EARLY MEDIEVAL BEAD

625

Biconical spacer bead, made from a single coiled length of beaded wire. The surface of the bead is somewhat worn. This bead would have formed a spacer between pendants on a necklace of mid-7th century date. X-ray fluorescence analysis at the British Museum gave an approximate composition of 50% gold, 47% silver.Discussion: The spacer bead belong to a rapidly expanding group of elements belonging to high status necklaces which became fashionable during the seventh century. The necklaces were strung with a variety of pendants, often containing contemporary garnet cabochons, but also earlier, fifth century, cut stones and late Roman millefiori or mosaic glass like the examples from the North Downs. Each of the North Downs pendants would have been flanked by gold biconical spacer beads and together with several more similar pendants would have made up a high status neckIace comparable to those found at Desborough, Northamptonshire (Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse, 'The Making of England, Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600-900', 1991, Cat. No.13) or Sarre, Kent, whose centrepiece is a pendant mounted with a magnificent fragment of millefiori glass (Ronald Jessup, 'Anglo-Saxon Jewellery, London 1959, Pl. XXVII).