Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This pendant consists of a bird surmounting an elongated and a faceted, elliptical extension that tapers to a rounded point. A transverse perforation pierces the bird below its head. The bird, perhaps a duck, has a short tail marked by six parallel incised chevrons. The tip of the beak is missing. The crown of the head is corroded, but may have once had a crest. The eyes are modeled as raised pellets. The surface is formed by a smoothly polished light green patina. Tiny corroded spots appear elsewhere on the object. The bird rises from the terminal on a short post marked with four incised grooves. The pendant extension has faint vertical facets. These facets, of which there may be as many as nine, are not uniform in width.
Among the three types of facetted pendants that I. Kilian-Dirlmeier has described, two of them—Types A and B—are related to this piece (1). Type A is generally a plain, solid-cast, elongated oval shape, pierced at the top, with six, eight, or nine facets. Type B, of which the Harvard piece is an example, shows the same solid piriform element as Type A, surmounted by a bird with a pierced body, perching on a short, profiled post. The surfaces of these pendants have five, six, eight, or nine vertical facets. Pierced Type A pendants have been found in the Papatislures Cemetery at Kamiros, Rhodes, with small chains passed through their perforations, making it likely that these examples were worn as jewelry. Some pierced and unpierced Type A examples have also occurred in sanctuary deposits. Types A and B have both came from contexts at Pherai and Philia that strongly suggest they were items of personal jewelry, perhaps dedicated singly or worn as garment decorations (2). This pendant shows stylistic affinities with a pendant identified by Kilian-Dirlmeier as Thessalian (3).
NOTES:
1. For discussion of facetted pendants, see I. Kilian-Dirlmeier, Anhänger in Griechenland von der mykenischen bis zur spätgeometrischen Zeit, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 11.2 (Munich, 1979) 76-77, nos. 490-501, pl. 26.
2. On faceted pendants from Pherai, see K. Kilian, Fibeln in Thessalien von der mykenischen bis zur archaischen Zeit, Prähistorische Bronzefunde 14.2 (Munich, 1975) 180-82, nos. 4-19, pl. 81. There were three faceted elongated elliptical pendants from Philia, although none was surmounted by a bird; see I. Kilian-Dirlmeier, Kleinfunde aus dem Athena Itonia-Heiligtum bei Philia (Thessalien) (Mainz, 2002) nos. 923-25, pl. 60, which are also published in ead. 1979 (supra 1) 60-61, nos. 490-92.
3. See Kilian-Dirlmeier 1979 (supra 1) 77, no. 496, pl. 26. An additional parallel is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, inv. no. 3333; see J. Christiansen, Greece in the Geometric Period, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen, 1992) 74-75, no. 44. In this example, a pair of birds surmount the pendant; the ceramic core with which it was cast is visible where the bottom half is broken off. The facets are decorated with stacks of stamped circles.
Tamsey Andrews and David G. Mitten
