Portrait as a Decoration on Little Boxes Made of Bone

Abstract

The author talks about two covers on little boxes made of bone, cyllindric in shape, which are kept in the Archeological Museum in Split. Both covers have female portraits on them. The first cover had been known and the author wrote about it is his earlier article (see note 1). He indicated then that the portrait might have been from the ist or the 2nd c. and incorrectly defended the dating for the 2nd c. This fact, together with the finding of the second cover with the female portrait, prompted the author to reconsider the analysis of portraits on bone boxes. The first portrait is now dated in the second century by analogy from the time of Tiberius. This is further confirmed by the hairstyle which characteristic element is the spiral lock of hair found behind the ear and going down to the shoulder. The second cover was discovered during the investigation of Salona’s west necropolis in the tomb no. 593 with very rich inventory. On the basis of the comparision with the sample for the making of portraits on the other cover we find that it is from a later period, during the rule of Augustus. However, the tomb also contains a fragment of a bronze cover on which there was a coinfrom nero time as a decoration. Thus the tomb must be closer to the 6th or the 7th decade of the ist century. But the appearance of Nero coinis only terminus post quern for the tomb and the object was create earlier. The box could have been in use for a longerperiod (three of four decades). Thus the author concludes that the portrait on the cover was made relatively soon after the introduction of this kind of hairstyle and this means sometimes in the first two decades of the ist c.A.D. The box was placed into the tomb only after a certain time. Which portraits were used as a sample for the marking of characters on the bone covers it is hard to tell, but the most reasobale guess is that they were created after the heads on the coins. Considering that such portraits were superficially copied, it is obvious that it was only important to show a female figure with modern hairstyle and to neglect the facial characteristics.