Glass and amber, 8.81 grams including thread, 6.73-13.53 mm. Circa 5th-7th century AD. A group of Anglian decorative beads normally worn by high-status females on the chest, strung between penannular or small-long brooches. The group comprises: a dark blue hoop with red, white and pale blue inserts; a dark blue short melon bead; an amber D-section bead; a translucent pale green hoop; a large white (faience?) melon bead; a translucent green spiral hoop; a small triangular-section amber bead; a dark blue melon bead; a dark blue hoop with green and red inserts. The beads were recovered from the Catterick area (Yorkshire) which is usually identified as the site of the late 6th or early 7th century battle of Catraeth immortalized in the Old Welsh poem Y Gododdin in which a troop of three hundred horsemen from the fortress of Din Eidyn attacked an unnamed but overwhelming enemy force and was wiped out. The case has been made for the British horsemen having set off from the area of modern Edinburgh to attack an Anglian (English) stronghold, although the poem does not mention either the location of the battle or the name of the enemy. Reference: cf. the glass bead forms in Brugmann, B. Glass Beads from Early Anglo-Saxon Graves, Oxford, 2004 and discussion of the poem in Cessford, C. Where are the Anglo-Saxons in the Gododdin poem? in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, vol. 8, Oxford, 1995. Very fine condition. Provenance: found Catterick, North Yorkshire, England.