The shale bead

Yvonne Rose, Archives Supervisor

In 2015 we excavated a very wet site close to the Brayford Pool in Lincoln. One of the finds, which is due to head off to the museum very soon, is this lovely example of a shale bead. It was found during analysis of the samples which was a lucky catch!

The bead has broken down the middle, probably along a natural stress line. Shale is a type of sedimentary rock which is made up of layers and layers of compressed clay and other minerals such as quartz, and as a consequence it can easily laminate along these layers. XRF (X-ray fluorescence) was used to determine the material, as jet and shale can look quite similar. XRF uses X-rays to work out the elemental breakdown of the item; different elements react differently to x-rays and by seeing how the x-rays react, technicians can work out the elemental make up of an object.

The bead is a roughly oval shape with a hole in the centre which has most definitely been drilled. The shape of the hole suggests that it was drilled from both sides rather than straight through from one side. This bead would mostly likely have been one of many on a necklace or other form of strung jewellery. The bead itself doesn’t show any sign of hard wearing suggesting that it was a fairly new bead or necklace, or that it was only worn for special occasions.

This bead was quite difficult to date from its shape alone. Artefacts manufactured from materials such as shale, with its propensity to laminate especially as it dries out, tend not to survive the centuries. This results in an incomplete archaeological record of all the styles and construction methods used throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Age eras, meaning accurate comparison for dating purposes is not always possible. The closest beads in appearance to ours are from a shale and amber necklace from Balmashanner, Angus in eastern Scotland which date from around 800 BC. As you can see from the picture, there are broad similarities to our bead but it’s not quite the same style. From this comparison we can assign a broad date range for our bead to around 1000‒800 BC.

We can have a lovely specimen of a shale bead but without an extensive record collection to compare it, we can only guess to at its age. So keep digging and finding lots more shiny beads!