The jewellery hoard excavated under the floor of an Early Bronze Age
house-unit in the prehistoric settlement of Cape Kolonna/Aigina
represents in many ways an exceptional collection still unique in the
central Aegean of the late third millenium B.C. The material consists of
precious metals (gold, silver) and several nonmetallic valuable objects
(carnalian, rock-crystal, frit) and belongs to a secondary hoard of
pins, pendants and beads, partly bent for the deposit context (pins).
Concerning their original typological function some of the objects
represent particular remaining stocks. Apart from a small carnalian bead
decorated in the typical Mesopotamian etching-technique, other items of
the deposit represent products of Anatolian and Mesopotamian jewellery
crafts. The hoard casts new light on the relationship between the
central Aegean and the Eastern advanced civilisations of Anatolia and
Mesopotamia, a relationship that has as yet only been illustrated with
respect to a few oriental "exotica" in the Aegean. A general
investigation of all these foreign precious objects in the Aegean during
the third millennium where the hoard from Cape Colonna can be added as
an important new complex shows that the contacts on the part of the
Eastern civilisations during the Early Dynastic Period do not form real
trade activities controlled by direct and regular economical conditions.
The appearance of foreign precious objects in the Aegean is the result
of staggered stages in early and more accidental commercial contacts
which can nevertheless bridge long geographical distances and spaces and
which consist of a complex system of interlocked and small-spaced
networks and merchant units.
