gems, ancient gemology, ancient jewelry, early metallurgy, glyptic, engraved gems, magical gems, amulets, beads, glass, gold

Some years ago, with the encouragement of Dr D.B. Harden, I began the pursuit of a type of segmented bead apparently rare in Romano-British contexts, but curiously frequent in the graves of Meroitic Faras. A preliminary note appeared in 1966; now, there is much to add, including (by the generosity of Dr Maria Dekowna and Mme Hanna Pawtowska of the Institute of the History of Material Culture, Polish Academy of Sciences) analyses which in two cases hint at a common origin. But Faras and Britain are only the extremities of a distribution which proved, even when the Far East was excluded, to cover an immense area and a wide range of time. A particularly interesting thread is traceable for Roman times, suggestive of a link with the Mediterranean via eastern rather than western Europe.