About Us

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

Elliot Blair

President
Elliot Blair
Assistant Professor and
Curator of Southeastern Archaeology
Department of Anthropology
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama USA
ehblair@ua.edu

Secretary-Treasurer
Alice Scherer
Center for the Study of Beadwork
Portland, Oregon, USA
AS-beadweaver@outlook.com

Journal Editor
Alison Kyra Carter
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon, USA
acarter4@uoregon.edu

Editor Emeritus
Karlis Karklins
Head of Material Culture Research, Parks Canada (retired)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
karlis4444@gmail.com

Michele Hoferitza

Newsletter Editor
Michele Hoferitza
M.S. Candidate, Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management
Utah State University
Logan, Utah, USA
BeadForumNewsletter@gmail.com