Researchers have unearthed green comma-shaped glass beads and cylindrical, sky-blue decorative pieces from a tomb believed to date from the first half of the third century. The researchers said Thursday that they found over 210 decorative pieces made for one of the rulers of the ancient Tango region, in the north of present-day Kyoto Prefecture.
Of this total, about 90 are cylindrical glass decorations, each measuring 2 cm long, while about 30 are comma-shaped glass beads up to 4 cm long, they said.
It is believed to be the largest find of such glass beads in Japan, according to the researchers at the Kyoto Archaeology Center in Muko, Kyoto Prefecture, and the board of education in the town of Mineyama, in the north of the prefecture.
The tomb, dating from the Yayoi Period (300 B.C. to 300), is in the Akasaka-Imai mound in Mineyama, one of the largest burial mounds in Japan.
The tomb is shaped like the upturned hull of a ship and is 4.4 meters in length and 1.3 meters wide.
A researcher said the person interred in the tomb was probably a woman who stood about 150 cm tall and would have been a relative of the ruler of Tango.
The decorative pieces were placed as if they had surrounded the person's head, while more decorations had been put close to her ears.