African diaspora archaeology has its roots in American plantation archaeology of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the first artifacts recovered from these contexts was the simple blue glass bead, recognized by some as signifying retentions of African belief. Simultaneously emerging in the 1970s was the field of historical mortuary archaeology, in which graves of African Americans were treated as archaeological resources for the first time. When these graves were studied scientifically, greater emphasis was placed on the skeletal biology than associated grave goods, and a very different set of questions was explored. Combining these two fields, this study documents a heretofore unrecognized pattern of not blue, but black beads and white beads—almost exclusively associated with infants and women––and ties these color choices and demographic patterns to specific West African cultures and the underlying meanings of womanhood, marriage, fertility, birth, and protection.

中文翻译：

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非洲侨民中的黑白珠子

非洲侨民考古学起源于 1960 年代和 1970 年代的美国种植园考古学。从这些环境中恢复的首批文物之一是简单的蓝色玻璃珠，一些人认为它象征着非洲信仰的保留。1970 年代同时出现的是历史太平间考古学领域，该领域首次将非裔美国人的坟墓视为考古资源。当对这些坟墓进行科学研究时，更多地强调骨骼生物学而不是相关的坟墓物品，并且探索了一组非常不同的问题。结合这两个领域，这项研究记录了迄今为止未被识别的非蓝色模式，