Bracelet of Beads from Saxton Road, Abingdon, Oxfordshire: 6th century AD

The string of beads was found to the right of the pelvis of an Anglo-Saxon woman buried in the cemetery just south of Abingdon, and probably had been worn on her right wrist. There are eight clear glass beads, eighteen opaque glass ones variously coloured and ornamented with stripes, a spherical and a polyhedral jet bead, some bone ones and one made of a green glass vessel rim fragment.

Crude as the bracelet may appear to modern eyes, its components represent exotic luxuries, as is true of beads found in all periods. Glass had to be imported from Frankish Europe in the 6th century, and jet would have come from Yorkshire or continental Europe.