Beads make ideal trade items because they are highly portable and treasured where they are imported. To our advantage, many are made of durable materials and last into the archaeological record. They are, for example, the oldest known form of art.
From the beginning, I will tell you what many of you already know. I am something of an evangelist for beads. I believe their scientific, humanistic study can teach us much about the past. In this short time, I want to show you some examples of that.
In terms of beads, Berenike, Egypt, principally traded with India. From the third century B.C. through the second century A.D. the trade was mostly with South India. The garnets (left) and quartz (right) stone beads look like they came from Arikamedu or perhaps Kodumanal in the south. The small, drawn (cut from a tube) Indo-Pacific glass beads also look like they were coming from there.
Indo-Pacific beads were not very numerous in those centuries, making up only about four percent of the beads excavated. However, after the hiatus of the third century, they become very important, making up some 40% of the beads on the site. They were not from Arikamedu. We do not have them analyzed yet, but the colors make it quite clear that they were coming from Mantai, at the northern end of Sri Lanka.
Arikamedu did not make orange glass beads (see left). Mantai did (right), and also made an unusual green-blue glass, unlike that of Arikamedu or other Indo-Pacific beadmaking site.
What happened? In the first and second centuries, the principal South Indian port was Muziris, on the Malabar Coast. Muziris was mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, in Ptolemy's Geography, and is prominent on the Peutinger Table. It is also celebrated in the Tamil-language Sangam poetry. Yet, no one has ever identified it.
Left: a section of the map of India drawn after Ptolomy's Geographia. Muziris empo-rium is clearly more important than neighboring towns. As it was an "emporium," Roman merchants lived there for some time.
The Sangam poems never describe large buildings at Muziris, only its role as a port. Neither Muziris nor Westerners are mentioned after the first century. The "Augustinian Temple" on the Peutinger Table is, in my opinion, a mishearing of a temple to Agastya, the Patron Saint of South India. Right: section of the Peutinger Table, perhaps a fifth century copy of a third century copy of a first century map.
Map of South India. It appears that raw materials for stone and glass beadmakers came from an area just off the northwest corner of the map and from around Kodumanal (on the Noyil River) to Arikamedu (west coast) and Kodumanal. Their beads passed through the Palghat Gap and down river to Muziris for export to the Roman West. A maritime route, involving Mantai, Sri Lanka, may also have been used.
The Sangam poets put Muziris on the Periyar River (see map). But "periyar" just means "big river." There were several "Periyar Rivers" in Sangam times and the Periyar of today may well not be the Periyar of the past, especially along the shifting Malabar Coast (Francis 2002: 119-120).
It seems likely that Muziris was a small fishing village with a temporarily good port down-stream from the Palghat Gap, one of the few places where one can cross the Western Ghat mountain range. Just over the gap is the lapidary-jewelry site of Kodumanal, very close to the source of beryl and other gems, as well as pepper and cardamom-growing regions. Arikamedu probably sent its gemstone and glass beads in this direction, as well (Francis 2002: 121-122).
The Romans found it a good place to trade, but after the Romans left, it fell back to sleep. When the Romans returned a century later, there was not much there and they kept on going until the reached the bustling port of Mantai. As confirmation of this, Roman coins are very scarce in Sri Lanka until the fourth century, when they appear in large quantities (Weerakkody 1997: 163-154).
The case of the mysterious Muziris is an example of what we can learn when we incorporate bead evidence into our understanding of trading networks. Many other things can be learned as well.
Beads are helping to clarify some of the demographics at Berenike.
A pendant in the shape of a jug (left) is regarded by some as a Christian symbol. Not everyone agrees that it is, but a nacreous (mother-of-pearl) cross (right) was being manufactured at Berenike.
A glass cabochon-seal is unusual in that it has translucent red glass in it, quite rare for this time. Engraved into this cabochon, probably used as a seal, is a device representing a Zoroastrian fire altar. Similar devices are known on Sasanian stone seals.
A small steatite (soapstone) Roman fire altar pendant was also found (left). Here we have a Roman pagan device. There was also a small Bes pendant (from nearby Shenshef; (right) and an unusual molded glass scarab, both symbolic of the Egyptian pagan religion.
The beads give us evidence of people belonging to four different religions. Of course, we also have the evidence of the temples and the church, but there is no other archaeological evidence for a Zoroastrian (most likely from Persia) having been at Berenike.
Another clue to the nature of Berenike's population lies in some beads made of the marine shell Conus. There were made both by piercing the whole shell and by removing the spire and piercing it to make a discoidal bead. They were certainly not made for export. The shell bead most connected with ancient Egypt is the cowry, but no cowry beads were at Berenike (there are cowries around, but none were made into beads.)
Inland people especially value shell beads. The modern Ababda Bedouin wear cowry and "paper" or "little bubble" (Atyidae ) shells. Both of these (and Conus) are available in the Red Sea; next time I will have to ask where they obtain these shells. No doubt the ancestors of the modern Ababda Bedouin were the desert nomads, the people the Romans called "Blemmyes." While the Blemmyes at Berenike were not really "inland" people, their orientation would have been. I believe that they wore the Conus shells
While one Conus shell bead was dated to the Flavian period (it could be an intrusion), all the others were in late contexts, from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Other evidence, including the ceramics and the food refuge, have suggested to other specialists that the Blemmyes became the dominant faction of the Berenike population in these later centuries, and these beads confirm that.
One more demographic note concerns the glass bangles (solid bracelets), whose fragments are found in considerable numbers in the later centuries. (No, they are not beads, but I always get stuck studying them anyway). Similar bangles have been found in Palestine at the same period. Virtually no one has ever studied them (but see Spaer 1988, 1992). Who wore them? Can they help us answer the question as to whether woman lived at Berenike?
Left: bangle profiles. Below: bangle tops.
I do not have the entire answer yet, but several things are now clear. Men did not wear them. Neither did wealthy women; they are too clumsy for that. Middle class women are recorded with them in Palestinian graves. One archeologist I asked who has seen them in Roman military areas told me that he always thought prostitutes wore them. Servants might also have worn them. Certainly, they indicate the presence of apparently quite a few women, but what the function of the women at Berenike was cannot yet be determined.
The beads at Berenike have helped to clarify the problems of Middle Eastern glass beads in general. A lot of these beads are unusual in that they were made by methods not used anywhere else at any other time, save the largely Egyptian diaspora of glass beadmakers to Southeast Asia in the ninth or tenth centuries (Francis 2002: 87-99).
I think I now know why. Glass beadmaking was a minor craft. It was also a scattered industry. Beadmakers bought fancy glass chips, canes, or plates from the glassmakers of Alexandria, or even used scrap glass. Once made, a high temperature is not needed to remelt glass, so the glass was softened and worked at home, perhaps even on the kitchen hearth.
Since many people were making beads according to their own ideas, beads were made by many unusual techniques, including:
Single-strip folding
Double-strip folding
Piercing
Piercing (interior view)
Piercing and folding
Piercing-folding-and-marvering
as well as disc folding, torus folding, and fusing. This explains why the same piece of decorated glass may be formed into a bead in any of several different ways (see double-strip folded and pierced beads above).
The reason for all of this was the lack of wood for fuel in Egypt. There are trees in the cities and towns, but you cannot cut them down. The Nile Valley could be a lush forest, but it is not because it is used for agriculture. No doubt, the high status of the glass vessel makers allowed them to import wood. However, beadmakers just had to make do.
In contrast, the glass beadmakers of Syria (in the widest sense of the Levant) had wood and could wind glass beads directly in the furnace, as they always had done. These beads, too, reached Berenike, either for personal use or for export.
I have calculated the relative value of an American "board-foot" (30 cm by 30 cm by 2.5 cm) of wood from the Egyptian version of Diocletion's fourth century Edict on Prices (Lewis and Reinhold 1966: 464-473). (I am convinced that the price lists, at least, were specific to each province.) To buy this small amount of wood in Egypt at the time would take a a farm worker or camel driver more than a day's wage. A skilled worker such as a carpenter, baker, or shipwright, would pay a half a day's wage. A barber would have to cut thirteen heads, the most skilled scribe would have to write 104 lines, and so on. Wood was expensive; Egyptian beadmakers would have used as little as possible.
As low-class as beadmakers probably were, beads were part of a healthy trade between Egypt and India. Coral and gold-glass beads went east, while gemstone and Indo-Pacific beads came west.
Interestingly, the complex mosaic beads made in Alexandria are rarely found in the Indian subcontinent or Southeast Asia, nor are they common at Berenike. They seem to have been traded on the land Silk Route rather than on the Maritime Route.
Right: The only fancy Egyptian mosaic glass bead thus far found at Berenike.
There are examples of bead styles moving East to West. One is the cornerless cube, a cube or rectangular prism with its eight corners cut off at an angle, an easy way to facet a bead. The earliest of these beads I know of appear at Taxila (now in Pakistan) in carnelian and blue glass. The Romans took to it, making is principally from blue glass, either by winding the glass and paddling it into shape, sometimes adding eyes (probably done in Syria) or cutting and drilling the glass as one would stone (probably done in Egypt). The style remained popular into the European Middle Ages.
Another style adapted by Egypt from India was the collared bead. Collared beads have extra bits of material around their apertures. They are found occasionally in many places. There are collared beads in the Royal tombs of Ur. Venice made some early in the twentieth century. One sees them among metal beads from various places. However, as a style, they were principally made at Arikamedu, India, in glass and stone during the late centuries B.C. and the early centuries A.D. (Francis 1986)
Egypt adopted the style. We find collar beads in gold-glass and coral (both likely made at Alexandria). However, they are not found until there was extensive trade with India. Both coral and gold-glass beads were traded heavily to the East. For 2000 years, India has been the major consumer of Mediterranean coral. Gold-glass beads are not only all over the Indian subcontinent, they are found as far east as Java and Korea.
Right: Egyptian-made collar beads: gold-glass and coral.
The last bead I shall discuss is quite spectacular, large, and covered with mosaic chips. Steve Sidebotham found it on the surface and when I arrived in 2001, he bugged me every day about whether I had seen it.
When I finally did examine it, I was amazed. It is of the type made in Eastern Java from about 600 to 900 A.D. It is usually found with Tang ceramics; the Tang period began in 608. As this was a surface find at Berenike, it might be assumed to have been imported toward the end of occupation. We do not know when Berenike was deserted, but we suspect in the mid-sixth century. So, we are only a few decades apart. I do not think it is a later intrusion. The bead assemblage at Berenike is very pure. With one exception (probably brought in by a modern worker) there are no intrusions.
East Javanese mosaic bead found at Berenike. Left: side view. Right: view of one end.
We know that gold-glass beads got to Java, and here is an East Javanese bead in Egypt. The Romans did not even know Java existed. This might lend a little weight to J. Innes Miller's (1969) contention that there was a lively trade between the Malay world and Rome via East Africa following a southern "Cinnamon Route."
Beads cannot answer all the questions archaeologists may have about a site. However, as is the case with ceramics, coins, and many other artifacts, beads should take their place in the arsenal of those who wish to uncover the past. They offer many advantages and many opportunities to enrich our knowledge of those who went before us.
PHOTO CREDITS
Shell cross by Steven Sidebottham in Francis 2000, p. 224. Ptolemy Map and Map of South India from Francis 2002, plate 37, figure 12.4. Putenger Table in Stuart 1991. All others by the excavation photographer. All scales in cm.
REFERENCES CITED
Francis, Peter Jr.
1986 "Collar Beads: A New Typology and a New Perspective on Ancient Indian Manufacturing," Bulletin of the Deccan College Postgraduate & Research Institute 45: 117-121
2000 "Human Ornaments," pp. 211-225 in Steven E. Sidebotham and Willemina Z. Wendrich, eds. Report of the 1998 Excavations at Berenike, Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), Universiteit Leiden. Leiden.
2002 Asia's Maritime Bead Trade from ca. 300 B.C. to the Present. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
Lewis, N. and M. Reinhold
1977 Roman Civilization Sourcebook II: The Empire. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
Miller, J. Innes
1969 The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire: 29 B.C. to A.D. 641. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Spaer, Maud
1988 "The Pre-Islamic Glass Bracelets of Palestine," Journal of Glass Studies 30: 51-61.
1992 "Islamic Glass Bracelets of Palestine: Preliminary Findings," Journal of Glass Studies 34: 44-82.
Stuart, P.
1991 De Tabula Peutingeriana: de Kaart. Museumstukken II, Museum Kam, Nijmegen.
Weerakoddy, D. P. M.
1997 Trapobanê: Ancient Sri Lanka as Known to Greeks and Romans. Indicopleustoi: Archaeologies of the Indian Ocean. Turnhout: Brepols.
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