EARLY MEDIEVAL BEAD

500

Cylindrical glass bead with rounded ends, made of semi-translucent pale aquamarine or turquoise glass. It is 14 mm long and 11 mm in diameter, with a 4 mm perforation. Dating this bead has proved difficult. Cylindrical shapes are not found among pre-Roman beads. No parallel can be found in M. Guido's Prehistoric and Romano-British Glass Beads (1978). Catherine Johns of the British Museum thinks it is not Roman. This leaves early Anglo-Saxon as the most likely option, but it is an unusual colour. Leslie Webster of the British Museum has seen it and has suggested that the unusual colour may derive from the re-use of a glass tessera from a Roman mosaic. If it is early Anglo-Saxon, it will probably date from the sixth to early eighth centuries AD.