Faience, a glass-like substance made by firing a paste of sand plus a copper-based colourant, was a novelty during the Early Bronze Age. The long and complicated story of how the technological know-how to make this material spread from an ultimate origin in the Middle East to Britain has been set out elsewhere (Sheridan and Shortland 2004). Beads and pendants of faience would have been highly prestigious and rare possessions. Two have been found in Perth and Kinross. One, a segmented bead, was found in a Bipartite Urn in the Kilmagadwood cemetery (MPK18535), and was associated with the cremated remains of a child aged 7 to 9 years, the latter dated to 1737–1542 BC (SUERC-76278, 3357±24 BP; Sheridan et al 2018a). The other, a star-shaped bead, was a stray find in Blairdrummond Moss, under a considerable depth of peat (Callander 1906, 37–8; Beck and Stone 1936, 247).
