English: A light blue glass bead with a slightly off centre sub-circular hole. The bead is broadly bun / globular shaped being near circular in plan and rectangular shaped in cross section. The central hole is irregular and slightly faceted through wear: it measures 5.7mm x 6.3mm. The bead is a light matt azure blue colour; when it is held up to the light it is translucent and has a number of small air bubbles and flecks present. The external edge has a decorative white trailed serpentine stripe of glass within the matrix. The bead has also been slightly scratched and damaged by abrasion in the plough soil. Glass beads are common finds from the late Iron Age - Early Medieval (Anglo-Saxon) period (150 BC - 1000 AD), however stylistically this form is likely to dates form the late Iron Age or early Roman period (150 BC-300 AD).
The bead measures 15.2mm in diameter is 7.5mm high and maximum of 4.6mm thick (from central hole to outer edge). The bead weighs 2.05 grams.
Guido (1978: 63-64) describes beads of this type as her group 5A, illustrating an comparable idealised example plt. 1, no. 10d. She describes how this was an extremely long lived style which continued in use throughout the Iron Age, Roman and Early Medieval periods. Guido cautions that "it is quite impossible to date these beads visually" (p. 64), however, following the precedent set by previous records on this database, an Iron Age to Roman date is tentatively suggested, based on the richness of the blue used, cf. HAMP-FB9144, CAM-CF57E4, SOM-143704. A similar bead of Guido's type 5A was found during excavations in Colchester, in a context dating to c. AD 75-125 (Crummy 1983: 32, no. 546).