Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c14.s3.7

v1.c14.s3.7

Among the semi-precious stones, carnelian was the most popular, not only because of its attractive red colour and translucency but also because of the plentiful supply of the material from overseas sources. A great variety of beads with various shapes and shades of colour in red, lemon, yellow and a translucent variety known as sard have been found at Lothal. The lapidaries of Lothal produced carnelian by cooking agate. It is a great technological advance over others in bead-making. They knew that for easy working it was necessary to heat the agate nodules. The deep red colour of the beads was due to cooking the finished bead once again in the kiln at a high temperature. Long barrels, cylinders, truncated convex-cones, standard bicones with a cylinder section, diamond-shaped ones and small sphericals with a circular section are the main types of beads in carnelian. (Rao, 585-86)