Manufacture Of Beads Research Articles

Bohemian Glass Beadmaking: Translation and Discussion of a 1913 German Technical Article

This report provides an English translation of a German technical article on late 19th-century and early 20th-century Bohemian glass-bead manufacturing, published in 1913 in the journal Sprechsaal. The article emphasizes the description of techiques for the manufacture of mould-pressed beads, secondarily describing methods for wound, blown and drawn-bead manufacturing.

The Iron Age of ‘Loughey’ and Meare: Some Inferences from Glass Analysis

The archaeology of two Iron Age sites, ‘Loughey’ in County Down, Northern Ireland, and Meare Lake Village, Somerset, is discussed. Changes in the archaeological interpretation of the sites are considered in the light of recent research into Iron Age sites in Britain and Ireland. Consideration of the chemical composition of the glass from ‘Loughey’ and Meare helps to add weight to the existence of suspected links between Ireland and the Continent in the first century B.C., and not, as has regularly been assumed, specific links with south England. The compositional characteristics of the glass from Meare are found to be totally different from those of the ‘Loughey’ glass and it is suggested that glass raw materials were imported to Ireland for the manufacture of Iron Age glass beads there. We can not now be as confident that the person buried at ‘Loughey’ was of ‘foreign’ origin.

A Prehistoric Shell and Bone Necklace from a Burial Exposed in a Bank of the San Pedro River, Arizona

ABSTRACTFacts have recently come to the author's attention which may add some heretofore unknown details concerning the manufacture and use of cup-shaped beads that make up part of an ancient shell and bone necklace found associated with a burial exposed by erosion in the banks of the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona.

Research Items

South African Stone Bead Industry THE relative scarcity of the stone bead throughout the world justifies a record of the discovery of serpentine beads by Harold S. Harger on sites in the western Transvaal (Trans. Roy. Soc. South Africa, 38, 2; 1940). From the collection as a whole it has been possible to describe the entire process of manufacture from beginning to end. The prime factor in the establishment of the industry was the occurrence of a serpentine dyke midway between the factories on Nooitgedacht and Winkelhaak. This region affords abundant evidence of settlements of primitive man of pre-Bantu tunes. The serpentine beads were found in cleared spaces where native kraals at one time had existed. Old furnace slags, an iron hammer, ornamental stone pendants, gold beads, a steatite mould, pottery, etc., combine to indicate that the industry was established by an early Bantu tribe in pre-European times. The greater part of the material consisted of 108 cylinders ready for boring, 15 were finished ready for use; and 15 beads of copper and 2 of gold were also found, the occurrence of the last named indicating a Bantu origin. Some much-corroded pieces of iron found on Winkelhaak, when fresh, might have been thin enough to perform the boring. One bead had been bent to take the palm of the hand and facilitate vertical pressure. The procedure adopted in manufacture was to trim the material into cylindrical shape and then saw it in sections-a method followed by Cro-Magnon man in the manufacture of stone beads. The segments were then drilled and smoothed, the ends being ground smooth on a stone to make them lie close. To avoid waste of labour owing to splitting in drilling, stones were sometimes drilled before shaping. While the industry is early and pre-European, it is Bantu and not, properly speaking, Stone Age, as usually understood.

The Lake Villagers of Glastonbury 1

THE Lake Village of Glastonbury consisted of between eighty and ninety round huts surrounded by a stockade, and planted for security at the edge of the sheet of water, that is now represented by the peat in the marshes, extending from Glastonbury westward to the sea. The inhabitants smelted iron and made various edged tools and weapons-axes, adzes, gouges, saws, sickles, bill-hooks, daggers, swords, spears, etc. They also smelted lead ore from the Mendip Hills,. and made net-sinkers and spindle-whorls. They probably carried on the manufacture of glass beads and rings and other personal ornaments. They were also workers in tin and bronze. It is likely that the beautiful Glastonbury bowl was made in the settlement, since unused rivets of the same type as those of the bowl have been commonly met with. They were expert spinners and weavers, carpenters and potters,. using the lathe in both industries. The discovery of a wooden wheel, with beautifully turned spokes, proves that they possessed wheeled vehicles, while the snaffle-bits of iron imply the. use of the horse. Their commerce was carried on partly by land, and the possession of canoes gave them the use of the waterways. They were linked with other settlements by the road running due east from Glastonbury, that formed a part of the network of roads traversing the country in the prehistoric Iron age, more especially with the lead mines and the fortified oppida, or camps, of Mendip and of the rest of the county. They were also linked with the Bristol Channel by a waterway along the line of the river Brue, and along this was free communication with the oppidum of Worlebury, then inhabited by men of their race.