Round Agate Bead

This Agate bead was photographed in Tanjavur. It was in the shop of a jeweller who had bought it from a river bed panner. This bead appears to be polished but is still in a crude and pitted state. Perhaps this bead was rejected due to the naturally occurring flaw seen in the picture below. This bead exhibits a very interesting feature of the bead making process.

This bead would have first been found in a rough state. This rough would have been brought to the manufacturing area. Here the bead would have been chipped to form a round shape. Then the bead was sent for drilling. This bead shows deep concave shapes formed around the perforation. This was created by the drilling process. The hole would have been drilled with a bow around a long stick on whose end a diamond chip would have been stuck. This process is still done in the few surviving bead manufacturers workshops in Kangayam. This bead seems to have been polished after the drilling but not brought to a definite shape as the defect in the stone would have made the polisher reject the stone.

This bead is 14 MM in diameter and 9 mm in height.
This bead can be dated to being approximately between 300 BCE - 300 AD
The source of this material would have probably been in Gujarat