| Abstract: |
Beads are small and strong and travel well. The trade in beads and bead materials is tens of thousands of years old. Beads can be made out of any solid material, but glass has long been most popular, due to its low cost, strength, and variable colour, size, and shape. The widespread trade and high survival rate of glass beads make them excellent type-fossils, but this potential has not been widely exploited, largely due to the lack of comparative material on a broad enough scale. During the last six decades much has been written on glass beads in the Malay peninsula, both in excavation reports and papers specifically on the topic. We still lack a synthesis on this subject. As many archaeologists have discovered, it is extremely difficult to do more than describe beads from a particular site if that one assemblage constitutes the entire data base. The same is true for a relatively small regulation, such as Malaya. Here we shall examine glass beads in Malaya in the light of new evidence. We have the advantages not only of hindsight and standing on the shoulders of giants, but also of a wider perspective gained from a detailed study of beads in Europe, the Muslim world, India, China, Korea, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
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