Bob Hoover is right.  The chemical composition of these beads show that they were made in Bohemia, now the modern-day Czech Republic, so the common name of Russian blues is not accurate, although still widely used.  A number of studies have dealt with the composition of these beads:

Kenyon, Ian, Susan Kenyon Ron Hancock and Susan Aufreiter
     1995  Neutron Activation Analysis of Some 19th Century Facetted Glass Trade Beads from Ontario, Canada, that have Chemical Compositions Resembling Bohemian Glass.  The Bead Forum 27:4-9.  

Glascock, Michael D., and Robert J. Speakman
     2002  LA-ICP-MS of European Glass Beads. Paper presented at the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Society for  American Archaeology, Denver.

Burgess, Laurie and Laure Dussubieux 
    2007 Chemical Composition of Late 18th- and 19th-Century Glass Beads from Western North America: Clues to Sourcing Beads.  Beads: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 19:58-73.

I still don't have a really good date for their appearance in N. America.  Lester Ross has suggested the late 18th century.  Like Paul Webb, I'd be interested to hear if anyone on Histarch has a tightly-dated site where these beads occur. They occur in a of range colors in addition to the ubiquitous dark and medium blues (including a grayish purple).

The beads we sampled (dark blue, green and colorless beads, with six straight sides and two rows of ground facets) are from Sullivan's Island in Washington state, from the Columbia River, not all that far from Fort Vancouver (HBC).  Due to the early 20th c. excavation techniques used I can't identify when certain bead varieties show up, though the site was in use from the late 18th to the late 19th century.  But there were over 2,000 of these faceted beads present.  

The still-debated arrival date for these beads means one thing: more bead studies are needed to help map out overall and regional chronologies.   

Laurie Burgess


-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 7:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Russian" faceted beads in the southeastern U.S.

It is true that therse beads have been misleadingly used as prrof of 
Russian influences.   I believe I read somewhere in the distant past that they 
were actually made in the present Chech (?) Republic.
They have been found at Hudson Bay Company sites and we even have a few 
from the California missions, so they were really international.   We have 
basically ignored the fact that native peoples had bead preferences which the 
Europeans needed to take into account if they wanted to conduct trade.   A 
question of "agency".

Bob Hoover