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Spiral-End Beads in Western Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

W. Culican
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Extract

Full discussions have taken place in the pages of this journal of the distribution and chronological significance of gold and silver tubular beads with spiral ends in W. Asia and Greece. They were fully treated by Professor M. Mallowan, who recorded finds from Tell Brak, Alaca Hüyük, Troy IIg, Veri in the Caucasus, the shaft graves at Mycenae and Mari on the Euphrates. Spiral-end pendant ornaments from Hissar II and Ur III were connected by Mallowan with the style of these beads.

Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop added the reference to the beads of this type in the Poliochni treasure of Lemnos with its well-established Troy Ilg connexions. The occurrence of a necklace of twenty beads in the Dorak treasure provides a further link between Alaca and Troy. Whilst admitting that beads of this type lasted over a long period, both authors agree that they made their first appearance in late third millennium contexts (2300–2000 B.C.), where they serve as a loose but valuable evidence of cultural contact in the latest phases of the Early Bronze Age, the Mycenae, Mari and Veri examples appearing to constitute a second group in the 1600–1300 B.C. bracket.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1964 , pp. 36 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1964

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References

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20 Insufficient details of the Marlik Tepe tomb-groups are available to enable a precise dating. A general date of ‘early part of the first millennium B.c.’ is all that has yet been given. On analogies with Luristan styles, the date of the gold and electrum vessels from Marlik is nearer to the eighth than the tenth century. Finds of metal vessels and beads from kindred cultural contexts of Amlash and Daylaman appear to be somewhat earlier than those of Marlik Tepe and are probably fully tenth century B.c., but spiral-end beads have not been recorded from these sites.

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24 Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (1957)Google Scholar, fig. 4. For Trialeti and Mycenaean examples cf. Schaeffer op. cit. p. 515. Other occurrences of these beads in Mycenaean contexts are: Amandry, P., Collection Helène Stathatou p. 28Google Scholar; Stais, P., Collection mycénienne p. 89Google Scholar; Ephemenis Arkheologiké (1889) p. 151Google Scholar, pl. VII.7. The type is also known in Cyprus, L. Cesnola Collection, Photographic Album photo 3, bottom row.

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30 Not only are Assyrian ivories and gold plaques found in the treasure, but also the jewellery group listed in Kunstschätze aus Iran (Ausstellungskatalog, Zürich 1961), 248Google Scholar. The granulated roundels are comparable to late Assyrian jewellery, Haller op. cit. p. 28. Dress plaques of diamond shape with double-spirals on the corners are especially interesting for their links with the spiral-ended crosses on the Ephesus Jewellery, Hogarth, Ephesus pl. IX, 33–47; pl. X, 33. An Assyrian ‘Maltese cross’ is worn by the relief figure of Shamsi-Adad, V, Pritchard, J. B., A.N.E.P., p. 442Google Scholar.

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35 British Museum, Woolley, C. L., Ur Excavations: The Royal Tombs, p. 121Google Scholar, no. 61, U12380, pl. 144. They have a more angular shape and belong to what is described as a bracelet of gold and lapis diamonds. Possibly the gold copy the lapis beads.

36 John Marshall, Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilisation, pl. CXLIX.

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51 Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (1960)Google Scholar, fig. 17. Whilst the Lschasen cart-pole standards provide impressive later parallels to Alaca Hüyük and Horoz Tepe objects, a group of animal figures from a Sargonid-period grave near Kirkuk (B.M.Q. XXVI, 3–4, p. 93Google Scholar, pl. XXXVII) are near contemporaries to the Alaca model animals and have certain stylistic similarities. One, ibid. pl. XXXVI b, appears to be a small standard or large pin.

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55 Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (1960)Google Scholar, figs. 2, 3.