Enotia: The Contexts of Greek Earrings, Tenth to Third Century B.C.

Earrings, often worn together with necklaces, bracelets and rings, were one of the most popular forms of jewelry in the Greek world. The present study collects earrings discovered in archaeological contexts from Greece, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Cyprus and Magna Graecia, dating from the tenth to the third century B.C. Chapter One considers general issues concerning jewelry in antiquity, including the types of ornaments customarily worn, techniques of manufacture, and the primary and secondary evidence for jewelry. A brief overview of the two main archaeological contexts in which jewelry is customarily found, cemeteries and sanctuaries, leads to a consideration of these contexts for the public display of personal wealth. Finally, the evidence from the visual and written sources that relates to jewelry is presented. Chapters Two through Five present the material chronologically, with discussion of the main archaeological contexts that have yielded jewelry, descriptions of specific earring types, and, where relevant, artistic representations of earrings. At the end of each chapter, broader topics concerning jewelry are considered. In Chapter Two, the question of Greek interaction with the eastern Mediterranean is explored with particular reference to jewelry forms and techniques supposedly inspired by the east. Macedonian burial practices are evaluated in Chapter Three with the purpose of identifying various cultural and artistic links among northern Greece, the Balkans and southern and eastern Greece. Jewelry as women's wealth is discussed in Chapter Four, using the written evidence from lawsuits and temple inventories. In Chapter Five, the causes and effects of an increase in the corpus of known jewelry are investigated. A summary reviewing the functions of jewelry is presented in the concluding chapter. An appendix documents the earrings discussed in the text, arranged by type and cross-referenced to the description of the form in the text.