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Early Bronze Age faience bead
Early Bronze Age faience bead
One of two faience beads found with a cremation burial dug into a burial mound. It is made from faience - a blue, glass-like material made by firing a mixture of sand, water, plant ash and copper. It has a flattened, sub-rectangular shape with three perforations to hold three strings of beads – these are called ‘spacer plates’. Spacer plates made from jet and amber are uncommon finds in Early Bronze Age graves dating to between 2200 and 1650 BCE but no other faience spacer plate beads are currently known from Britain. The pale, powdery surfaces suggest that it was burnt on the funeral pyre.
Un o ddau lain faience a ddarganfuwyd gyda chorfflosgiad a gloddiwyd mewn tomen gladdu. Mae wedi’i wneud o faience – deunydd glas tebyg i wydr a wnaed trwy danio cymysgedd o dywod, dŵr, lludw pren a chopr. Mae iddo siâp is-betryal, gwastad gyda thri thwll i ddal tri llinyn o leiniau – yr enw ar y rhain yw ‘gleiniau gwahanu’. Mae gleiniau gwahanu a wnaed o fuchudd ac ambr yn anghyffredin mewn beddau o’r Oes Efydd Gynnar rhwng 2200 a 1650 CC, ond nid ydym yn gwybod am unrhyw leiniau gwahanu faience eraill ym Mhrydain ar hyn o bryd. Mae’r arwynebau golau, powdraidd yn awgrymu eu bod wedi cael eu llosgi gyda’r corff ar y goelcerth angladdol.
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Site Name: Holywell Golf Links, Brynford
Notes: Found amongst burnt bones with bead 45.311/2, over which was the inverted cinerary urn 36.299, constituting a secondary burial in a barrow, Hemp's No.20F. The beads accompanied the cremated remains of two children and a large inverted (upside down) urn was placed over the bones. In 1933 the cremated bones were sent to the Royal College of Surgeons in London to be analysed but were not returned to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. They were probably destroyed when the college was bombed during the Second World War. Roedd y gist yn cynnwys dau bot (yrnau llestri bwyd) a gweddillion person ifanc a gafodd ei amlosgi. Anfonwyd yr esgyrn hyn at Syr Arthur Keith yng Ngholeg Brenhinol y Llawfeddygon rywbryd ar ôl iddynt gael eu darganfod ac ni chawsant eu dychwelyd i’r amgueddfa. Mae’n debygol y cawsant eu dinistrio pan gafodd y coleg ei fomio yn ystod yr Ail Ryfel Byd.