Grave 50 Portway Andover

Below is a picture of a bead string (grave 50) from the  Portway Andover excavation report.  This is the third bead string I have recreated from that report, and I completed this project for the Artifacts of a Life event at the end of September.

Historic Glass Beads

This bead string, (which is interpreted as a bracelet) had 25 glass beads, 4 amber beads (which I recreated in amber colored glass), one fragmentary metal bead (which I did not replicate), and two Roman coins (small copper colored store bought medallions were used as a substitute).

My recreation

Thoughts on my recreation process

None of the beads on this string were very advanced, so technically, this was a relatively easy bead string for me to recreate. Any difficulties I had in recreating this bead string came about because some of the beads had uneven shapes or mistakes in their design, which I tried to replicate this time around as exactly as I could manage.

Replicating beads with specific mistakes actually takes me a good bit more time than replicating perfect beads of the same design, because I have to observe the historic bead a bit more closely to figure out how to make the same mistake found on the historic bead. It also takes the same amount of technical skill to replicate a specific mistake on a bead.

If I was talking with a newer bead maker who was interested in reproducing this bead string, I would encourage that person to attempt to make the beads as best they could, and not to worry about replicating a specific mistake. But, if they did make a mistake on a bead, I would tell that person to keep those beads with mistakes in the final project. In that way, I think a bead string would come to have the "feel" of the original, with its combination of beads with imperfections, and more perfectly executed beads.

Mistake Beads

To the right are examples of my "mistake" beads, beads which did not make it into the final bracelet. In most cases, this I rejected these beads because they did not match the extant necklace well enough, not because my overall technique was poor. I'll likely keep at least a few of these beads  to be given away later.  Some of the reasons these beads were rejected include
--wrong color: I was trying to mix my own transparent light brown for one of the beads, and it came out too dark
--wrong shape: I didn't notice that the documentation provided a better view of the bead until after I created it.
--wrong size: I made the bead a bit too big the first time
--wrong decoration pattern:  I included one too many or too few waves on a few of the beads, either by accident, or because I did not look closely enough at the historic bead the first time. In one case, I was also trying to replicate a bead with a very sloppy decorative technique, and gave it a few tries to see which one looked most like the period bead.
--large air bubbles in the bead: This is the one actual technique "mistake" that I made during this recreation project. I trapped several large air bubbles in one of the beads. This is a problem, because air bubbles increase the risk of bead breakage.

Grave 19 Portway Andover

This small bead string is from Grave 19 of the Portway, Andover Anglo-Saxon Cemetary.

I completed a recreation of the above small bead string (likely a bracelet) over the course of 3 evenings. It took 2 evenings to make the beads, and 1 to remake a few beads that I was not fully happy with. I was originally not very excited about this project. I primarily made it to make sure that I would have enough items to enter for the Artifacts of a Life event, the event I created the larger necklace from Portway for. The technical level of this bead string is very low for me (no decoration, minimal shaping), and I didn't think it all that pretty to begin with. However, I'm glad that I did recreate this string, because actually seeing my recreation transformed how I thought about the bead string.

In person, this small bead string is quite adorable. Maybe my feelings changed because I could actually hold the string, instead of just looking at it on the page. Maybe it's the fact that a newly created bead string is so much more shiny than the historic one, which had been in the ground for centuries. Having the bead string in front of me also helped to emphasize just how symmetrical it was, especially towards the center of the string, and my modern eye really appreciates this symmetry. The order of the beads in the grave was mostly preserved, so this bead string is a likely example of the aesthetics under which Anglo-Saxons strung their beads.  The symmetry is not perfect, but it is quite obviously there, which is something I have found, to a greater or lesser extent, with most of the Anglo-Saxon bead strings I have recreated.  The distinction between light and dark beads is also very evident (another idea which is prevalent in the Anglo-Saxon aesthetic). There are many dark blue/black beads, with a fewer lighter white/red beads placed at regular intervals among the darker beads.

A few technical thoughts about my reproduction:
-The beads were made to match the size of the historic beads to within a couple of millimeters size.
-I forgot to try to match bead perforation sizes with the historic necklace, so that aspect of the recreation is not as accurate. However its not something that is very evident when the necklace is displayed/worn.
-A few of the beads (the white ones) were simply not listed in the description of the grave. The necklace is described as being made of "glass and other beads." I think these white beads are not glass (maybe stone?) but I've recreated them here as glass beads because that is the material I work with.
-I was not happy with my first attempt at recreating the bicone white bead, because my bicone was much straighter and more precise than the original. It just didn't look right when strung. So, I tried again, this time making it a bit rounder and it worked out well.  I also burned the glass slightly the first time, so I was a bit more careful the second time and turned down my flame and tried not to overwork the bead.

The bead on the bottom is my first attempt. The top bead is my second attempt.

-The same thing mentioned above happened for the largest black bead in the string. The edges and lines of my first recreated bead were too straight, so I tried again it, rounding the bead out slightly more the second time
-Finally, bead #25 is an odd one. It has red glass at the core, and then clear glass over-top, but it is not described in the report as an "encased" bead, and it's very unevenly made. The authors of the report make reference to a "swirl technique" which was referenced in Beck's bead classification from 1927, so I've ILL'ed that book to learn more.

Recreated Portway Andover Necklace

A photograph of the finished necklace on display at Mudthaw!

 

Link to Photo of Historic Necklace

Extra Beads from Portway Andover Necklace

Below are a bunch of beads that I made for my Portway Andover Necklace project that did not make it into the final necklace for one reason or another. What I want to do for this blog post is talk a bit about some of these beads, and why I did not include them in my final project, in the hope that it will offer a bit of insight into my thinking and my process for recreating this historic necklace.

                      

All of the beads pictured are perfectly good beads. I did not make a major error in technique on any of these beads. In fact, I've realized that it is much rarer for me to actually "mess up" on a bead with a design that I am familiar than it was a year or two ago. The reason I did not include these beads in my necklace was because they were  not "exactly" what I wanted for this project. Because I have a higher level of technical skill than I did when completing my earlier necklace recreations ( and because all of the techniques and beads in this necklace were already familiar to me from past projects) I wanted to try to do something a little different to challenge myself with this project. When making this necklace I wanted to try to come "as close as I could"  to reproducing the beads based on the information found in the archeological report (size measurements, photographs, and drawings of each bead). For some beads I was able to come closer than others before I reach the point where I felt that to try any more would make me frustrated (its important to keep this fun!). 

I enjoyed this project because it let me challenge myself in different ways. It helped me learn to look at bit more closely at historic beads, and it let me me work to use my technical skills to try to make the glass do more exactly what I wanted it to do. I also liked the idea of trying to recreate the beads more accurately, because I think that subtle things, such as the thickness of a stringer design, and the placement of design elements closer or farther from each other, effects the overall feel of the bead. Hopefully my beads feel like a closer reproduction on this necklace than they have before.

A sampling of some of my thoughts and considerations as I recreated some of the beads for this project are below. If I were starting this necklace now, I would likely try blogging about each type of bead separately.

-When making the yellow and dark blue melon beads, I counted the number or ribs on the bead. I was able to do this for 2 of the 3 melon beads in this necklace because a top down view was given of the historic bead which enabled me to count the number of ribs. I then tried to make my bead not only the same size, but with the same number of ribs as the historic bead.

-When making the yellow melon bead, I was not happy with the transparent yellow glass rod I ordered. It was too light in color. So I mixed a very little bit of opaque yellow into the transparent yellow glass. This made the color darker, but still created a glass bead that was mostly transparent.


-When making the black and white wavy beads I noticed that some of the waves were thicker than others, so I tried playing with stringers of different thickness to see if I could get my beads to look closer to the historic beads. I also tried playing with how close or far away each wave was to the other waves. To the left are some of the beads I did not end up using, but you can use this picture to see how the thickness of the line varies between the beads, and how the space between the waves on the beads varies. This variation is particularly strong  when you compare the left most bead and the third bead from the left.

-When making the raked red and yellow and green and yellow beads I tried to count or infer the number of raked lines that were on the historic bead, and make my beads with a similar number of raked lines. I also tried to modify the thickness of my stringer and my placement of the stringer so I could place the same number of wraps around the bead as in the historic examples.

-When replicating the amber beads using amber colored glass I tried to make my beads the same size as the historic beads. Most of the beads were fairly uniform, so this was easy. However a few beads were much more irregular in their shape. At first I made these "irregular" bead much more "regular"  in shape. However, after talking with Clare/Isabel about the project, she made me realize that I really knew that I should try to reproduce them more accurately, even if it meant creating beads that were obviously uneven.

-Perhaps my most interesting revelation came when I was working on making the green and yellow zig-zag beads pictured to the right. I noticed that the archeological report described these beads have having a "wave design." However, after making a bead with a wave design (left most bead) I'm not sure that was the best or most accurate term to use. Zig-Zag seems to me to be a better and more accurate design term to use, so I modified my technique accordingly

Going further, when looking at the images of this type bead in the archeological report (image right), I noticed that the zig-zag design was not very crisp. There was a lot of glass contained in the tips of the zig-zag. After trying several times, I could not replicate this look very well. I could sort of get there, but it felt very awkward when trying. Having seen a period reconstruction of a bead with a similar design on You Tube, I think that part of the issue is  the modern torch and methods I am using. Thinking about this now, I might be able to try to more accurately recreate the construction method seen in the video if I use a softened ball of glass on the end of a rod to make my design instead of a modern thin piece of glass called a "stringer," and if I keep the flame very low. I will also be interested to try this design when I build my own period fire source!!!

***

Because these extra beads are perfectly good, many of the beads pictured above have already gone on to be used in other ways. They will not be wasted!! For example, I gave a small bag with some of these beads in it to be used in a gift basket. I also carry a small box of practice beads around with me when I do bead making demos, and sometimes I give a few of those beads away to people who stop by.

The purpose of grave goods and the person behind grave 44.

The archeological report I'm using as my source gives information on the person burred
in each grave. It turns out that the person in grave 44 was a juvenile, a teenage girl between the ages of 12-14.

Photo of Grave 44

However, if you examine the necklace that I recreated, it seems to be a pretty big necklace for such a young girl. I have a slight frame, and when I put it on it seems much heavier than I would be comfortable wearing.

My point in saying this is that it seems a bit odd for a young girl to be wearing a necklace that big. This leads me to question what the grave goods placed in a burial really indicate. Were they actual possessions of the deceased, or were they offerings from loved ones? Did the necklace belong to the young girl, or was the necklace owned by someone else and gifted to the girl at her burial? And, if the necklace was not her necklace, why was this very large elaborate necklace given to her. What about her was so special? Was it her age (just on the cusp of adulthood--the idea of so much promise/potential wasted)? Or was it her status (was she the daughter of someone of significance)?

Clearly some research is needed. I will need to go back and read more of the analysis in the archeological report to learn more about the person behind grave 44, but, it also might help to do more research on Anglo-Saxon burial practice. What do academics and archeologists think the grave goods represented?

I have found a few sources I can mine for information on this topic. I looked at these sources earlier for information about beads, but I think I need to go back to them to learn more about Anglo-Saxon society and burial customs. This will help me to better understand the meaning and significance behind the beads found in this grave.
--The Spindle and the Spear: a critical inquiry into the construction and meaning of gender in the early Anglo-Saxon burial rite (book)

--Negotiating gender, family and status in Anglo-Saxon burial practices, c. 600-950 (article)
--The use of grave goods in Conversion Period England (book)

I also found a few other sources just now which could shed light on this issue
--From the Cradle to the Grave: age organization and the early anglo-saxon burial rite : According to the abstract this article discusses the idea that "real function of this system was to signal the position of members of the primary descent group within the households that made up the settlements of the early English."
--Grave Goods in Early Medieval Burials: messages and meanings : suggests numerous other motives and meanings behind grave goods, including "gift giving"

I have a lot of reading to do!

Bead Perforations

One of the reasons I like using archeological reports as sources is because they provide much more information about the beads than a simple image from a museum does. In the case of the image below, we can see the size of the perforation for some of the beads. This picture is also at a 1 to 1 scale, which allows us to measure the size of the bead and the bead perforations accurately. As you can see, the size of the perforation varies, and this variation is what I want to talk about. Why are the perforation sizes so different on the same necklace. 

Now, the answer to this question could easily be because the beads were made by different workers who had different size mandrels, so, I suppose the real question is: are there any reasons why an artisan would prefer one size over the other.

The only real commentary I've seen in my research so far giving a reason behind the size of bead perforations was given in relation to transparent beads. I'd have to go back to find the source, but I think it may have been Birte Brugmann's book which mentioned this idea. I should go back to her book when I get home. But, the basic idea she talked about is this:

-the thinner the layer of transparent glass, the lighter the color of the bead. 

-building up a thick layer of transparent glass will result in a bead that has a comparatively darker color. 

-as a result, one way to keep a lighter color in a larger sized transparent bead would be to make that large bead with a large hole.

 There are only three monochrome transparent glass beads in this necklace (three melon shaped beads). The two beads whose hole sizes are shown do not seem to have an unusually large perforation sizes (between 2-3mm), so I'm not sure that was a considering factor here. Though with small number of monochrome transparent beads here, it is hard to say. I might have to look at larger sample sizes. The mandrel sizes on the transparent beads with decoration also seem to vary pretty widely (1-6 mm). This brings me to my next point.

Another very logical reason for using a mandrel with a larger size is that making beads with a larger hole would also mean that the artisan could make a larger bead using less glass. This idea would seem to make a lot of sense, especially as raw glass was a valuable resource in England, since it was most likely imported from abroad. It would make sense then to suspect that larger bead would regularly have larger perforations. But, in fact, this doesn't seem to be the case with regards to this necklace. While a few larger beads have large perforations (#34 for example) other large beads have small perforations. Bead number #23 for example, which is the largest glass bead on this necklace has a rather small perforation of 3mm or so.

So, in conclusion, while there might be some very good reasons for artisans to prefer larger mandrels over smaller ones, the size of the mandrels and the beads they produce seem rather random, a if most of the time mandrel size was not a serious consideration. 

When I am making my recreations, I will try to follow the size of the perforation listed for an historic bead, just to keep my recreation as accurately as possible. When I don't know the size of the perforation, I generally use larger mandrels for larger beads, so as not to use up as much glass, and so that it will take me less time to build up a larger bead. 

However, I do find the larger mandrels (4+mm) a bit heavy and unwieldy, and so I tend to use them only for the largest beads.  Did period artisans feel the same, not liking to use larger mandrels because they were less comfortable to use. Its hard to know, because so few tools survive. The one photo of a period mandrel (or what is thought to be one) that I have seen comes from the Ribe excavation (Scandinavia). It is 30 cm's long (almost 12 inches), but the tip where the bead would go is much smaller. The sizing on the image in the article makes it seem as if the tip would be about 3-4mm, while the rest of the mandrel would be twice that width, making it heavier, but perhaps more sturdy than if the entire mandrel were narrow. 

Overall, this mandrel seems as if it would be a heavier mandrel than the ones I like to use most.  But it is also likely that they were used differently, making their weight less of a factor for the comfort of the period bead maker. When I make beads I hold the mandrel in the air and spin it. But, perhaps period artisans were able to rest the mandrel on the side of a fire/kiln. I have read articles and watched videos where people do this when trying to recreate historic bead making methods.

Overall, with this blog entry, it feels like I've thought about this issue a bit and not come to any definite conclusions. That is slightly annoying, but, i'm also ok with it, because in a few of the articles I'm reading on experimental archeology, the authors also speak in terms of possibilities and conjecture, because it is almost impossible to know some things for sure: "however the question does not deal with "right" or wrong because we will never be able to verity or refute our theories" (Tine Gam). Basically, we can only do our best based on the archeological remains available to us.

Portway Andover Necklace

Excavations at Portway, Andover, an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, were carried out from 1973-1975.

Link to record of archeological report where the above picture was taken from.

My most recent project has been to recreate the outer necklace from the above image (grave 44). This necklace is being recreated for the Artifacts of a Life event in September
--These beads are almost all of a style that I have recreated already (as they are mostly all shown in Brugman's typology which I recreated as an earlier project). However, what makes this necklace significant is that the order it is strung in was preserved in the grave. This very rarely happens! As a result, studying this necklace can perhaps tell me something about Anglo-Saxon bead fashions and necklace styles, especially if I compare it to the other two Anglo-Saxon necklaces I have reconstructed so far.
---I also hope to use my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon beads and Brugman's Anglo-Saxon bead typology to date this necklace, and see if my dating of the necklace agrees with the dates from the report. Dating graves is one reason that archeologists develop typologies of objects.

The necklace from grave 44 has:
17 amber beads (which i will recreate using amber colored glass
25 shaped or polychrome beads
=Total 42 beads

I first came across this necklace as a pintrest image when I was doing a Google image search trying to come up with an idea for Artifacts of a Life. I was then able to track down the archeological report from the excavation using the information on the museum card about the item, and order the report on interlibrary loan, which gave me a LOT of information about the necklace, as well as a much better picture.

However, as Artifacts of a Life requires more than one object, I am also thinking of recreating the other two small bead strings pictured here (graves 19 and 50). These strings are much much simpler. If I am able to make progress of buildings period bead kiln, I may even be able to make at least the smallest string using a period fire source!The smallest necklace only requires a few colors of glass, and only has 20 beads, all monochrome. Normally, this would not be something I would not be interested in recreating (it is too simple to be interesting to me at this point)...but, it would be perfect to try with my period fire experiments, as I will be basically learning how to make beads anew using a different source of heat. I am very excited about this idea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'll try to post more about this necklace as I work on finishing it. It is actually almost complete, but I have some scribbled thoughts about my process and thoughts as I was working that woudl be nice to type up less formally in blog form, before including those thoughts in formal documentation. I have tended not to make process posts, but this is something I've been encouraged to try by a few people.