Детали

COLEM:1912.2506

Colchester Collections

pendant, necklace, amulet

Roman jet pendant in the form of a human bust, ending just above the waist, with the body flattened but the head fully three-dimensional. It is pierced from side to side through the ears. Tight curly hair is shown by deep grooves running across the head from front to back and side to side. The face is grotesque, its features formed by grooves that are often wide and deep. It has slanting eyebrows and eyes set some distance apart, a nose formed by four grooves set in a lozenge and almost as wide as both the curved mouth and the distance between the outer corners of the eyes. There is little or no neck. The shoulders are strongly sloping before dropping down to the arms, which are hinted at by a slight groove close to each side. Clothing is indicated by pairs of parallel grooves forming a garment neckline and running down from each shoulder; they may have been intended to represent stripes or bands in the fabric. Short shallow scratches, presumable tool marks, are less noticeable on the front but prominent on the back. Some longer, wider and deeper grooves on the back were perhaps made when the pendant was dug out of the ground. The back is polished to a shine while the front is worn, dull, and slightly cracked in a few places. It would also originally have been polished, but much handling has worn away the shine. This use-wear points to the amulet being of some age when placed in the grave. It has not proved possible to identify the material of the pendant, but it is black and appears to be jet.

Roman

width: 27.00 mm
height: 36.50 mm

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