second time. There was nothing to indicate its original form, but it seems probable that it was a torc. Its size is larger than is usual for such ornaments, and might suggest that it had been a girdle. The metal, however, is not sufficiently pliable for such a purpose; and, large though it be, torcs have been found in Ireland having a length of 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 6 inches.[1] The wave-line decoration on the back, shown with the terminals the natural size, occurs on early fibulae both in Britain and on the Continent; it can, for instance, be faintly seen on the fibula illustrated in Plate LXXXV., Fig. 5. It appears on brooches from the Romano-British village at Rushmore, excavated by General Pitt-Rivers, and it may be noted on an early fibula from the villa of Anthée in the Museum of Namur. The whole treatment of the ornament, and especially of the trumpet-shaped ends, suggests that the Newstead torc is of purely native manufacture.
Beads
A group of personal ornaments of another kind will be found in Plate XCI. Some sixty beads, complete or fragmentary, were collected in the course of the excavations. They were for the most part found within the fort. The majority belonged to the class of opaque melon-shaped beads, often of a bright blue colour, common on all Roman sites. A certain number, while of much the same shape, were made of clear, dark-blue glass. Some of these latter came from the ditch of the early fort. Two of unusual size and somewhat irregular shape (Figs. 8 and 10) were lying beneath the Via Quintana. In the pit in the Principia, at a depth of 8 feet and near the head of a skeleton, were four tiny specimens which had evidently formed part of a necklace (Fig. 24). They were of clear glass decorated with gold leaf, which was in turn covered by a thin layer of glass. Beads of the same sort from the Well of Coventina, at Procolitia, are now in the Museum at Chesters. The Newstead find probably belongs to the second half of the second century.
Decorated beads were rare. Three are ornamented with projecting bosses of different colours. One of pale green glass has bosses of dark blue with white curving lines (Fig. 12); another of dark blue translucent glass has bosses of opaque white, each with a blue centre (Fig. 16); a third of grey-green glass has two bosses of opaque white with yellow centres (Fig. 18). Five are decorated with wavy lines of opaque white. Four of these are of blue glass (Plate XCI., Figs. 17, 19, 23 and 26) and the fifth is of greenish glass, with wavy lines of white, while round the perimeter are the remains of a band of
1 Archaeologia, vol. xxxix. p. 505.
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