In the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy[1534] is another gold ornament of the same form as Fig. 492. It is, however, smaller, and the lower part is at present flat. Gold penannular rings of torque-like patterns, pointed at each end, and which may have been ear-rings, and not bead-like ornaments, are not uncommon in Ireland and Britain.[1535] Rings of nearly the same kind are still in use in Northern Africa. Plain double-pointed penannular ear-rings in bronze are also found, but I am uncertain as to the period to which they should be assigned. Some appear to be of Saxon date.[1536]
I have a pair of ear-rings of circular form from Hallstatt, about 2 inches in diameter, of hollow bronze, made from a thin plate, and with one end pointed which fits into a socket at the other end. Other ear-rings of bronze,[1537] from the same cemetery, have a small ring encircling them, to which, in one instance, three small spherical bells are attached.
In the Laibach Museum are some bronze ear-rings of the Early Iron Age, much like those from Goodmanham, but broader.
Ear-rings of the Bronze Period appear to be almost unknown in France. I have, however, specimens found with a hoard of bronze socketed celts, fragments of swords, spear-heads, bracelets, and a variety of other objects at Dreuil, near Amiens, about 1872.
They are two in number, in form like Fig. 490, but rather shorter. One of them is coiled up, and the other has the broad part nearly flat. Each is ornamented with some parallel lines stamped in across the broader part. Several small hollow and some solid rings, circular, semicircular, and flattened in section, were in the same hoard.
Some few objects of bead-like character have from time to time been found in barrows and with other bronze objects. Dr. Thurnam[1538] describes a tubular bronze bead, 1¼ inch long, found in a barrow in Dorset, and now in Mr. Durden’s collection. He thinks the bead mentioned by Sir R. Colt Hoare as found in a barrow near Fovant[1539] may have been the spheroidal head of the bronze pin with which it was found. Some beads of amber and jet were, however, discovered with it.
A notched bead of tin, like a number of small beads strung together, accompanied a little pin of copper or bronze, most probably an awl, and some conical buttons of bone or ivory, in a barrow on Sutton Verney Down,[1540] in which there had been deposited a burnt body. Hoare says that “it is the only article of that metal we have ever found in a barrow.”
Small beads, or more probably drum-shaped buttons of gold, as suggested by Dr. Thurnam,[1541] have also been found in the Wiltshire barrows.
Beads formed of joints of encrinites, with others formed of burnt clay, as well as a necklace formed of the shells of dentalium, were found in a barrow near Winterbourn Stoke.[1542] Glass beads of the notched form have been found with burnt interments, and frequently with bronze instruments in others of the Wiltshire barrows.[1543] Other beads have spiral ornaments in white upon a blue ground. A blue glass bead, with three yellow spirals on it, was found with the point of a bronze blade in a cist with burnt bones in a barrow at Eddertoun, Ross-shire.[1544] Such beads, known as Clachan Nathaireach,[1545] or serpent stones, have been used as charms for diseased cattle and other evils.
Glass beads with the same spiral ornamentation have been found in the cemetery at Hallstatt, and their presence in these graves certainly affords an argument for assigning them to a comparatively late period, or at all events to a time when commerce with the Continent was well established.