bead that I now know is a fake, in my classification. A lot of the information I developed was used in Magical Ancient Beads, and by Jim Lankton for his Timeline book for the Bead Museum-DC; and in the paper we wrote together a few years ago on jatim in Korea. So, it is not as though this information was never presented. I talked about it many times in public lectures, in exhibit materials for The Bead Museum, and like that.

Be well. Jamey

Hi again, Jamey,

The pictures I've seen of the beads from the 400 BCE Sa Huynh site certainly look like the brick-red/burnt ochre Indo-Pacific beads, ie drawn beads. They definitely weren't the same as the glass beads found in north China at around that time, and so far to the best of my knowledge, no north Chinese artefacts from that early period have been found in the Mekong delta. I'll try to get someone to send me copies of the photos, so that I can post them here, though it may take a while.

Of course, all these dates shift back and forth a bit as new evidence accumulates, but I'm wondering how certain the dates are for drawn bead-making at Arikamedu in India. I'm fascinated by the suggestion that the technology might actually have begun in SE Asia; I hadn't heard that before. I must say at first glance it seems improbable to me; all the evidence that I know of still points to drawn beads having been introduced along with other goods and ideas from India, though I also think it's quite likely that local people would have wanted to learn the technology themselves as soon as they saw how attractive and marketable those beads were. It was, as I said, a period of very rapid social and technological change.

However, it used to be thought, too, that all the carnelian and agate found at early sites in SE Asia came from India or Afghanistan, but recent mineralogical tests on artefacts from a number of sites show that much of the material was locally mined. Bronze-making seems to have developed autonomously in the region also, and jadeite was being worked by highly-skilled craftsmen in Vietnam three thousand years before it reached China! So I guess it's best to wait and see.

Re: Jatim in Korea. That's fascinating too, Jamey. I tracked down a summary on the internet - where could I find the whole paper?

Best regards,

Will

Jamey,

Here's a photo which may be interesting. Not a bead but a glass ear ornament from the Sa Huynh site I mentioned before. It came apparently from the 300-200 BCE level. Since this is a localised form that was made somewhat earlier in stone and jade, it seems fairly safe to say the glass ring was made locally. The stone ones (I'm not sure about the glass) were exported to the Philippines also.

I couldn't say if the glass is imported or locally-produced. I heard some time ago that laboratory studies were being done to try to determine whether a distinction could be made between glass imported from India and glass manufactured in southern Vietnam, but I haven't come across any publications.

Best regards,

Will