Glass Beads from Songo Mnara, Tanzania: Chemical Composition and Evidence for Local Bead Manufacture

Wood, Marilee; Dussubieux, Laure; Wynne‐Jones, Stephanie; Fleisher, Jeffrey

doi:10.1007/s10437-022-09484-8

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Beads made of the MO subgroup glass are also found in limited numbers at several East Coast sites with occupations in the 13th and 14th centuries, including Gedi, Jumba Ruins, Manda, Mnarami and Mbaraki in Kenya (Trombetta et al this volume), as well as at Unguja Ukuu (7th to 10th century) and Songo Mnara (15th to 16th century) (Wood et al 2022) in Tanzania. About a quarter of these East Coast beads are wound, the rest are drawn.…”

Section: V-na-al Glass Beadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Elemental Analysis of Glass Beads

2022

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Glass beads, both beautiful and portable, have been produced and traded globally for thousands of years. Modern archaeologists study these artifacts through sophisticated methods that analyze the glass composition, a process which can be utilized to trace bead usage through time and across regions. This book publishes open-access compositional data obtained from laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry, from a single analytical laboratory, providing a uniquely comparative data set. The geographic range includes studies of beads produced in Europe and traded widely across North America and beads from South and Southeast Asia traded around the Indian Ocean and beyond. The contributors provide new insight on the timing of interregional interactions, technologies of bead production and patterns of trade and exchange, using glass beads as a window to the past. This volume will be a key reference for glass researchers, archaeologists, and any scholars interested in material culture and exchange; it provides a wide range of case studies in the investigation and interpretation of glass bead composition, production and exchange since ancient times.

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Section: V-na-al Glass Beadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Elemental Analysis of Glass Beads

2022

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“…Susan McIntosh and her colleagues have suggested the possibility of glassworking at Igbo-Ukwu in the form of local modification of imported glass beads (McIntosh et al, 2020). New studies are now unveiling glassworking among the Swahili communities of Eastern Africa (Rodland, 2022;Wood et al, 2022). The discovery of a workshop feature with copious glass beads and the new bead series at Mkokotoni raises the possibility of secondary glassworking and beadmaking during the early second millennium AD in the Swahili Archipelago (Rødland, 2022).…”

Section: Investigating Glass Production In Sub-sahara Africa and Bidamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Making of Bikini Glass in Bida, Nigeria: Ethnography, Chemical Composition, and Archaeology

Lababidi¹,

Babalola

Gratuze

et al. 2022

Afr Archaeol Rev

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This paper discusses the process, prospects, and challenges of making bikini glass in Bida (Nupeland), central Nigeria. The Masagá glassmakers of Bida provide the ideal case study for investigating the production of bikini. Nineteenth-century Arab and European writings have described glassmaking in Nupeland; however, with the exception of the study carried out by Peter Robertshaw and his colleagues in 2009, there is no work that identifies the raw materials and formula used to produce bikini glass. Our recent ethnographic work at Bida provided the opportunities to collect raw glass, beads, and unfused raw material for bikini glass as well as vitrified furnace wall fragments for analysis. We present results of binocular observation and chemical compositional analysis conducted on the raw materials, glass products, and furnace remains to understand the mineralogical and chemical characteristics of various materials connected with the production of bikini. From the manufacture of glass to that of glass ornaments, bracelets, and beads, the documentation of the work of Masagá glassmakers provides new data for the history of glass and its techniques. This information is relevant for understanding glassworking in the past. The paper also addresses issues relating to migration, technology transfer, and culture contact between Nupeland and its neighbors in the Lower Niger region. It argues that the investigation of the production of bikini glass in Bida is essential for expanding our knowledge of the archaeology of glassmaking and glassworking in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

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Embodying Ethiopia’s Global Golden Age on the Muslim-Christian Frontier: The Allure of Glass Beads

Marín-Aguilera

Dussubieux

2023

Afr Archaeol Rev

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The period between AD 700 and 1500 has been recently labeled as “Africa’s global Golden Age.” This is particularly true for the Shay communities living on the Muslim-Christian frontier in the ninth to fourteenth century AD. Located in the center of the Ethiopian highlands, the Shay faced the expansion of the Christian kingdoms and the advance of the Muslim polities. In an increasingly violent context of religious conversion and war between the two religious powers, the Shay stressed their independence by burying their deceased in collective structures, contrary to the mortuary practices of both Christians and Muslims, and by including precious local and global grave goods in their tombs. The laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) analysis of 34 glass beads shows how the Shay communities benefited from the Islamic global trade routes at the time, particularly the Middle East, Egypt, and the Indo-Pacific networks. This article examines the crucial role of global glass beads in the construction of a trans-corporeal landscape among the Shay that served the emergence and consolidation of the social self as a collective identity against their Christian and Muslim neighbors.

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Glass Beads from Songo Mnara, Tanzania: Chemical Composition and Evidence for Local Bead Manufacture

Cited by 6 publications

References 31 publications

The Elemental Analysis of Glass Beads

The Elemental Analysis of Glass Beads

The Making of Bikini Glass in Bida, Nigeria: Ethnography, Chemical Composition, and Archaeology

Embodying Ethiopia’s Global Golden Age on the Muslim-Christian Frontier: The Allure of Glass Beads

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