These stunningly beautiful glass beads with intricate spiral patterns are known only in the North East. Who made them and why?
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Pretty much identical to the coloured glass beads with circular and spiral patterns found at Beattock and Castle O'er in Dumfries and Galloway. Perhaps the Galloway glass bead makers went up to Moray for their holidays?
Martina has a recent paper in the JAS and it turns out the sand used for the beads came from what is now Lebanon and the suggestion is that the beads were made from re-cycled material .
Maybe the Galloway people stole them :-)
They are very beautiful ... traded ??
wow fascinating stuff! i was able to read the article via the wayback machine - web.archive.org/web/20110307141920/leopardmag.co.uk/feats/305/puzzle-of-our-iron-age-beads