About Us
The Society of Bead Researchers is a non-profit scientific-educational organization founded in 1981 to foster serious research on beads and beadwork of all materials, regions, and periods, and to facilitate the dissemination of the resultant knowledge. Membership is open to all persons who desire to know what beads can tell us about the world’s cultures, past and present. The Society currently issues a digital biannual newsletter, The Bead Forum, and publishes an annual peer-reviewed journal Beads.
The Society strongly discourages the purchase or trade in beads and beaded items that have been looted from archaeological sites or museum collections. Such activities result in the destruction of sites and the loss of precious knowledge about the temporal contexts of the beads and how they functioned in former cultures.
OFFICERS
President
Elliot Blair
Assistant Professor and
Curator of Southeastern Archaeology
Department of Anthropology
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama USA
[email protected]
Secretary-Treasurer
Alice Scherer
Center for the Study of Beadwork
Portland, Oregon, USA
[email protected]
Journal Editor
Alison Kyra Carter
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon, USA
[email protected]
Associate Editor
Brad Loewen
Professor Historical and Marine Archaeology
Université de Montréal
Montréal, Québec, Canada
[email protected]
Newsletter Editor
Michele Hoferitza
M.S. Candidate, Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management
Utah State University
Logan, Utah, USA
[email protected]
Editor Emeritus
Karlis Karklins
Head of Material Culture Research, Parks Canada (retired)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
[email protected]