Part of a necklace

Part of a necklace with four-spiral ornaments and tubular beads from Protogeometric graves in Skyros. Identical ornaments have been found in Protogeometric graves at the site of Lefkandi on Euboea. This type of jewellery, however, is also known from the Mycenaean period and is encountered as early as the 16th c. BC, in the Grave Circles at Mycenae. At present, it is not clear whether the Mycenaean tradition of jewellery-making lived on in some regions of Mainland Greece without interruption after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization (12th c. BC). Certainly, in the period that followed, very little jewellery was produced, and it was mainly of bronze or iron, as there was a dearth of gold sources in Greece. Skyros had a rich Mycenaean past, while Euboea apparently recovered more rapidly than any other region from the disastrous consequences of the tumult at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Nonetheless, it is not impossible that techniques that had been forgotten for a long time were rediscovered at the end of the 10th c. BC, when the Euboeans began again to develop trading contacts with the traditional centres of gold-working in the Near East.