Black and White Beads in the African Diaspora.

African diaspora archaeology has its roots in American plantation archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the first artifacts recovered from these contexts was the simple blue glass bead, recognized by some as signifying retentions of African belief. Simultaneously emerging in the 1970s was the field of historical mortuary archaeology, in which graves of African Americans were treated as archaeological resources for the first time. When these graves were studied scientifically, greater emphasis was placed on the skeletal biology than associated grave goods, and a very different set of questions was explored. Combining these two fields, this study documents a heretofore unrecognized pattern of not blue, but black beads and white beads—almost exclusively associated with infants and women––and ties these color choices and demographic patterns to specific West African cultures and the underlying meanings of womanhood, marriage, fertility, birth, and protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]