The beads were found among other items including copper jewelry. One item found in the cache of objects was twine made of an organic material that may be willow bark. This twine offered a unique opportunity. The researchers had heard of beads discovered at the sites decades earlier, but earlier scholars did not have the technology to date organic material with accuracy. The newly found twine was tested with accelerator mass spectrometry carbon-dating. Carbon-dating judges the age of an organic object by measuring the level of decay of the radioactive element carbon-14. The results of the tested twine were shocking: the material had probably wrapped up the jewelry sometime between 1440 and 1480. As Columbus did not arrive in the
Bahamas until 1492, this discovery indicated a pre-existing trade relationship connecting Europe and the Americas.
The beads are the only examples of their kind west of the Rocky Mountains. This fact and their early date suggested to researchers, according to the paper, that “the most likely route these beads traveled from Europe to northwestern Alaska is across Eurasia and over the Bering Strait.” In a
statement from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the likely path of the beads from Venice to Alaska is laid out.
