Neolithic Shell Derived Beads Were Locally Made

A new study by scientists at the University of York has shed new light on the use of mollusc shells as personal adornments by Bronze Age people.

The research team used amino acid racemisation analysis (a technique used previously mainly for dating artefacts), light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, to identify the raw materials used to make beads in a complex necklace discovered at an Early Bronze Age burial site at Great Cornard in Suffolk, UK.

They discovered that Bronze Age craftspeople used species like dog whelk and tusk shells, both of which were likely to have been sourced and worked locally, to fashion tiny disc-shaped beads in the necklace. The research is published in PLOS ONE.

The researchers included archaeologists, mathematicians, chemists and physicists, the latter from the BioArCh and York Centre for Complex Systems Analysis (YCCSA) and the Departments of Archaeology, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics at the University of York. Dr Sonia O'Connor, of the University of Bradford's Department of Archaeological Sciences, carried out the light and electron microscopy, and prehistoric jewellery specialist Dr Alison Sheridan, of National Museums Scotland, facilitated access to the Great Cornard necklace, which had been excavated by Suffolk Archaeology.

When it was first realised that the tiny white beads had been made from shell, the question arose as to its source. Had the shell been obtained locally or did it originate from a species from further afield, perhaps even the Mediterranean thorny oyster (Spondylus)? The Mediterranean thorny oyster is a shell of long-standing symbolic and cultural significance which is known to have been used on the Continent around the time when the Great Cornard necklace was made.

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