The National Museum of Denmark’s photo shows fourty-four annular (ring-shaped) translucent turquoise blue glass beads strung on a modern circular thread and displayed against a black background.
In 1885, Jens Jensen, a farmer, found the forty-four glass beads in a large cremation urn in the ploughed-over Kongehøj burial mound, near Humlum church, Denmark. The broken urn contained burnt bones, forty-four turquoise blue glass beads, and two gold spiral rings. The cremation burial is dated circa 1,100 BC.
A research project published in 2015, analysed twenty-three blue glass beads from various Danish Bronze Age graves. The analysis showed that the glass of two of the beads originated in Egypt, and the others originated in Mesopotamia. The forty-four glass beads from Kongehøj at Humlum, originated in Mesopotamia. They date to the same long-distance exchange period as Baltic amber moving south. The research project links glass moving north with Baltic amber moving south, which points to complex, far-reaching trade and exchange in exotic goods some 3,000 years ago.
Beautiful blue glass beads from the Danish Bronze Age.
Found by a farmer at Humlum in Denmark in 1885. Glass analysis published in 2015 shows the beads originated in Mesopotamia indicating far-reaching trade networks some 3,000 years ago.
📷 National Museum of Denmark
#Archaeology