DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.74781#0367
Nearly 700 individual amber objects were unearthed during the British and Austrian excavations
in the Artemision of Ephesos, the majority of which were found in the centre of the sanctuary. Du-
ring the reconstruction of the first temple for Artemis [Naos 1), a hoard consecrated around 650 to
640 BC was deposited there as a building sacrifice and contained gold jewellery and amber along
with other valuable objects. The amber from the Artemision represents the largest find complex
of this material in the entire Eastern Mediterranean region. It includes carved figures, beads,
pendants, inlays and pinheads, but also unworked amber. The forms and types of the individual
objects find their closest parallels above all in Italy, where amber from the Baltic was traded since
the Bronze Age. Archaeometric investigations prove that the Ephesian finds were also made from
Baltic raw material. A large number of similar individual parts contained in the hoard indicate
that a magnificent piece of jewellery had also been laid down there. It seems that this elaborate
piece of jewellery, made of small pieces, was a wide girdle offered to the goddess Artemis as the
protector of women in labour. This girdle can be used to establish a connection with Southern Italy,
where the colony of Siris offered itself as a mediator of amber jewellery of the Oinotrian type. All
forms considered together prove the existence of a workshop in the Artemision in the 7th century
BC that produced also amber jewellery.
Alessandro Naso, scholar of the Etruscans and other pre-Roman cultures of Italy, is a Former Full Professor for Ur- und
Fruhgeschichte at the Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck, Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne University Paris and
Director of the Institute of Studies on the Ancient Mediterranean of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISMA).
He is now Full Professor of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities and Director of the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni
Archeologici at the University of Naples Federico II. He published intensively about pre-Roman Italy and is currently
working on the Etruscan and Italic finds of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
ISBN 978-3-7001-9282-4
in the Artemision of Ephesos, the majority of which were found in the centre of the sanctuary. Du-
ring the reconstruction of the first temple for Artemis [Naos 1), a hoard consecrated around 650 to
640 BC was deposited there as a building sacrifice and contained gold jewellery and amber along
with other valuable objects. The amber from the Artemision represents the largest find complex
of this material in the entire Eastern Mediterranean region. It includes carved figures, beads,
pendants, inlays and pinheads, but also unworked amber. The forms and types of the individual
objects find their closest parallels above all in Italy, where amber from the Baltic was traded since
the Bronze Age. Archaeometric investigations prove that the Ephesian finds were also made from
Baltic raw material. A large number of similar individual parts contained in the hoard indicate
that a magnificent piece of jewellery had also been laid down there. It seems that this elaborate
piece of jewellery, made of small pieces, was a wide girdle offered to the goddess Artemis as the
protector of women in labour. This girdle can be used to establish a connection with Southern Italy,
where the colony of Siris offered itself as a mediator of amber jewellery of the Oinotrian type. All
forms considered together prove the existence of a workshop in the Artemision in the 7th century
BC that produced also amber jewellery.
Alessandro Naso, scholar of the Etruscans and other pre-Roman cultures of Italy, is a Former Full Professor for Ur- und
Fruhgeschichte at the Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck, Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne University Paris and
Director of the Institute of Studies on the Ancient Mediterranean of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISMA).
He is now Full Professor of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities and Director of the Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni
Archeologici at the University of Naples Federico II. He published intensively about pre-Roman Italy and is currently
working on the Etruscan and Italic finds of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
ISBN 978-3-7001-9282-4
