{"id":93,"date":"2024-06-03T11:13:30","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T10:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/?p=93"},"modified":"2025-01-09T16:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T16:15:13","slug":"a-glass-bead-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/2024\/06\/03\/a-glass-bead-game\/","title":{"rendered":"A Glass Bead Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s a picture of some objects from the Icklingham hoard, on display in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. You might be surprised to see glass beads \u2013 could these really be prized possessions, valuable enough to be hoarded alongside gold and silver?<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_78\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78\" style=\"width: 2992px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-78\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/files\/2024\/06\/IcklinghamBeads.jpg\" alt=\"Beads from the Icklingham hoard\" width=\"2992\" height=\"2992\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-78\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Beads from the Icklingham hoard on display in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Cambridge (copyright MAA Cambridge, by kind permission).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also intriguing that at first sight, some of the more colourful glass beads look like the kind found in the Anglo-Saxon period \u2013 they aren\u2019t typical of Roman beads. A bit of investigation, though, shows they are types that occur in the late Roman period as well \u2013 at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, the same as the dates of the latest coins in this hoard. A workshop making beads that look like this is known in the Rhineland of Germany.<\/p>\n<p>If you look closely at the dark blue \u2018cornerless cube\u2019 beads, you might notice what looks like a figure-of-eight design engraved into the surface of one of them. The bead collector Horace Beck, who once owned the artefacts from the hoard, identified a parallel from Gotland, an island that today belongs to Sweden. But does that mean this unusual bead originated there? A few other examples we have tracked down come from surprisingly disparate locations \u2013 Poland, Romania, and Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p>The status of the beads as exotic objects in a Romano-British context might explain their value in this hoard. We\u2019re searching for more evidence, though \u2013 especially for the engraved &#8216;cornerless cube&#8217; bead. If you\u2019ve ever seen anything like it among archaeological finds, please let us know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s a picture of some objects from the Icklingham hoard, on display in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. You might be surprised to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/2024\/06\/03\/a-glass-bead-game\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50875,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[305568],"tags":[185349,307226],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/hoards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}