Beads have been very important to North American indigenous populations for a very long time. The Augustine Mound, for example, is a burial site almost 3000 years old in New Brunswick, not very far from Oak Island, that contains over a thousand copper beads. The late Tricia Jarratt did a comprehensive study of them in her outstanding 2013 MA Thesis. Slightly further afield, more thousands of beads, both copper and shell, come from approximately contemporary Boucher Site in Swanton, Vermont, right on the Québec border (this last link contains photos of ancestral remains).
When Europeans showed up, beads continued to be important as an exchange medium, and as symbolic and ritual objects. European glass beads now supplemented traditional copper, stone, and shell beads. So it isn’t surprising that the Oak Island team has found a bead associated with the (probably) late 17th or early 18th century pit structure on Lot 5.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they found other beads all over the island over the years. There are sometimes hundreds of them even in a test unit. This one just happens to be nice and presentable.
Beads can be very helpful for archaeologists. Some types of beads help us narrow down the date range of a site, and their chemical composition can help us understand ancient trade networks, and technological and economic organization. Beads were important to the people who made, traded and used them a long time ago, and they are important and exciting finds for archaeologists in the present as well.
The bead from Lot 5
Beads are usually classified according to their manufacturing process, shape, and decoration. Kidd and Kidd developed a typology often used by archaeologists. I am far from a bead expert, but the Lot 5 bead looks to me like it could be what Kidd and Kidd call a type IIb31. These are cut up and sometimes reshaped from long tubular beads. It could be another type, but if so, the same thoughts apply slightly modified.
A type IIb31 bead from York Factory, Manitoba, from Karlins and Adams 2013
Unfortunately, that type of bead is found in sites that are as old as the Tunica Treasure from the mid-1700s, or as recent as an early 20th century context at York Factory, Manitoba (see picture above). They can also be identified in Onondaga sites from the late 1500s to the mid-1600s (Bradley 2005). This Québec ministry of culture site says type IIb31 beads were manufactured and exchanged between the 16th and the 19th centuries.
In other words, if this is indeed a IIB31, the bead isn’t very helpful for nailing down a date just by looking at its type. Perhaps the chemistry can tell us a bit more, but that information hasn’t yet been shared on the show. For example, Shugar and O’Connor found change over time in the chemistry of glass beads recovered from Fort Niagara in an 18th century context.
Chemistry can also help us figure out where the beads were made (whether Holland, Italy, France, etc), and which trade networks the people who handled them were involved in.
So all in all, a great find, potentially very informative, and I am glad they featured it on the show. Eventually, an excavation report will tell us a bit more. But as with the rest of the archaeological finds from Oak Island, it doesn’t move us closer to a Templar treasure.
References
Bradley JW 2005. Evolution of the Onondaga Iroquois: Accommodating Change, 1500-1655, University of Nebraska Press.
Brain JP 1981. Glass beads from the Tunica Treasure, Peabody Museum, Harvard University. https://rla.unc.edu/archives/LMSfiles/LMS%20Bulletin%2007.pdf
Jarratt TL 2013. The Augustine Mound copper sub-assemblage: beyond the bead, Masters Thesis, University of New Brunswick. https://www.academia.edu/download/37466737/The_AM_Copper_SA_-_Beyond_the_Bead.pdf
Heckenberger MJ, JB Petersen, LA Basa, ER Cowie,
AE Spiess, RE Stuckenrath 1990. Archaeology of Eastern North America 18: 109-
144.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40914322
Karlins K and GF Adams 2013. Beads from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Principal Depot,
York Factory, Manitoba, Canada, BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 25: 72-100.
https://surface.syr.edu/beads/vol25/iss1/6
Kidd KE and Kidd MA 2012. A Classification System for Glass Beads for the Use of
Field Archaeologists, BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 24: 39-61.
https://surface.syr.edu/beads/vol24/iss1/7
Shugar A and A O’Connor 2008. The Analysis of 18th Century Glass Trade Beadsfrom Fort Niagara: Insight into CompositionalVariation and Manufacturing Techniques, Northeast Historical Archaeology 37 http://orb.binghamton.edu/neha/vol37/iss1/5
ArcheoThoughts 
These guys remind me of the abused boy, whose daddy keeps promising a pony. When the day arrives a load of horse crap arrives instead, and the boy, filled with excitement starts digging in it.
He abusive father says, “boy, why are you digging in that crap” and the boy replies, I know there is a pony here somewhere”. Ha ha ha
I think the largest thing about these shows that makes me fear for my species, is how they’re so popular. How can people actually believe these clowns?
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