Find of the Month – August
- 31st August 2017
Our first Find of the Month, found on Tuesday in Gloucestershire, is a 2000 year old glass bead.
The lime green translucent bead has twisted yellow and blue glass threads wrapped around it (time has changed the blue to red). Due to the style of the bead, we believe it is early Roman, either 1st or 2nd century AD, although large annular (round) glass beads like this were common during the preceding Iron Age too. The bead neatly reflects the excavation site it came from – a continuous late Iron Age to Roman settlement – in being a Roman artefact made in a longstanding Iron Age style.
Unfortunately the bead was found in a medieval furrow so we don’t know where it was originally left or lost, although it did go into the ground whole as the breaks are fairly fresh. Glass beads are most often found on their own, rather than as part of necklace. They are fairly rare finds, but the area from Worcester down to the south coast is one of several hotspots across the country where they appear more often.
Whilst some glass beads were imported to Britain, others seem to have been locally made and decorated in regional styles. We also found several glass beads at Ariconium, south Herefordshire, some years ago that look locally made – it is just possible that this bead and the Ariconium ones came from the same workshop.
(In case you missed it, we also found a sword last week – this is our find of the decade!)
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