On the island of Lindisfarne, just off the coast of Northumberland, known in England as the “Holy Island“, archaeologists have uncovered the oldest prayer beads ever found in England.

Fashioned out of salmon vertebrae in the 8th or 9th century, the necklace is the only artifact ever found in a Lindisfarne grave.

Fish, a significant early Christian emblem, were arranged in a group around the neck of one of the oldest bones, presumably, that of a monk interred at the renowned early medieval monastery.

The prayer beads may have been used for personal devotion, according to Dr. David Petts, the project co-director and a Durham University specialist in early Christianity, The Telegraph said.

“We think of the grand ceremonial side of early medieval life in the monasteries and great works like the Lindisfarne Gospels. But what we’ve got here is something which talks to a much more personal side of early Christianity,” he said.

Petts noted that the beads were recognized by Marina Chorro Giner, a zooarchaeologist. 

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a religious center founded in the 7th century by King Oswald of Northumbria, is famously the location of the first Viking raid of Britain in 793 A.D. The Vikings came back numerous times over the next century and the last of the monks left in 875, taking the exquisite Lindisfarne Gospels, written and illuminated by the monk Eadfrith around 700 A.D., with them.

Following the Norman invasion, a monastery was established on the island, although little of the Anglo-Saxon monastery survives, and there have been no significant excavations until lately. 

Source: arkeonews.net