Hello Will and all,
I'd like to start with the fact that though I have no knowledge of a bead workshop that was excavated in Crimea or the north black sea area, I strongly believe that only in Crimea they had at list half a dozen of them. I started collecting mostly Eastern Mediterranean and central Asiatic beads because this is my neighborhood. I got involved with the biggest antique dealers in this area, got to handle tens or hundreds of thousands of beads, ( funny, most of the dealers considered the beads as discarded in the early times. It's different now a days ). this is how I got to know beads, but every once in a while I got to see these beautiful examples of beads that were obviously ancient and had the look of an Egyptian mosaic bead for example, but something was different. I always wandered were they came from. Same case with eye beads with unordinary colors or different technique of manufacturing, (premanufactured eye). One day I purchased beads from a Russian guy in Israel. All the beads fell into the category of the ones I was wandering were they were coming from so I asked him and he told me he brought them from Ukraine. Needless to say that a week after I landed in Ukraine and started my Ukrainian bead hunt. I have been back there more than a dozen of times since. during these visits I got to meet diggers, dealers, archaeologists and academy people. I got to learn the history of this area. You see it's a very rich area with lot's of resources such as: on surface gold, Amber, wood and a very rich soil with a very fears inhabitant so each empire that started in the old world used it for its own necessities . Starting with the Phoenicians that built city states in the Black see area as they were expending. You can find in Crimea Pheonician beads very similar to the Eastern Mediterranean but still slightly different. they continued with this "Phoenicians design" long after the fall of Cartago. The Phoenicians as a Phoenician nation (if you like), were eliminated but the people and their skills continued. same with the Greek. They used the resources of this area ie;the Scythians served in the Greek army and they were considered as the " green barrettes" of today. They got their share of the loot only in gold.In that process they developed the infrastructure and expended the commodities that went in and out of that area and you can find amazing Greek beads there. As close to the source you are - you find more alike. same story with the Romans. When they concord that area ( most of the Roman era goldsmiths were Greek). So this area manufactured beads according to the fashion at that point of time. If the fashion in Alexandria was face beads, in no time they started to make face beads in Crimea as well. If you'd like you can contact me privetly and I will send you some catalogs of beads that I was able to translate & assemble from different publication in Russian and Ukrainian.All the best, Yankee.