bead

Indo-Pacific beads are small (D. 3–5 mm) and nondescript in style, but they were the most widely traded of all beads. Examples have been found from Ghana to China. These beads were made in various shades of opaque red-brown, orange, yellow, green, and blue, and in such semitranslucent colors as green, blue, and amber. They were first produced in Arikamedu between the years 200 B.C. and A.D. 400, probably by a unique drawing method that is still employed at one beadmaking site in India. This intensive manufacturing process employs unique tools and a specially made furnace from which long tubes are drawn by hand for hours and broken into manageable lengths. The tubes are then cut into the small beads, and most of them are heated while packed in ash to remove the sharp edges. Such reheating can lead to the fusing of some beads to others, which may have occurred in this example (two of the blue and black beads have become attached). These beads were mistakenly named “trade wind beads” because they were found in sites around the Indian Ocean. It is now known that their distribution was much wider, and they have been given the more accurate name of Indo-Pacific beads.