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 journalBeads.

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.

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