Early Roman Bead

Production

Glass beads have been a popular form of jewellery since the middle of the third millennium BCE, where beads were among the first objects made from glass. Most glass was produced in Egypt and the Levant, before it was exported and could be reworked and modified for use in objects. In Britain, the earliest beads known date to the late-Bronze Age, although these are relatively few, with beads becoming much more common in the Middle Iron Age. There were a wide range of types at this time, including types with very similar continental counterparts which were likely imported.

This bead was likely made by winding molten glass around a rod or mandrel. The two centrally placed ‘eyes’ were made by layering opaque white and dark blue glass on top of the main body of the bead. When complete, there were likely five or six eyes around the whole bead. A similar technique was used to apply the white lines which circle the central hole and between the two remaining eyes.

Beads of this particular type have been suggested to have been produced in the 1^st century CE and were manufactured in the ‘Iron age’ bead tradition and were part of a developing Romano-British culture evolved from the 1^st century CE.

Use

Evidence for the use of Iron Age and Roman beads mostly comes from inhumation burials, where their placement suggest that they were worn across the upper torso, likely as necklaces or strands. Unfortunately, for beads of this size, there is very little evidence of how they might have been used. Relatively few have been recovered from securely dated contexts, and even fewer from inhumations which may have indicated how these were worn. Based on the large size, it is unlikely that this bead was strung on a necklace worn across the chest but may instead have been worn as a singly as a pendant or attached to a bag or belt.

Where this bead was found also indicates that it had gone through multiple phases of use, first as a decorative bead, but later as part of an intentional deposit. Deposits such as this often contained highly personal objects, and were often a marker of foundation or closure, or deposited as offerings. The use of the bead for this purpose indicates that it was likely a prized possession.

Discovery

The bead was identified from a deposit at the entrance of a sunken featured building. Sunken featured buildings comprise an area of earth cut away to form a pit, which then had a super structure built over it. While most are associated with the Anglo-Saxon period, increasing numbers of this type of building have been identified from the Roman and medieval periods on Thanet. The structure which this bead was recovered from was dated to the 1^st to 2^nd century AD based on associated pottery. This was part of a wider settlement, which included a number of other structures, an early-Roman field system, rubbish pits and boundary ditches, along with an Anglo-Saxon structure of 6^th-7^th century date.