Friday, June 27, 2014

Recreation of Birte Brumann's Bead Typology

One of my long term projects has been to replicate each bead from Birte Brugmann's book, Glass Beads from Early Anglo-Saxon Graves, and in the process try to come to understand her study and the typology she created. I also wanted to learn more also how bead styles evolved over time during the Anglo-Saxon period. In the end, I was able to replicate all but one bead from her typology to my satisfaction. My summarization of her chronology in the documentation below is very much simplified from her book (her book can be very complex and detailed at times!!) but, it helped me to achieve my goal of realizing some general trends. The documentation includes close up pictures of all of the beads I made as part of this project.

Link to Documentation


Below is a chart showing most of the Anglo-Saxon beads that Brugmann identified in her typology. This chart orders the beads by decoration type and by time period. The chart itself comes from Brugmann's book. I have attached my recreated beads over the pictures of extant beads she used.



Brugmann's Original Chart