A Diagnostic Early Seventeenth-Century Glass-Bead Assemblage from New Lenox, Illinois: Building a Midwestern Glass-Bead Chronological Sequence

Abstract

An assemblage of 33 glass beads dates the protohistoric component at the New Lenox site in Illinois to within Glass Bead Period 2 (1600–1625/1630). All the white glass beads had been opacified with tin and lead, as determined by pXRF, resulting in a chemical composition indicative of a pre-1625 date. The New Lenox beads likely derived from indirect trade primarily with the French in northeast North America. Since it falls within a tightly dated time frame of circa 1609–1625, the New Lenox assemblage provides an important building block for a regional bead sequence for the Midwest.