Hmm. I'd been thinking about getting a couple of strands of amber chips to play with, when I found a reference in Owen-Crocker to amber going out of use by the 7thc, and shortly thereafter a comment on Norsefolk about huge ropes of amber being unsupported by evidence, and a "SCA convention". I need to read more about this so I don't get myself into trouble.
(The new necklace from Pennsic, from Cabachon, which is the stall run by the woman who teaches so much Anglo-Saxon stuff, including architecture, and references literature so charismatically. I might be okay with this -it's not many amber beads, and there are more of the silver + jet, and the amber isn't shaped.)
I do have a new book to read - it's the archeological report from the Mill Hill Cemetery, in Deal, Kent. (By Keith Parfitt and Birte Brugmann, The Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series; No. 14) I had no idea it existed as a published document entire, until I was chatting with a beadmaker at Pennsic A&S, who had some beads labeled "Migration Period", with their various cemeteries. Of course that drew me in, and I explained my interest, particularly in Mill Hill, and she whipped out a copy.
Friends from Phoenix Glade said they could see my "craft-gasm" across the hall.
Mill Hill is my favorite cemetery thus far, because per what I've read in Rogers and Owen-Crocker, it has the most craziness in brooches, and I'm really after graphic design. But the report is about EVERYTHING. What is in which grave, and bodies, and weapons, and beads, and pottery, and glassware...it's a terrific book, and not that expensive, thank goodness. It even has in the back, a listing of the other cemeteries in Kent, with their major finds, so I know where to hunt down more of a thing. From the Foreword:
"Mill Hill was the burial place for a 6th-century community of high status, with men bearing arms and women wearing jewellry, some deriving from the Continent. Until the excavation of Buckland, Dover, in 1994, the Mill Hill cemetery was the largest Kentish 6th-century site excavated with modern techniques. Its 76 graves can tell us much about the generations after the historical advent of the Jutes to Kent. The wealth of objects in the graves allows re-evaluation of both Scaninavian and continental influence on Kent in the 6thc century and therefore is of importance to studies of both the Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian periods."
There's Merovingian again. I really need to get stronger on my political history. I've been listening to Winston Churchill's history of Britain, but he doesn't run off and talk about France and Germany much. I'm also running into references to Alamannic culture...there's a honeycomb weave that's Alamannic.
Here's some info about amber for Kent, in context with other cemeteries (my paraphrasing) -
40% of total number of beads are amber (in Mill Hill). Higher than Lyminge (16%), but lower than Bekesbourne (49%). Anglian and Saxon regions use more amber than Kent: Castledyke (63%), Sewerby (46%). Shapes - most roughly shaped, very few shaped into wedges and discs. Apparently two graves at Mill Hill have typically Anglian/Saxon carefully shaped beads, one had 10, and the other 12.
Wow. That's not ropes. Well. I'm not going to get myself any more amber than I already have. 45 amber pieces. I'm rich!
It's going to take a year at least to get through this in a meaningful way, and share what I want to send off to my beadmaking and pottery buddies who are also working on reconstructive archeology.
Comments