File:Early-medieval gold object (FindID 18704).jpg

English: Gold and garnet fragment, possibly half of a rather long biconical bead. A hollow cone in shape, it has a circumferential band of cloisonne garnets around both the wider and the narrower end, and four longitudinal bands of cloisonne garnets running between. The band around the wider end had perhaps eight rectangular garnets originally, set in cloisons (cells); three survive now and two of the cloisons are badly crushed. A strip of gold projecting from the edge of this crushed area may be part of the attachment to the other half of the bead, or part of a suspension loop if the object is not a bead. Around the narrower edge are eight shorter garnets, some now broken. Each of the four longitudinal panels of garnets has seven rectangular cells; in one, all seven garnets survive, but the other panels have two, three and five garnets surviving. All the surviving garnets (where they are large enough to see) are cut on the curve, to continue the line of the cone, except for one in the band around the narrower end which is flat. No foils can be seen beneath the garnets. Between the longitudinal panels are four tapering fields of gold. Examination by eye shows that these have slight grooves around their edges, and this and the weight of the object (2.31g uncleaned weight) suggest that the gold fields are lidded cells rather than solid chunks. The narrower end has a strip of gold around the hole into the interior; the wider end is too damaged to reconstruct its original shape. Total surviving length 17 mm. The squashing of the wider end means that it now measures 9-10 mm across.