COMMENTS Reconsidering the Precolumbian Presence of Venetian Glass Beads in Alaska Elliot H. Blair In a recent article, Kunz and Mills (2021) report 10 drawn, a speo finished, turquoise blue, IIa40 beads manufactured in Venice and recovered from three late precontact sites in the Alaskan Arctic. They argue that these beads date to the fifteenth century, predating Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. This conclusion is certainly in error because beads of this type were not manufactured prior to approximately AD 1560. The historical and archaeological evidence for this dating is substantial. Additionally, the elemental and radiocarbon evidence presented by Kunz and Mills (2021) supports a late sixteenth- to early seventeenth-century date for these beads. Keywords: Alaska, Venice, glass beads, radiocarbon, chronology, instrumental neutron activation analysis En un artículo reciente, Kunz y Mills (2021) reportan 10 cuentas trazadas azules turquesa, de acabado a speo y tipo IIa40, fabricadas en Venecia y recuperados en tres sitios del pre-contacto tardío en el Ártico de Alaska. Argumentan que estas cuen- tas datan del siglo XV, previo a la llegada de Colón a las Américas. Esta conclusión es ciertamente errónea ya que las cuentas de este tipo no se fabricaron antes de aproximadamente el año 1560 d.C. La evidencia histórica y arqueológica de esta data- ción es sustancial. Además, la evidencia elemental y de radiocarbono presentada por Kunz y Mills (2021) respalda una fecha de finales del siglo XVI a principios del XVII para estas cuentas. Palabras clave: Alaska, Venecia, cuentas de vidrio, radiocarbono, cronología, análisis poractivación neutrónica T he recent article by Kunz and Mills (2021) is a welcome contribution to the limited literature on the early circulation of glass beads into Alaska. Unfortunately, the interpretations presented by the authors are not supported by either the historical and ar- chaeological record or their own data. Kunz and Mills (2021) argue that 10 drawn, a speo fin- ished, turquoise blue, IIa40 beads recovered from three sites in the Alaskan Arctic predate Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. This is impossible because beads of this variety were not manufactured prior to the mid-sixteenth century, a date well supported by historical and archaeological evidence. The elemental and radiocarbon data presented by Kunz and Mills (2021) also clearly support a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century date for these beads. Kunz and Mills (2021) suggest that the histor- ical data for the beginning of the drawn bead manufacturing industry, particularly those rounded using the a speo method, are unclear, and because of this ambiguity, they suggest that it is possible that IIa40 beads could have been manufactured and distributed during the early and mid-fifteenth century. This does not accur- ately reflect historical knowledge of Venetian bead manufacture, and the evidence is not nearly as ambiguous as they suggest. Many scholars, often writing in Italian and relying on primary documents from the Venetian archive, have documented the invention of drawn, hollow, canes for bead manufacture around 1470 (e.g., Elliot H. Blair (ehblair@ua.edu, corresponding author) ▪ Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama, Box 870210, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA American Antiquity 86(3), 2021, pp. 638–642 Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology doi:10.1017/aaq.2021.38 638