Chapter 5 - Other Arts

Summary

Ornaments (bracelets, pins, beads) undergo major development in the Neolithic. Aside from clay, stone, and bone, certain imported materials, including shells like Spondylus, and metals such as gold, silver (perhaps coming from Siphnos in the Cyclades), and copper, are used for necklace beads, earrings, or small hammered and polished pendants (Kyparissi-Apostolika 2001; C. Perlès, in Dietz 2018, 331–40).

Metal jewellery appears in the Late Neolithic: a cut-out disc of gold sheet in Volos Museum, topped with a trapezoidal projection pierced with two small holes, forms part of a class of pendants of ring-idol type thought to be highly schematic representations of the human body (AE1, fig. 40; Papathanassopoulos 1996, n° 299). They occur in various other materials (silver, stone, clay, shell) and have a wide distribution in cemeteries from the shores of the Black Sea to central Europe. They are well represented in the cemetery of Varna.