File:Fragment of Roman melon bead (FindID 66807).jpg

English: Fragment of a faience Roman melon bead dating from the 1st-2nd century. The fragment has four slightly diagonal grooves, a buff core and traces of a bright turquoise glaze.

S.Worrell adds: Faience melon beads were produced in a range of sizes and tend to have wide perforations and convex profiles with vertical or slightly diagonal grooves scored into the outside surface. They were produced in a wide range of blue shades ranging from turquoise to bright blue with a buff/greyish core although in many cases the glaze has completely disappeared or survives only in the grooves. They are found in very large numbers at some sites. Occasionally beads have been found in connection with burials in Britain, as in a Flavian cremation burial at Grange Road, Winchester which contained eight faience beads (Biddle 1967, 245 nos. 54-61, fig. 9).

The exact function for these beads is somewhat elusive. The smaller faience beads were probably used in a similar manner to other beads as a form of personal adornment, although the larger faience and glass melon beads may have been impractical to wear, particularly around the neck. An alternative function is that they were used as decoration for horse harness, a theory suggested by a comparison of the melon beads from Hofheim with the beads portrayed on a decorative strap around the neck of the horse on the tombstone of Titus Flavius Bassus, found at Köln (Ritterling 1913, 179-80 Abb. 35). The heavy abrasion especially at the perforations of many of these beads may support this proposition.