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ABSTRACTBy studying the distribution of wind instruments made of bone, we investigate the presence of musical traditions in the American Southeast and nearby regions during the last few centuries prior to European arrival. Our findings show that southeastern Indigenous peoples used bone instruments far less than their neighbors, suggesting that they almost exclusively made whistles and flutes from reeds, wood, and other materials that do not survive in the archaeological record. This variation in materials was not based on a lack of knowledge, as we detail the presence of several bone wind instruments in the Southeast, but rather, we suggest, a unique musical tradition in the region.

•LA-ICP-MS is a valuable tool for examining archaeological ceramics.•Eighteenth-century Choctaw ceramics were analyzed with experimental test vessels.•Results suggest some vessels were brought to Shumo Takali via trade or migration.

•38 glass beads were recovered from a Yapese stone money quarry in Palau, Micronesia.•LA-ICP-MS and morphological analyses indicate early- or mid-19th c. bead manufacture.•Most beads were manufactured in Bohemia and include a rare pressed and faceted type.•Beads are traditional money (udoud), but ease in counterfeiting devalued this type.•Beads introduced via Yap shed light on 19th c. long-distance exchange networks.

•Two effigy pipes from Southeastern North America were analyzed using GC–MS.•Two effigy pipes contained nicotine, a biomarker for tobacco.•An effigy pipe from Creighton Island off the coast of Georgia (USA) contained carvone.•Carvone detected in an effigy pipe indicates spearmint type plant was smoked.