D’Alasia à Tartessos. Ivoires et autres matières dures d’origine animale

Abstract

Antoine Hermary’s career throughout the Mediterranean inspired the authors to confront their point of view from Cyprus and Iberia, over a durée extending from the Late Bronze Age to the Archaic period, taking the case of ivory to highlight differences and similarities. The East and the West shared a marked taste for ivory and other related materials such as sea shells or ostrich eggs, to produce a large range of artefacts : pieces of furniture, chests and boxes, figurines, cosmetic instruments, elements of horse fittings and weapons. Debitage and decorative technique are compared, and the evidence for the existence of workshops is examined. The way a number of artefacts were “ translated” from one material to another, and produced in different materials of matching or opposed colours may account for the large geographic distribution of the so-called international style of the 2nd Millennium and the Orientalising period. The conclusion touches the question of the visual connexion between the decoration of small, portable artefacts and the ornaments of monumental architecture.