Talk:Beads
interesting points from a resent discussion, worth working into the page. Also because it mentions Danish and Norwegian finds. I should mention that all the photos are from the Swedish database only because they are the ones with the right licence.
"Jenn Culler: A note on the beads, most of the finds have LESS than a full strand. Average number of beads in graves is very, very low. At Birka, the average number of beads in graves with brooches is 22.7; 13.9 beads on average in graves in Denmark with oval brooches; and I think Kaupang, Norway was only 8 but I need to find my notes to double check that. Most of the beads are quite small, which means a lot of women likely wore a cord or wire with a scant handful of beads on it (if even that) and the beads did not cover it clear from one brooch to the next. A few graves have multiple strands, but they are not common at all. This was based on the report of the 320 graves surveyed by Johannes Brøndsted. I built out a spread sheet of all graves and the number of beads in the grave that could plausibly be suspended between the brooches (so if they were in a box at the corpse's feet, they did not count). I only counted the 62 graves that contained evidence of oval brooches for this survey. And those graves average 13.9 beads. If you look at all the graves there with beads (even without oval brooches), the number ranges from 1-50 beads in graves. (The average number of beads across all graves was 8.) The Købstrup Girl was found with 8 beads. It is theorised that the beads may have been used as currency. Matthew Delvaux has written a few papers on that topic."