Investigating late Bronze Age glass beads from Stotfold, Bedfordshire, UK

A total of seventeen annular transparent blue glass beads and one cylindrical glass bead with opaque grey-white decoration were found at a site near Stotfold, in Bedfordshire, England. The beads were part of a cremation burial (without an urn), associated with small fragments of gold sheet and bone, and the latter were carbon dated to 1303-1052 calBC with 95% probability. Analysis (quantitative using SEM-EDS and qualitative using XRF) found that the beads are made from low magnesium, high potassium (LMHK) glass, of the type prevalent in Europe between around 1200 and 900 BC. The grey-white trail on the cylindrical bead is opacified in a novel way, as neither tin nor antimony colourants were used. These are only the second confirmed example of LMHK glass beads from England, and the earliest in date. They provide evidence of networks extending between this community and continental Europe in the Later Bronze Age, and the burial of a high-status individual at Stotfold. Experimental recreation is used to investigate the possible methods of making the glass, using plant ashes, copper oxide, and quartz sand. A multi-stage process is proposed, using a low temperature firing before the final high temperature melting and homogenising.