Nueva Cadiz Glass Beads at James Fort in Virginia: Addressing Questions of Origin through Compositional Analysis

The glass bead assemblage generated by archaeological excavations at the seventeenth-century English colonial site of Jamestown in Virginia contains an anomalously large proportion of types, such as Nueva Cadiz and faceted chevron, that traditionally have been viewed as diagnostic of sixteenth-century Spanish assemblages. This study has applied the Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) method of compositional analysis as a means of addressing the ultimate origin of the Nueva Cadiz varieties represented at the fort site. Findings demonstrate that one variety was almost certainly produced in Venetian workshops and the other at production sites located elsewhere, such as in Spain or Belgium. The results contribute to the growing body of glass bead studies that are revealing how the complexities of early European industry and commerce affected the distribution of products in the colonial world.