In January of 1608, English Captains Christopher Newport and John Smith led a team of colonists on a trading venture to Chief Powhatan's home village at Werowocomoco. Once the Powhatan leader had informed the colonists of the price he wanted for his corn, the two English captains began to argue amongst themselves about fair exchange values. Tension mounted between Newport and Smith but was eased when they saw Chief Powhatan's reaction to a handful of European beads. Powhatan, who had declined to participate in any trade up to this point, "fixed his humour upon a few blew beads" and "importunatly desired them" (Barbour 1986 I:217). Smith then increased the Algonquian leader's eagerness to exchange by embellishing the beads' significance. He informed Powhatan that the blue beads being offered were "composed of a most rare substance of the colour of the skyes, and not to be worne but by the greatest kings in the world" (Ibid., II:156). So fascinated with these items was the Algonquian chief that "for a pound or two of blew beads" he offered "2 or 300 bushels of corne" (Ibid.). Although Jamestown’s early European settlers considered glass beads to be trifles, the Powhatans held them in high esteem. For the local indigenous population, glass beads were highly symbolic and ritually charged objects whose ownership was linked to elite status (Potter 1989, 1993; Rountree 1989).

Beads recovered from archaeological sites offer scholars a wealth of information about past cultural preferences, sociopolitical systems, exchange networks, and intercultural relations. The study presented here provides a general survey of the glass and stone beads found during Jamestown Rediscovery's 1994-1997 field seasons and attempts to answer the following questions:

• What varieties of beads did Jamestown colonists bring to the New World for trade with the indigenous population?
• How does the bead assemblage from 1607 James Fort compare with collections from other early historical settlements in the Americas?
• What insights regarding regional and global bead commerce can be learned from Jamestown's collection?