Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz. The name comes from the Koine Greek αμέθυστοςamethystos from α-a-, "not" and μεθύσκωmethysko / μεθώmetho, "intoxicate", a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness. Ancient Greeks wore amethyst and carved drinking vessels from it in the belief that it would prevent intoxication.
Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them onto a thread or thin wire with a sewing or beading needle or sewing them to cloth. Beads are produced in a diverse range of materials, shapes, and sizes, and vary by the kind of art produced. Most often, beadwork is a form of personal adornment, but it also commonly makes up other artworks.
A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood, or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under 1 millimeter (0.039 in) to over 1 centimeter (0.39 in) in diameter.
Jewellery consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a western perspective, the term is restricted to durable ornaments, excluding flowers for example. For many centuries metal such as gold often combined with gemstones, has been the normal material for jewellery, but other materials such as glass, shells and other plant materials may be used.
Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35% and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat content. When removed from the ground, it contains a very high amount of moisture, which partially explains its low carbon content. Lignite is mined all around the world and is used almost exclusively as a fuel for steam-electric power generation.
Lapis lazuli, or lapis for short, is a deep-blue metamorphic rock used as a semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense color. Originating from the Persian word for the gem, lāžward, lapis lazuli is a rock composed primarily of the minerals lazurite, pyrite and calcite. As early as the 7th millennium BC, lapis lazuli was mined in the Sar-i Sang mines, in Shortugai, and in other mines in Badakhshan province in modern northeast Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli artifacts, dated to 7570 BC, have been found at Bhirrana, which is the oldest site of Indus Valley civilisation. Lapis was highly valued by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Lapis beads have been found at Neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and as far away as Mauritania. It was used in the funeral mask of Tutankhamun.
Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8·4H2O. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gemstone for millennia due to its hue.
Bituminous coal, or black coal, is a type of coal containing a tar-like substance called bitumen or asphalt. Its coloration can be black or sometimes dark brown; often there are well-defined bands of bright and dull material within the seams. It is typically hard but friable. Its quality is ranked higher than lignite and sub-bituminous coal, but lesser than anthracite. It is the most abundant rank of coal, with deposits found around the world, often in rocks of Carboniferous age. Bituminous coal is formed from sub-bituminous coal that is buried deeply enough to be heated to 85 °C (185 °F) or higher.
A necklace is an article of jewellery that is worn around the neck. Necklaces may have been one of the earliest types of adornment worn by humans. They often serve ceremonial, religious, magical, or funerary purposes and are also used as symbols of wealth and status, given that they are commonly made of precious metals and stones.
Tiger's eye is a chatoyant gemstone that is usually a metamorphic rock with a golden to red-brown colour and a silky lustre. As members of the quartz group, tiger's eye and the related blue-coloured mineral hawk's eye gain their silky, lustrous appearance from the parallel intergrowth of quartz crystals and altered amphibole fibres that have mostly turned into limonite.
Onyx is the parallel-banded variety of chalcedony, a silicate mineral. Agate and onyx are both varieties of layered chalcedony that differ only in the form of the bands. Onyx has parallel bands, while agate has curved bands. The colors of its bands range from black to almost every color. Specimens of onyx commonly contain bands of black or white or both. Onyx, as a descriptive term, has also been applied to parallel-banded varieties of alabaster, marble, calcite, obsidian, and opal, and misleadingly to materials with contorted banding, such as "cave onyx" and "Mexican onyx".
Azurite or Azure spar is a soft, deep-blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. During the early 19th century, it was also known as chessylite, after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France. The mineral, a basic carbonate with the chemical formula Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2, has been known since ancient times, and was mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Natural History under the Greek name kuanos (κυανός: "deep blue," root of English cyan) and the Latin name caeruleum. Copper (Cu2+) gives it its blue color.
A mangala sutra, or tali, is a necklace that the groom ties around the bride's neck in the Indian subcontinent, in a ceremony called the Mangalya Dharanam during a Hindu wedding. The necklace serves as a visual marker of status as a married Hindu woman.
The Bovey Formation is a deposit of sands, clays and lignite, probably over 1000 feet thick. It lies in a sedimentary basin termed the Bovey Basin which extends from Bovey Tracey to Newton Abbot in South Devon, England. The Bovey Basin lies along the line of the Sticklepath Fault and owes its existence to subsidence along this fault. A smaller basin with similar deposits lies further northeast along the fault at Petrockstowe.
Cannel coal or candle coal is a type of bituminous coal, also classified as terrestrial type oil shale. Due to its physical morphology and low mineral content cannel coal is considered to be coal but by its texture and composition of the organic matter it is considered to be oil shale. Although historically the term cannel coal has been used interchangeably with boghead coal, a more recent classification system restricts cannel coal to terrestrial origin, and boghead coal to lacustrine environments.
A ring is a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry. The term "ring" by itself denotes jewellery worn on the finger; when worn as an ornament elsewhere, the body part is specified within the term, e.g., earrings, neck rings, arm rings, and toe rings. Rings fit snugly around or in the part of the body they ornament, so bands worn loosely, like a bracelet, are not rings. Rings may be made of almost any hard material: wood, bone, stone, metal, glass, jade, gemstone or plastic. They may be set with gemstones or with other types of stone or glass.
The Hoxne Hoard is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes, a metal detectorist in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million.
Clinker is a generic name given to waste from industrial processes, particularly those that involve smelting metals, welding, burning fossil fuels and use of a blacksmith's forge, which commonly causes a large buildup of clinker around the tuyere. Clinker often forms a loose, dark deposit consisting of waste materials such as coke, coal, slag, charcoal, and grit. Clinker often has a glassy look to it, usually because of the formation of molten silica compounds during processing. Clinker generally is much denser than coke, and, unlike coke, generally contains too little carbon to be of any value as fuel. It is also applied to the byproduct of combustion and heating by those who use anthracite or lignite coal-fired boilers.
The Street House Anglo-Saxon cemetery is an Anglo-Saxon burial ground, dating to the second half of the 7th century AD, that was discovered at Street House Farm near Loftus, in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, England. Monuments dating back as far as 3300 BC are located in the vicinity of the cemetery, which was discovered after aerial photography revealed the existence of an Iron Age rectangular enclosure. The excavations, carried out between 2005 and 2007, revealed over a hundred graves dating from the 7th century AD and the remains of several buildings. An array of jewellery and other artefacts was found, including the jewels once worn by a young high-status Anglo-Saxon woman who had been buried on a bed and covered by an earth mound.
Ancient Roman jewelry was characterized by an interest in colored gemstones and glass, in contrast with their Greek predecessors who focused primarily on the production of high-quality metalwork by practiced artisans. Extensive control of Mediterranean territories provided an abundance of natural resources to utilize in jewelry making. Participation in trade allowed access to both semi-precious and precious stones that traveled down the Persian Silk Road from the East.
