Garnet Bead

This is a beautifully worked garnet bead. Garnet is supposed to be one of the harder beads to drill.

Banded Agate Bead

Agate Bead

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

The Number Game

When one studies beads and trade of ancient south India, one also wonders at what scale this trade and manufacture was conducted. Through some research and mathematics a staggering figure emerges!

"Three trenches were laid in the bead mound to identify various technological aspects of glass making. Three floor levels were identified in 1.5 m cultural deposit dating between 1^st century AD and 3^rd century AD. There are nearly 2000 glass beads of various sizes and colours collected from 50 sq.m digging area. The 50 sq.m amounts to 0.25 % of the total bead mound. If one exposes the entire mound of 5.5 ha. area, one may encounter with minimum of a million beads. These too are the refuses left by our ancestors as the best ones were being used or sold. "
- http://heritageindiatrust.org/Porunthal.aspx

This is an excerpt from an excavation report of the Porunthal Excavations. This is an astounding figure. If what is being excavated are just the unsold and rejected beads then one can only speculate what the actual quantities manufactured might be.

It is said that the Romans bought 50 Million Sestertius worth of goods each year from India. Roman trade with India was its peak between 50 BC - 150 AD. This is approximately a 200 year period. 50 Million Sestertius in today's value is approximately 500 million euros. This volume would have had a profound impact on Indian trade and society of that time.

Faceted Quartz Bead

This is a quartz bead found in the Tanjore District. This bead was found in the Cauvery River. The bead is 20 mm x 16mm. It is a faceted shape which tapers down to both ends. The perforation is 1.8mm. The bead is polished but shows some crack and damage due to wear and tear by being in the river. This bead can be placed between 800 BCE - 300 AD

Garnet Beads

This is a small group of garnet beads found in Karur, TamilNadu. These beads are all polished but have no specific shape. They are all hand drilled and are between 3 - 9mm. Garnets were one of the most abundant semi precious materials to be found in Tamilnadu. These beads probably date between 1st - 6th Century AD.

An interesting aspect of documenting beads is that most of them are found in riverbeds. These beads shown above were found in a river near Karur. Probably the Noyyal river. As opposed to archaeological excavations, these beads only help us to study the varieties and quantities, Drilling patterns and approximate find spots. Since they were found in a river they could have been washed down from any point up-river of the find spot.