Beauty and the eye of the beholder. Personal adornments across the millennia - Adina Boroneant

The result is the present volume comprising 26 studies organized in three major sections related to regional studies on adornments, and their use and presence in everyday life and afterlife. Within one section, papers were organized in chronological order. The papers in the volume cover geographically the whole of Europe and Anatolia: from Spain to Russia and from Latvia to Turkey; it spans chronologically many millennia, from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Iron Age (2nd – 4th centuries AD).
The volume opens with ten regional studies offering not only comprehensive syntheses of various chronological horizons (Palaeolithic – Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Neolithic/Chalcolithic – Emma L. Baysal; Fotis Ifantidis; Selena Vitezović and Dragana Antonović; Sanda Băcueț Crișan and Ancuța Bobînă; Andreea Vornicu-Țerna and Stansislav Țerna; Roberto Micheli) but also new data on the acquisition and working of various raw materials or specific types of adornments (Columbella rustica shells – Emanuela Cristiani, Andrea Zupancich and Barbara Cvitkusić; wild boar tusk – Ekaterina Kashina and Aija Macāne; canid tooth pendants – Petar Zidarov). The unbreakable link between adornments of the everyday life and those of the afterlife it is also highlighted in some of the contributions.
The following section – Adornments in settlement archaeology – includes nine studies, covering the archaeological evidence from specific settlement sites. Many studies focused on the adornments’ iconographic designs, meaning, and exchange but also on raw materials, technologies of production and systems of attachment. Chronology-wise, this section brings together the most varied range of ornaments, raw materials and processing techniques from sites in Spain (Esteban Álvarez-Fernández), Turkey (Sera Yelözer and Rozalia Christidou), Greece (Catherine Perlès and Patrick Pion; Christoforos Arampatzis) and Romania (Adina Boroneanț and Pavel Mirea; Ioan Alexandru Bărbat, Monica Mărgărit and Marius Gheorghe Barbu; Monica Mărgărit, Mihai Gligor, Valentin Radu and Alina Bințințan; Gheorghe Lazarovici and Cornelia-Magda Lazarovici; Vasile Diaconu).
The last section – Adornments of the afterlife – focuses on ornaments identified in various funerary contexts allowing for a more detailed biography of ornaments through mostly use- and micro-wear studies, in order to reconstruct their production sequence and use life. Raw material availability and their properties, as well as contexts of deposition are also taken into account. In the seven studies of the section, different funerary contexts from Latvia (Lars Larsson), Ukraine (Nataliia Mykhailova), Hungary (Zsuzsanna Tóth) and Romania (Monica Mărgărit, Cristian Virag and Alexandra Georgiana Diaconu; Vlad-Ștefan Cărăbiși, Anca-Diana Popescu, Marta Petruneac, Marin Focşăneanu, Daniela Cristea-Stan and Florin Constantin; Dragoş Măndescu; Lavinia Grumeza) are discussed.