There are a lot of so called glass face-beads or mask-beads for Early Latene which were used by Celts, Thracians and Scythians as an element for the binding the bridle or scale armor.

See papers written by M. Karwowski and A. Rustoiu:

https://www.academia.edu/5355376/M._Karwowski_The_earliest_types_of_eastern-Celtic_glass_ornaments_in_H._Dobrzanska_V._Megaw_P._Poleska_eds._Celts_on_the_Margin._Studies_in_European_Cultural_Interaction_7th_Century_BC_-_1st_Century_AD_Dedicated_to_Zenon_Wozniak_Krakow_2005_163-171

https://www.academia.edu/3559934/Aurel_Rustoiu_Celto-Pontica._Connections_of_the_Celts_from_Transylvania_with_the_Black_Sea

Many thanks for the link.

The main difficulty is that the archaeological evidence give hard evidence of a strict association between beads and objects. The links are almost always missing (thread.), so it is often difficult to prove that beads did not fell near the object. However, there are many good ethnographic examples.

Many thanks for your answer.

In my case, beads were found in a small pit associated to a primary burial. The excavation data clearly show that the beads were not associated to the body but constituted an independent deposit associated to the burial.

This configuration makes me think that the beads were used to decorate an object made of perishable raw material rather than as personal ornament.

I found many ethnographic examples (unfortunately there is no precise description of the beads attached to mobile industry in general), that is why I wanted to complete with archaeological studies that highlight this hypothesis.

Anyway, many thanks for the discussion, I will keep you informed if I find something on the topic.

best wishes

Solange

I don't know if you would consider it as a personal adornment or not, but as you know baby carriers are very often decorated with beads (like cowries). I don't know if the burial you mentioned is of a female person, but in this case a folded leather baby carrier would have made sense.

Yes this is the hypothesis proposed by P. Vang Petersen for interpreting the thousands of shells associated to the young woman from the Burial n°8 of the Mesolithic site of Vedbaek (Denmark). In my case the body is attributed to an old adult. But more than the identification of the object (I state there are too many types of items that can be decorated with beads to be able to hypothesize on this point and too few data to identify it on my case), I am looking for the methods and analytic criteria that have been used by authors to conclude, as I will probably do, that the beads were not part of body ornamentation but decoration for an item. That is why I am looking for examples in the literature. It is a methodological investigation to discuss the appropriate archaeological analytic procedure when confronting to such an ambiguity regarding the beads function.

Many thanks for your answer and the reference it is really useful.

Dear Rigaud,

There are many cloth pieces in Anatolia from Neolithic to the end of the Bronze Ages. But one of them including faience beads. It was found in a palace as a luxuries cloth possibly imported from Babylonia. We know that according to the cuneiform text there is a famous cloth type known in Babylonia during The Second Millennium BC. For this cloth piece you can look Prof. Nimet Özgüç's article at the below. The cloth was made white linen and it has decorated on the one side sew a gold yarn light and dark blue faience beads. 

Özgüç 1968 N. Özgüç, “Exacavations at Acemhöyük”, Anadolu 10, 1968, 29-52. see Pages 47-48, Pl. XXII, 1-3.

Anadolu/Anatolia has an online archive for the direct access to this article link : http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/14/700/8856.pdf

As it was prooved by the excavatinos at Hirsova -tell (Gumlnita Culture, V mill), the beads from operculae of fishes was used like adornements but the most of the pieces was found in the secondary position like rubish areas

Dear Rigaud,

In a grave from Alsónyék-Bátaszék site (Lengyel culture), there is a ceramic pot decorated with white beads (probably manufactured from bone, marble or Spondylus - in the article there are no details about raw materials). Please see the attached article (page 391, Pl. 2, top right corner image).

Best wishes,

Catalin

Dear Rigaud,

There is an ancient reference of a burial urn from the brazilian Amazon (Maracá tradition), with glass beads used as decoration. It's on page 53 of the pdf contained at the link below.

Nevertheless, as far as I know, there are no known examples of this in the currently known urns. There is no reason to doubt the description, but this means we cannot confirm the information nowadays...

Hope it helps

http://memoria.bn.br/pdf/424692/per424692_1897_00001.pdf

Dear Catalin, Dear Tiago,

Many thanks for the two publications

This is exactly the literature I was looking for! It will be really helpful. (the pottery with the white beads is amazing!)

I have searched similar examples in many contexts, but unfortunately many publications describe primary deposits of ornaments with no clear information on their context of discoveries/spatial position/direct association with other artefacts.

Thank you a lot

All the best

Solange

l know two examples from Turkey/ Ancient Anatolia. One is a carved ıvory box covered with beads found at Sarıkaya Palace in Acemhöyük Excavation dated to the beginning of the Second Millennium BC. The other is a general thing that a bead could be used as an ornament with a bronze pin in Anatolia or in the Near East.

There are many examples of beads (of glassy faience, glass, amber and clay) in earrings attached to Early Iron Age Pomeranian culture face urns in N Poland. For further reading:

https://www.academia.edu/6030864/Anthropomorphe_Gef%C3%A4%C3%9Fe_in_Nord-_und_Mitteleuropa_w%C3%A4hrend_der_Bronze-_und_Eisenzeit._Studien_zu_den_Gesichtsurnen_Kontaktzonen_und_sozialer_Kontext

https://www.academia.edu/37548759/Late_Bronze_and_Early_Iron_Age_communities_in_the_northern_part_of_the_Polish_Lowland_1000-500_BC_ (see Fig. 11)

Polish face urns corpora:

W. La Baume 1963 Die pommerellischen Gesichtsurnen, Mainz.

M. Kwapiński 1999 Korpus kanop pomorskich. Część I – Pomorze, Gdańsk.

A. Kwapiński 2007 Korpus kanop pomorskich. Część II – Polska środkowa i południowo-zachodnia, Gdańsk.