Beads on the tundra: The first U.S. import from Europe? February 11th |
Glass beads the size of blueberries found by archaeologists in a Brooks Range house-pit might be the first European item ever to arrive in North America, predating the arrival of Columbus by a few decades. Made in Venice, Italy, the tiny blue beads might have traveled more than 10,000 miles in the skin pockets of aboriginal adventurers to reach the Bering Strait. There, someone ferried them across the ocean to Alaska. At least 10 of the beads survived a few centuries in the cold dirt of three locations in northern Alaska. Archaeologists recently unraveled the mystery of the beads in a paper published in the journal American Antiquity.