Boundedness versus periodicity over commutative local rings

Over commutative graded local artinian rings, examples are constructed of periodic modules of arbitrary minimal period and modules with bounded Betti numbers, which are not eventually periodic. They provide counterexamples to a conjecture of D. Eisenbud, that every module with bounded Betti numbers over a commutative local ring is eventually periodic of period 2. It is proved however, that the conjecture holds over rings of small length.