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French beads in France and Northeastern North America during the sixteenth century

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Abstract

Although it is generally recognized that the French played an important role in the bead trade during the early contact period in Northeastern North America, there have been no serious attempts to carry out archival research and to locate reference collections of beads in France; consequently, surprisingly little is known about French beads. North American bead researchers are still asking some very basic questions about the provenience, chronology, and trade of French glass beads. This study seeks to answer these questions by drawing on a combination of written sources and archaeological collections—early French travel literature and collections of beads from First Nations contact sites. Information from these relatively well-known sources is supplemented with new data gathered from post-mortem inventories of Parisian bead-makers and from notarized contracts containing descriptions of beads purchased for the North American trade. The study also draws on a unique collection of beads dating from the second half of the 16th century, recently unearthed in the Jardins du Caroussel, near the Louvre Museum in Paris.

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  1. Celat / Department of History, Laval University, Québec City, Québec, Canada, G1K 7P4

    Laurier Turgeon

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Turgeon, L. French beads in France and Northeastern North America during the sixteenth century. Hist Arch 35, 58–82 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03373652

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