Gold band with impressed decoration (chest ornament)

A rare gold band from the island of Skyros, with impressed representations of warriors bearing helmets and shields. The warriors are separated from each other by vertical registers, each containing three circular motifs. A meander band borders the representation above and below. Fashioned from very thin gold sheet, the band was probably a chest ornament made exclusively for funerary use. The band was obviously embossed in a matrix, probably made of wood. Sheet-gold funerary ornaments were extensively used in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age (1600-1100 BC) but they became very rare in the Protogeometric period (1100-900 BC). Examples with pictorial representations appeared again in the mid-9th c. BC. The illustrated band forms part of a Geometric assemblage of sheet-gold ornaments with representation of warriors from Skyros, currently exhibited on the Museum of Cycladic Art. These ornaments reveal relations with Euboean workshops (Lefkandi, Eretria), although their iconography is unique and finds parallels only in Attic vase-painting of the Late Geometric period (760-700 BC). There is little leeway for doubt in their interpretation; in a society in which warfare was still the privilege of nobles, jewellery of this kind must have accompanied dead warriors of aristocratic lineages in their graves.