Product review: Fluted brass beads from Crazy Crow

Fluted spherical beads, nowadays commonly called "melon" beads, were a common feature in Achaemenid jewelry and were even used on the thigh cords of akinakes scabbards.  They could be made of metal, stone, glass or ceramic, and often, but not always, featured a small rim at one or both openings.

I recently acquired a bag of fluted beads from Crazy Crow Trading Post.  They are advertised as hollow but heavy and 3/8 inch (about 9.5mm) in diameter; no indication as to whether that refers to the stringing length or the width.  I chose brass as a substitute for gold.

As you can see, they are not quite as advertised...

While the metal used may indeed be brass, it's "red" brass (that is, with a low zinc content and thus a more coppery orange hue) rather than the common yellow brass that it appears to be in the catalogue and online photos.  This isn't necessarily bad, but it does mean they're a less effective substitute for gold and look more like a medium- to low-alloy tin bronze, which was also used for some beads.  Reinforcing this effect is the fact that the beads are "raw" brass with no protective coating.  As you can see, some of them are rather badly tarnished.

In other respects, the beads do live up to the ad copy.  They measure a hair over 9mm in width and 9.5mm in stringing length.  They're surprisingly heavy, much more so than some of Crazy Crow's other hollow metal beads that I've bought, though lighter than solid beads would be.

The raw brass gives me pause.  While all unpainted metal would be "raw" in period, it would also be difficult to polish these without leaving any polishing agent in the grooves or getting it into the inside of the bead, where it could permanently etch the metal (I have seen Brasso do this when allowed to remain in crevices).  Therefore keeping them bright and shiny would be a challenge.

Otherwise, I think these would be excellent for period jewelry if you know what they are and how to use them.  As a substitute for bronze rather than gold, they would probably be appropriate for an impression of a well-off but not especially rich person.  Also, they might be useable on the thigh cord of a small akinakes, paired with a small chape - my examination of Persepolis reliefs indicates that the width ratio of the chape to the bead ranged from 3.57:1 to 5:1, so a 9mm-wide bead could be paired with a chape that is at most 45mm across.

Analysis of an unprovenanced akinakes

I've just stumbled across a curious article from last October by Sean Manning of Book and Sword.  It concerns the analysis of an iron/steel akinakes purchased "from dealers in Tehran" along with iron Luristan-style blades in the 1960s.

The dagger is a fairly standard design and could fit in with known finds from Achaemenid territory or elsewhere in Asia.  What interests me is that the article includes a photo of the top of the pommel, the first I've seen of an iron akinakes, showing a tang with a wide rectangular cross section peened flush.  The pommel was apparently a separate piece from the rest of the grip, with the sturdy peened tang holding it firmly in place.

Assuming this is a genuine Iron Age artefact, it is the first evidence I've ever seen for the construction of an iron akinakes hilt, and indicates that the iron akinakes was NOT created in a single piece like the bronze proto-akinakai from Central Asia.