Pair of crescent-shaped earrings

Luxurious pieces of jewelry merchants brought for wealthy noblewomen from Byzantine workshops, frpm the great centres on the coast of the Black Sea or from Greece. Gold lunular earrings, an item of high fashion of the time, were crafted by combining the traditional shape of the oriental lunula and the perfected techniques of filigree and granulation. They served as a model for many variations of this type of earring, made by local workshops in lands under the Empire's political and cultural influence. They were found in Mačvanska Mitrovica, ancient and medieval settlement, believed to have been the place of execution of Bishop Irenaeus of Sirmium (St. Irenaeus) during the Christian persecution. The remains of an ancient martyrium exist from those times, above which three more churches were erected in the course of later centuries. The necropolis around the churches shows that the Slav population was buried there as well.