Spiral-End Beads in Western Asia

Spiral-End Beads in Western AsiaAuthor(s): W. CulicanSource: Iraq, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1964), pp. 36-43Published by: British Institute for the Study of IraqStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4199758 .

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36

SPIRAL-END BEADS IN WESTERN ASIA

By w. CULICAN

FULL discussions have taken place in the pages of this journal of the distribution and chronological significance of gold and silver tubular beads with

spiral ends in W. Asia and Greece. They were fully treated by Professor M. Mallowan, who recorded finds from Tell Brak, Alaca Htuyuk, Troy Ilg, Veri in the Caucasus, the shaft graves at Mycenae and Mari on the Euphrates.' Spiral-end pendant ornaments from Hissar II and Ur III were connected by Mallowan with the style of these beads.

Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop added the reference to the beads of this type in the Poliochni treasure of Lemnos with its well-established Troy llg connexions.2 The occurrence of a necklace of twenty beads in the Dorak treasure provides a further link between Alaca and Troy.3 Whilst admitting that beads of this type lasted over a long period, both authors agree that they made their first appearance in late third millennium contexts (2300-2000 B.C.), where they serve as a loose but valuable evidence of cultural contact in the latest phases of the Early Bronze Age,4 the Mycenae, Mari and Veri examples appearing to consti- tute a second group in the i6oo-0300 B.C. bracket.

More recently published references show that the occurrences of these beads are no longer divided into early and late groups, but are spread throughout the second millennium and into the first. There must now be added an ornament of late Early Helladic times consisting of two crossing spiral-end tubes5 with additional threading loops at the end of one tube. It is part of a treasure from Thyreatis, Peloponnese, dating about 2000 B.C. Higgins also has pointed out the existence of clay copies of these beads in Middle Minoan I contexts (2000-I700 B.C.) at Petsofa in Crete.8 Within the same range of date must be attributed the necklace of grave 20 at Assur7 which, on the evidence of a seal, is placed by the excavator between I90o-1500 B.C. (the Old Assyrian Period). This was a tomb rich in jewellery and contained unusual cylindrical stone beads capped with gold, and a number of trapezoidal head-bands, simple goid strips with beaten circlet decoration. A Luristan axe found in this grave is of a type attributed by Schaeffer to ' Luristan ancien' and attributable to the end of the Ur III period.8 It suggests perhaps that the deceased had some

1 Iraq IX 1947 Pt. 2, pp. 17I-6. 2 Iraq XXII I960, pp. I09-i I0. 3 I.L.N. 29 November 1959, p- 754. ' C. Schacflcr, Stratigraphie el chronologie comparee de

l'Asie occidentale, p. 93. 6 R. A. Higgins, Greek and Roman Jewellery, p. S I,

p1. 1.

8 Op. cit., p. 62.

7 H. Haller, Die Graber und Griifte von Assur, p. Io, pl. ioa.

8 C. Schacffer, op. cit. p. 485, fig. 263; R. Maxwell- Hyslop, Iraq XI (1949) type 17, where another axe of this type from Assur is recorded.



37 W. CULICAN

contact with the Zagros. No precise date within these limits is given to Tomb 20; it can perhaps be argued on the parallels for its fluted-head pins and the axehead as well as a bronze patera9 that a date nearer to the upper limit than to the lower is indicated. The use of spiral-end tubular beads in Meso- potamia is also attested not only by their occurrence in a Middle-Assyrian grave at Marin but also by a single bead in an undated grave at Babylon.1"

To a date between I200-11 00 B.C. must be attributed the westernmost occurrence of these beads in tomb AIO at Lakkithra in Cephallenia.12 Four beads from the burial of a young woman consist of double spirals of gold wire soldered to the sides of thin gold tubes. Thus, though the effect is very similar to that of W. Asiatic and Mycenaean double-spiral-end beads, they are constructed slightly differently. With them were found long biconical beads built up of coiled gold wire.13 Although jewels of Mycenaean III type are present in these tombs, including gold melon-shaped fluted beads, the reel-shaped and short biconical beads of gold are foreign to Mycenaean tradition, as is the curious sheet-gold ornament from burial Az14 consisting of a quartered circle topped by two curling feathers. The Anatolian appearance of this ornament ought perhaps to be dismissed in view of the artistic originality of the Cephallenia Mycenaeans.15 Higgins gives a reference to unpublished spiral-end beads from a Mycenaean tholos tomb at Englianos (Pylos).16

The other noteworthy occurrences are late in the second millennium or in the early first. Six beads of this type from the excavation of Dr. Negahban at Marlik Tepe in Gilan are shown strung on a necklace of gold spherical and ribbed melon-shaped beads and a pendant of gold stylized pomegranates, all typical of Marlik Tepe jewellery.'7 A necklace18 has biconical stone beads with terminal gold caps, similar to other Marlik Tepe beads.19

The cultural affinities of the Marlik Tepe finds, like those from Amlash and Daylaman, are two-fold; firstly to the Talish-Lenkoran cultures of the eastern Caucasus and secondly to the eighth-seventh century metalwork of Luristan20

9 H. Haller, op. cit., p. IO, pl. iob.

10 A. Parrot, Syria XVIII (1937), pp. 8if, pl. XV.

11 0. Reuther, Die Innenstadt von Babylon, p. I9, fig. 14a; p. 8I, fig. I6.

i Epbemeri~ Arkbeologik6 I932, p. 23.

iS Ibid., ikon 3o as found and pinax i8 as recon- structed. Coiled wire beads are common in the late Bronze Age Caucasian graves, e.g. Schaeffer op. cit. fig. 217, and are found amongst the Ur jewellery, Maxwell-Hyslop, loc cit. pl. XI, 4. They appear to be unknown in the Acgean but are found in Bronze Age Sicily.

14 Ephemeris Arkeologiki 1932, p. 41, pinax i8.

15 A.J.A. 1937, p. 484; Arkh. Deltion 1917, p. Z22;

I919, pp. 82-94, I14.

la Op. cit., p. 8i.

' I.L.N., 28 April I962, p. 664, fig. 9.

18Ibid., fig. 7.

9 Ibid., p. ii, fig. F.

20 Insufficient details of the Marlik Tcpe tomb- groups are available to enable a precise dating. A general date of 'early part of the first millennium B.C.' iS all that has yet been given. On analogies with Luristan styles, the date of the gold and electrum vessels from Marlik is nearer to the eighth than the tenth century. Finds of metal vessels and beads from kindred cultural contexts of Amlash and Daylaman appear to be somewhat earlier than those of Marlik Tepe and are probably fully tenth century B.C., but spiral-cnd beads have not been recorded from these sites.



SPIRAL-END BEADS IN WESTERN ASIA 3 8

in the southern Zagros and to that of the Mannai in the northern Zagros. An occurrence of a spiral-end bead at Veri in the Caucasus has been noted; not far distant is the considerable number of gold spiral-end beads from the Kurgan waggon burials excavated on the shores of Lake Sevan at Lschasen in Russian Armenia. Six are published by Mnatsakanian in Excavations of Tmuli on the Shore of Lake Sevan in 195 6.21 They were found with gold winged beads of a ttype found at Tepe Hissar and Mohenjodaro at an earlier period and a gold pendant reminiscent of earlier Hissar types (fig. IG).

The Sevan Tombs are not sufficiently well published to allow an independent opinion of date. The excavators propose a date in the fifteenth-thirteenth centuries B.c. and this date is followed by Dr. H. Kantor.22 The Kurgans

of Sevan were elaborate cart and waggon burials of Trialeti type and therefore this date seems generally acceptable. Schaeffer has used a comparison between certain beads at Trialeti and Mycenaean beads at Prosymna and Kephalari to date the Trialeti kurgans.23 These beads consist of two hollow hemispheres of gold soldered together and decorated with lines of granules round the circum- ference and small circlets of granules at regular intervals on the gold backing. There are a number of such beads from one of the Lschasen Kurgans24 (fig. IC, D), even more elaborate than those from Trialeti. The art of granulation appears to have been locally practised at Trialeti and local jewellers were in all probability copying a few Mycenaean imports. The presence of granules

I

A c -D

cl 0 0 1 I., 1. . , I , I -L . i I

E J

FIG. I. Gold beads from Kurgan I, Lschasen.

21 Sovjetskaia Arkheologia 2 (I957), p. I52, fig. II. 22 The Nelson Gallery at Atkins Museum Bulletin,

IV 2 (I962), p. 4. 230p. cit., p. 5 I4. 24 Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (I957), fig. 4. For Trialeti

and Mycenaean examples cf. Schaeffer op. cit. p. 5I5.

Other occurrences of these beads in Mycenaean contexts are: P. Amandry, Collection Helne Stathatou p. 28;

P. Stais, Collection myeenienne p. 89; Ephemenis Arkheo- logiki (I 889) p. I 5 I, pl. VII.7. The type is also known in Cyprus, L. Cesnola Collection, Photographic Album photo 3, bottom row.



39 W. CULICAN

on some of the Lschasen spiral-end beads (fig. iE) may thus go some way to indicate local manufacture. They were found together with a number of beads in the form of short tubes built up entirely of gold granules soldered together (fig. iA, B). Granule-tube beads, with or without a gold foil backing, hitherto appear to be exclusively Mycenaean, except for a few Carthaginian examples of much later date.25 This further link with the beads of the Mycenaean area not only confirms the general date of the Lschasen burials but fits in with the discovery in Caucasian graves at Nosiri (W. Georgia) and Chuburiskhinji, of faience beads en forme de rouielle ajouree26 discussed by Schaeffer and called by J. B. Wace at Mycenae 'lantern beads'.

Culturally linked with the Marlik Tepe beads are three excellent spiral-end beads, one large and two smaller, acquired by the Cincinnati Art Mluseum.27 They are part of a necklace at present consisting of stone and gold beads and are said by a reputable dealer to come from Ziwiyeh (Plate Vllla). They were acquired along with other objects from the Ziwiyeh treasure. The dating of this treasure is indeed problematical but whilst certain Ziwiyeh objects (not necessarily from the original hoard) appear to enter the sixth century, the upper limit of the Assyrian ivories from the treasure is the reign of Tiglathpileser, whose palace reliefs introduce vigorous chariot scenes.28 The burial in the late seventh century proposed by some scholars does not preclude an eighth century date of manufacture for certain pieces. Refinement of the arguments on Ziwiyeh dating are here unnecessary: it is sufficient to suggest that on present evidence an overlap between Marlik and Ziwiyeh is possible in the eighth century and that it is to this century that the Cincinnati necklace should be assigned, especially as the other beads on it include long bluish stone cylinders with golden caps exactly of Marlik type and small gold globular fluted ' nasturtium seed' beads of Late Assyrian and Babylonian type.29

The question now arises: are these new occurrences evidence of a continued post-third millennium diffusion from the Iran-Caucasus region or Assyrian exports? Assyrian contact with Ziwiyeh is beyond doubt, and Assyrian jewellery, small gold Maltese crosses and diamonds with double-spirals on the corners, is represented there30 (fig. z). An Assyrian pearl with a cuneifornm inscription of Adadnirari I (I304-1267) from Chodsali, shows Assyrian trade

25Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 ('957), p. 148, fig. 4 for Lschasen examples. For Mycenaear' examples G. Karo ' Schatz von Tiryns', Ath. Mitteilungen tV (1930), pl. IV; A. Persson, Royal Tombs at Dendra, pl. XXVII.

26op. cit., P. 514. 27 Accession No. 1953.66, The Cincinnati Art

Museum Bulletin V 2 (I957), p. 14, fig. 4. 28 See now R. D. Barnett and M. Falkner, The

Sculptures of Tiglathbpileser III, British Museum, I962.

2D E.g. H. Bossert, Geschichte des Kunstgewerbes III, p. 356, 'Goldshmuck aus Dilbat, Sammlung Frau Dr. Hahn, Berlin'.

30 Not only are Assyrian ivories and gold plaques found in the treasure, but also the jewellery group listed in Kunstschadte aus Iran (Ausstellungskatalog, Zurich x96I), 248. The granulated roundels are com- parable to late Assyrian jewellery, Haller op. cit. p. 28.

Dress plaques of diamond shape with double-spirals on the corners are especially interesting for their links with the spiral-ended crosses on the Ephesus Jewel- lery, Hogarth, Ephesus pl. IX, 33-47; pl. X, 33. An Assyrian ' Maltese cross' is worn by the relief figure of Shamsi-Adad V, J. B. Pritchard, A.N.E.P., p. 442.



SPIRAL-END BEADS IN WESTERN ASIA 40

in the Caucasus.31 Also the Amlash jewellery contains local copies of Babylonian 'Ishtar' pendants small discs of gold with star designs stamped upon them (Plates VIJIb, IX). These seem to have been popular in the Caucasus and crude imitations were found at the beginning of the Iron Age at Redkin Lager near Lake Sevan and earlier at Agha Evlar.32 At Amlash these pendants appear to be made by local jewellers; their centres are set with coloured stones and surrounded by bands of typically Iranian guilloche.33 This is especially noticeable in the pendant acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as part of a group from Daylaman, which contains a gold headband similar to those in Assur grave zo.34 Whilst these instances provide abundant evidence of northern contact with Mesopotamian jewellers, the origin of the beads remains uncertain. There is of course the possibility, in view of the tradition of gold and silversmiths' work in general at Maikop

and Trialeti, that spiral-end beads are of Caucasian tradition, but it appears perhaps more likely that they were produced on the Iranian side of the Caucasus. Their appearances in western Asia at diverse dates might be a result of renewed trade or ethnic contact with Caucasian peoples. Whilst the answer is not clear, it might be significant that the Lake Sevan and Marlik Tepe spiral-end beads are found alongside beads consisting of a tube with semicircular 'wings' (fig. i F, H1; Plates VIII, IX). These are not a common Mesopotamian type and occur in small numbers in the Royal Tombs at Ur,35 Mohenjodaro,36 Harappan Lothal37 and later at H-issar IIIB.38

These beads are common at Troy and Poliochni39 and beads from Alaca with four wings are close relatives.40 This association between winged and spiral-end beads was independently noticed by Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop in her review of Higgins.4'

FIG. 2. Gold dress ornaments from Ziwiyeh.

31 C. Schaeffer, op. cit., p. 498.

32 Ibid., figs. 2I7 (2I-24), 298.

33 Kunstscltdtie aus Iran nos. 42, 43, 44, 45.

34 I am grateful to E. L. B. Terrace for providing a photograph of this material, which he has now published in Syria XXXIX (1962), pp. 212-224; also E. L. B. Terrace, The Art of the Ancient Near East in Boston, I962, no. 13.

"I British Museum, C. L. Woolley, Ur Excavations: The Royal Tombs, p. I2i, no. 6I, UI238o, pl. 144. They have a more angular shape and belong to what is described as a bracelet of gold and lapis diamonds. Possibly the gold copy the lapis beads.

38 John Marshall, Moheidodaro and the Indus Civilisa- tion, pl. CXLIX.

37 Indian Archaeology I959-60, pl. XIVB.

38 E. Schmidt, Excavations at Tepe Hiisar, pl. LXVI, H236I, fig. 138.

39 C. W. Blegen, Trov I, p. 57, type I7, fig. 356; H. Schliemann, Troay and its Remains, p1. XX; Poliochni: L. Bernabo Brea, Bolletino d'Arte XLII, Ser. IV, p. 2I3, Cig. 36B.

40 R. Oguz Arik, Les Fouilles d'Alaca Huiyik al. 3 I 9- 352, pl. CLXXXI. The Alaca beads are cast and appear similar to certain four-wing beads at Troy and Poliochni, but the two-wing beads at several sites appcar to be made of two circular sheets hammered together.

41 A.J. XLllI I (i963), p. 141.



41 W. CULICAN

Both Mallowan and Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop look to N. Iran for the origin of spiral-end beads, the former placing a spiral ornament (not itself a bead, but perhaps a relative) from Hissar II at the beginning of the sequence, the latter suggesting their distribution along a highland zone stretching from the Caspian Talish to Western Anatolia. With the association of spiral ornaments, winged beads and coiled wire tubular beads at Ur in the Royal Graves, the question of Iranian-Caucasian influence on the Ur jewellery arises; especially since the famous basket-shaped earrings of Queen Shubad have parallels at Hissar and Amlash,42 whilst earrings consisting of a shallow open coil or twist of gold intended to be rolled on to the earlobe and found at Ur, Troy, Alaca and Poliochni are very common at a later date in Caucasian graves.43 Possibly this influence in jewellery, beginning in the middle third millennium, followed the export of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan through and from northern Iran to Mesopotamia, the Indus and the West.44 This is certainly suggested by the very early occurrence of lapis lazuli at Hissar and by the spiral-end beads quoted from Mari, which were part of a necklace together with flat disc-shaped winged beads of lapis lazuli. Such trade in the hands of a group of north Iranian pedlars would, of course, have been spasmodic and account for the wide range in time and distribution.

S. Piggott in his study of the distribution of spiral-headed and animal-headed pins in W. Asia and the Aegean45 stressed the dependence of the animal-headed pins on the Caucasian animal style. Both types of pin have an early phase of occurrence-like that of spiral-end beads-in the latter part of Early Bronze (about 2300-2 I00) in Anatolia, Cyclades, Iran, Turkmenia-and find their way eastwards to Chanudaro and westwards to Greece. Again wbilst not of firm value for chronological connexions, the pins provide the same framework of cultural contact as the spiral-end beads and make, in the initial phases of their distribution, a valuable horizon. It is in the later phases of the Early Bronze Age that these pins were thought to occur most commonly and recent finds

42 E.g. KunstscliIrte aus Iran, p. 47.

3 E.g. Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (I 95 7), p. I5 8.

4" Several statements that lapis was available in the S. Caspian region, namely Mt. Demavend, are not substantiated by geological opinion. I lornblower quotes various opinions of assyriologists that lapis was available at Demavend (Man I949, p. 82) and E. Herzfeld interprets the Assyrian name for Demavend, ' mount auknu ' literally and not as an epithet, Zoroaster and his World, p. 722. 0. Stutzer and W. Eppler in Die Lagers/atten der Edelsteine und Schm,uck- sleine (Berlin I935) vol. VI, p. 391 state: ' Die ange- blichen Lagerstatten in Turkestan . . . Persien . . . sind sehr zweifelhaft'. A number of scholars have

postulated a station in the Caspian region trading the Badakhshan lapis to the west; notably J. R. Harris, Lexicographical Studies in Ancient Egyptian Minerals (I96I), p. I26, suggests that ifrrt, Egyptian name for lapis, indicatcs Tiflis or Tebris, south of the Caspian. Turquoise was available in the Nishapur district but not south of the Caspian (Stutzer-Eppler op. cit. pp. 348f). It is interesting to note that the new links between the Anau culture and the chalcolithic Quetta cultures provide examples of currency of lapis beads to Baluchistan and W. Pakistan between 225O-I850 B.C., W. A. Fairservis, Excavations in the_Quetta Valley, i956, p. 230; Archaeological Studies in the Seistan Basin etc., I96I, p. 74.

4' Ancient India IV 1948.



PLATE VIII

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S.~ ~ .y,

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PLATE IX

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SPIRAL-END BEADS IN WESTERN ASIA 42

have confirmed this.46 As has been pointed out by D. H. Gordon (Iraq XIII, 195 I, Pt. I, p. 5 4), double spirals of copper wire with an upward central loop for suspension occur early in the Caucasus and in Luristan and appear to have had a long life in both regions. They also occur commonly in the second millennium graves of Trialeti and the Koban, although, as stressed by Piggott, the fashion was long-lasting and in the Mycenaean shaft graves, Luristan and Koban, animal and spiral-headed pins were popular in the second millennium.

In view of the occurrence of both winged and spiral-end beads at Alaca Huyuk it is indeed worth dwelling on the Caucasian parallels to the Alaca objects. Tantalising as is the gap between their earliest occurrences at Alaca and their later occurrence or survival in the Koban region, the hammer head pins of both regions have been connected by H. Zubayr Kosay47 and the likeness of the Alaca long swords to those of Talish was noticed by N. Sandars.48 The swastika ornament on the grilles and garment-plaques of Alaca, and now on the superb gold jugs from Mahmutlar49 are later found at Trialeti and the Koban,50 but otherwise the ornament is uncommon in W. Asia. Now, from the Lake Sevan tombs come cart-pole standards topped by bull and stag figures of bronze (Fig. 3), the nearest parallels yet discovered to the stag and bull standards of Alaca and Horoz Tepe (connected by Piggott to the animal- headed pin tradition) and at the same time providing a Caucasian link for some

48 E.g. spiral-head pins from Namazgah IV-V (S. Turkmcnia) in a context equatcd with lower-middle Anau III - I-lissar IIIA - Shah Tcpe 11 (second half third millennium B.C.), E. M. and V. M. Masson, ' Aeneolithic and Bronze Age Cultures of Central Asia', Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale S (i99), P. 29. Elaborate cruciform compartmented seals belonging to this same N.E. Persian-Turkmenian horizon appcar to have travelled southwards to Quctta and Damb Sadaat II (Fairservis, Excavations in the Quetta V'alley Q2z9, and Archaeological Studies in the Seistan Basin etc., p. 8o), Chanudaro and Shahi-tump and perhaps indicate the contexts of two unstratified bird-headed pins from Seistan ibid. p. S9, fig. Z2. The provision of a C14 date for Hissar IIiB, E. Vaughan Crawford, Metropolitan Auseum Bulletin April I963, shows that the Hissar IIB and IIIA pins must be placed in the third millennium. New western examples include three pins with bird-group heads from closely connected contexts at Tilmen Huyuk, Islahiych, S.E. Turkey, A.J.A. April I963, p. i8o-i8i, pl. 37, figs. a-b; Orientalia XXXII (I963), pl. VI, 14, i5, and a pin with addorsed goats' heads from the 'champagne cup' graves of the late third millennium at Car- chemish, C. L. Woolley and R. D. Barnett, Carchemish III p. 219, pl. 6o6. From contexts linked with Alaca comes a bird pin from Horoztepe, T. Ozguc and M. Akok, Horoztepe, an Early BronZe Age Cemetery (1958), p. 58, pl. XIV, 2, and a spiral-head pin from phase I at Chatal Hiiyyuk (Antioch), a phase containing black polished ' Khirbet Kerak' ware and a cylinder seal engraved with a crescentic-hilted dagger of Alaca

type, R. Braidwood, Mlounds in the Plain of Antioch, p. 42, fig- 324c. J. Mellaart, I.L.N., 28 Nov. I959, P. 754 mentions two spiral-head pins of silver from one of the royal graves at Dorak. From the Aegean comes a bird-headed pin from an early Middle Helladic stratum at Lerna, L. Caskey, Hesperia XXV (1956), fig. 426, and there are new Trojan spiral-head examples: C. W. Blegen, Troy I 37-709, pl. 357; Troy Il, pl. 288. R. A. Higgins, Greek and Roman Jewellery, p. 52-3, gives early Helladic-Cycladic examplcs from Naxos, Chalandari, Zygouries and Thyreatis. A spiral-head pin from Tarsus within the range I900-1650 B.C., H. Goldman, Tarsus II no. 207, fig. 43 1, should also be noted. For a summary of the contexts of Caucasian animal-head pins see Deopik and Mcrpert, Sovjetlskaia Arkh. I, I96I. A pin with a head in the shape of a goat on a platform from Amorgos (Higgins op. cit.) finds its nearest parallel in the Mcgiddo pins (Schaeffcr op. cit. fig. 135) and cstablish the typc carlier than at Byblos. So far, the Siyalk spiral-hcad pins appear to be the earliest but might cventually be matched by finds in a Turk- menian context.

47 ' Allgemcines uber die Schmucksacken des alteren Bronzcperiode' in The Aegean and the Near East: Essays presented to Hetty Goldman, 1957, pp. 36-38.

48 ' The Earliest Aegean Swords and their Ancestry' in A.J.A. 65 (x961), I.

49 Deutscher Kunstrat, Kunst und Kultur der Hetbiter (Koln I96I) pl. 3.

'0 C. Schaefer, op. cit-, fig- 300.



4 3 W. CULICAN

of the Luristan standards. These are outstanding examples of that highland zone region in which, as Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop pointed out, the bull and the stag play an important role.51

The view may of course be taken that the Caucasian cultures received the elements under discussion from Anatolia, but even this view must bridge the chronological gap of half a millennium. The spread of the black-red polished 'Khirbet Kerak' ware family of pottery from the Caucasus region into Syria and Palestine in E.B. II-III period now seems likely52 and provides at least one migratory framework for the cultural contact between Anatolia and Palestine with Armenia and the Caucasus. Pottery with Khirbet Kerak ware affinities is well represented at Alaca.53 It certainly seems that along with other elements the beads which have been discussed in this paper are earlier and later offshoots of a N. Iran- Caucasus tradition whose origin yet escapes us. Their amuletic significance is beyond doubt and the double- spiral pendants found at Ur and Hissar and incorporated into the Ur and Troy jewellery and found as a common amulet throughout the Caucasian cultures are most probably the basic form. It occurs usually singly in Caucasian graves and was doubtless hung round the neck on a cord as shown on the bronze figure from Ras Shamra.54 The quadruple-spiral beads were most probably a N. Iranian variant. The front-boards of the carts from the Sevan Kurgans55 are carved with both double and quadruple

spirals and at least here, where the cultural level instances considerably more than a primitive folk art, we may be certain of some amuletic and pro- tective significance in this design.

FIG. 3. Bronze chariot mount from Kur- gan 3, Lschasen Ht. zz cm.

"' Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (I960), fig. I7. Whilst the Lschasen cart-pole standards provide impressive later parallels to Alaca Hiuyuik and Horoz Tepe objects, a group of animal figures from a Sargonid-period grave near Kirkuk (B.M. O. XXVI, 3-4, p. 93, pl. XXXVII) are near contemporaries to the Alaca model animals and have certain stylistic similarities. One, ibid. pl. XXXVI b, appears to be a small standard or large pin.

52 C. A. Burney, 'Eastern Anatolia in the Chalco- lithic and Early Bronze Age', Anatolian Studies VIII

(I95 8), pp. I 5 7-209; E. B. Chanzadian, 'Eneoliticheskoi Poselinei blez Kerovakana ',Sovjetskaia Arkh. I (I963).

53 R. B. K. Amiran, ' Connexions between Anatolia and Palestine in the Early Bronze Age ', Israel Explora- tion Journal II 2 (I952), pp. 89-I03.

54 C. Schaeffer, Ugaritica I, fig. II7.

55 Sovjetskaia Arkh. 2 (I960), figS. 2, 3.



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Spiral-End Beads in Western Asia