Seventeenth century Dutch beads

Abstract

During the 1960s, the late Dr. W.G.N. van der Sleen of Naarden, The Netherlands, published a number of reports that dealt with Amsterdam’s 17th century glass bead industry (Sleen 1962–67). While these reports presented a general description of the 17th century beads that had been collected in and around Amsterdam, a detailed list of the various types was lacking. Because such a list could be useful to historical archaeologists for dating and possibly determining the origin of the beads in their collections, the author visited the Instituut voor Zuid-Aziatische Archeologie in Amsterdam in November of 1972, to catalog and photograph the beads recovered by van der Sleen from ten sites in The Netherlands (Figure 1), as well as to further research the Dutch bead industry. The results of this work are presented herein.