Necklace
© Bruce M. White, 2022

15-Necklace

Title Necklace
Era Roman Period to Early Middle Ages, 3rd–Mid-10th Century CE
Medium Gold, carnelian
Credit Gift of the Georges Ricard Foundation. 2018.10.211

This chain-link necklace intersperses gold biconical beads with carnelian flattened octahedron beads. The gold biconical beads are likely Roman and date to the third century CE or later. The carnelian faceted beads date to 800–1100 CE. These beads probably came from Viking looting and were worn by women to advertise the success of their men in battle.1 Mixtures of such different bead types were done to pique the interest of modern jewelry wearers.

MH

  1. ; Stockholm, National Antiquities Museum, BJ 632. ↩︎

Bibliography

Dubin 2009
Dubin, Lois Sherr. 2009. The History of Beads from 100,000 BC to the Present. New York: Abrams.
Necklace
© Bruce M. White, 2022