ABSTRACT
Thirty years have passed since Miss Tufnell (1953: 160 and Fig. 15) first published a unique gold earring from the British excavations at Tell ed-Duweir (Pl. I). Several years ago it was republished (Shea and Maxwell-Hyslop, 1979: 171–73) with a preliminary discussion of the technical methods used for its manufacture. In the absence of clear-cut stratigraphic evidence, the few close parallels known to us allowed only the suggestion of a 6th to 5th century BC date for the manufacture of this article of jewellery, based on certain distinctive typological features (Maxwell-Hyslop, 1971: 227 ff). Recently the publication of a late Iron Age cemetery at Kāmid el-Loz in the Lebanon has provided a well dated parallel (Poppa, 1978: Pl. 5(4): 10), though in silver, for the Lachish gold earring (see below, Fig. 1). The cemetery in question, located on the north-western side of the mound (Poppa, 1978: Pls. I and 2), has revealed a large number of richly endowed inhumations: mostly females buried in a fully extended position, north-west facing 1 (Poppa, 197 8: 43–49 and 135–39); and in many respects aptly complements the thorough re-study (Moorey, 1980) of the material from Woolley’s excavations in cemeteries 2 at Deve Hüyük near Carchemish. Gold earring from Tell ed-Duweir, now in the British Museum, London https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315423050/4d866e7b-a784-431e-9644-59266b690d45/content/fig14_pl-1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (photograph by P. Dorrell).
