Original Message: Hi, RM... |
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Hi RM, I'm sorry to hear you've been ill and hope you're feeling much better again now. Thanks for all the additional information. It's very interesting. It's good especially to know about the chalcedony ring, since I've always associated slit rings with southern China and Southeast Asia. Do you know more about the sites where they are found in the north, and have any production sites been discovered? Again, the tubular beads from Jinsha, which I hadn't seen before, are very similar to the ones from Ban Chiang and Phung Nguyen. They seem to have the same slanted ends that the early (second millennium BCE) Southeast Asian beads invariably have. Later tubes tend to be less carefully made and are sometimes square-cut at the ends. The most prolific time for agate beads in southern Vietnam was the Funan (Phnom) kingdom and it probably continued into Cham and pre-Angkor periods. Some of the agate was imported from India, but it's now known that much of it was locally mined and worked. I think the only difference between your crystal ring and mine is that the inside of mine is square cut (as with all Dong Son slit rings) whereas yours appears to be rounded at the edge. I'm not sure if the difference is meaningful or not. All the best, Will All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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