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Revisiting Baranda: a multi-analytical approach in classifying sixteenth/seventeenth-century glass beads from northern Zimbabwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2017

Farahnaz Koleini ,
Innocent Pikirayi  and
Philippe Colomban
Farahnaz Koleini
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Hatfield, Pretoria 0083, South Africa
Innocent Pikirayi*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Hatfield, Pretoria 0083, South Africa
Philippe Colomban
Affiliation:
Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Université Paris 06, UMR 8233, CNRS, MONARIS, F-75005, Paris, France
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

The glass bead trade in southern Africa provides important evidence of interregional contact during the early modern period. Compositional analysis of a large assemblage of imported glass beads from the sixteenth- to seventeenth-century AD trading site of Baranda in northern Zimbabwe reveals a south Asian origin of the majority of the beads. Combining stratigraphic data and morphological analysis with innovative compositional XRF and Raman spectroscopy approaches, the research was able to assign the Baranda beads accurately to their correct chronological range. This coincides with the period of Portuguese dominance of Indian Ocean trade.

Keywords

southern Africanorthern ZimbabweIndo-Pacific tradesixteenth–seventeenth centuries ADglass beadsglass compositionRaman spectroscopypXRF
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 91 , Issue 357 , June 2017 , pp. 751 - 764
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 

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