From shell to glass: how beads reflect the changing cultural landscape of the seventeenth-century lower Potomac River valley

ABSTRACT

This article examines over 7,500 beads from eight Native archaeological sites located in the lower Potomac River valley in order to understand how changes in bead assemblages between AD 1300 and 1712 expressed an ever-evolving Chesapeake cultural landscape. This analysis demonstrates clear differences in the types and distributions of beads from mortuary and domestic/nonmortuary contexts. Ossuary contexts contained the highest frequency of beads with the number of beads increasing over time. Following the arrival of English settlers in the 1620s, glass beads begin to appear in ossuary contexts. Beads from domestic or nonmortuary contexts are fewer in number, and those present were manufactured using local materials, including bone and clay, as well as shell. However, after 1680, there is a shift from shell beads being predominate on Native sites, to sites containing exclusively glass beads, red and black glass beads in particular. Post-1680 sites appear to reflect Piscataway displacement and the disruption of indigenous trade routes, leading Natives to obtain beads from colonial vendors. The distribution of bead color, an important attribute for communicating Native states of being, also shifts after 1680, with assemblages once dominated by white shell beads now dominated by black and red glass beads.     

Recognizing synesthesia on the international stage: The first scientific symposium on synesthesia (at The International Conference of Physiological Psychology,Paris, 1889)

ABSTRACT

At the first ever worldwide international conference of psychology in Paris, 1889, one symposium included a round-table event devoted entirely to the neurodevelopmental condition of synesthesia. Details of this seminal gathering on synesthesia and its international reception have been lost to historical obscurity. A synesthesia study committee emerged from this meeting, as well as a new research tool. Moreover, the scientific findings discussed during this symposium would be echoed over a hundred years later, when a new wave of synesthesia research in the late-twentieth century arose. This article sheds new light on this seminal gathering and aims to answer the following historical questions: Why was synesthesia included in this conference? What science was discussed? Who were the members of the committee and how did they come to be involved? What were their contributions to synesthesia research before, during, and after the conference? What has history shown us about the impact of this symposium on the science of synesthesia?