evidence of the impact of South Ionian artisans in Etruria, eastern Mediterranean, such as the numerous perhaps the same ateliers responsible for 76.AO.77 and multisubject Rhodian plaques (seventh century B.C.),39 or the other extant amber korai and kouroi, including the a work like the semicircular gold plaque (Island Greek Novi Pazar ambers. work) from Aydın (Tralles) of circa 600 B.C.40 The most complex of the Rhodian ornaments include female figures The chiton grasping is a significant gesture of 76.AO.77 (clothed or nude), human heads, animals and animal and all other korai figures and is a subject of considerable masks, pomegranate blossoms and other flowers, or solar discussion. Helmut Kyrieleis has established the point that symbols. A winged Potnia Theron with felines and a sculpted korai may represent movement in stasis (and not centaur grasping a fawn are also common subjects. The lose their essential meaning) in the way that a running or Aydın pendant is among the most elaborate compositions: hunting Artemis painted on a Greek vase can the female figure is in the “mastery of the animals” pose communicate violent movement.35Read as if it were an and is joined by griffin’s, bull’s, and ram’s heads and Egyptian image, 76.AO.77 (and related images) represents nonfigural solar imagery. a pose frozen at the most important or recognizable part of a ceremony, which “can only be understood in terms of Much remains to be understood about the origin, the meaning of the larger ritual in which it was meaning, and function of the large-scale kouroi and korai, embedded.”36For the tiny amber korai, is the pose frozen but it appears that these sculptural types could serve both in running or dancing, specifically cultic and ritual as votives and in funerary roles, to represent a divinity, a dance? If a dance, lines from the Homeric Hymn to heroized dead person, or an idealized youth. Both kore Artemismight be recalled: and kouros could be a pleasing offering, an agalma.41 Furnished with suitable attributes, the kore or the kouros This huntress who delights in arrows slackens her could become a hero or divinity: one of the Dioskouroi, supple bow and goes to the great house of her dear Apollo, or Athena, for example.42 While much has been brother Phoebus Apollo, to the rich land of Delphi, written about the life-size and larger korai and kouroi, there to order the lovely dance of the Muses and there is a relative paucity of discussion about the Graces. There she hangs up her curved bow and her miniatures.43 arrows, and heads and leads the dances, gracefully arrayed.37 76.AO.77 and the other amber korai may have served for the living as well as for the dead, in body adornment, as The active pose, the “attributes” of transparent clothing, amulet and ornament, roles that the large-scale objects veil, crown, chain, and long loose hair, and the material of were never called upon to play. The compact format of the 76.AO.77 suggest that the tiny pendant represents pendants, the incorporation of suspension devices or specifically Artemis or Leto. Given that Leto, like her plate bases into their designs, and the occasional evidence daughter Artemis, is a birth goddess, and given the age- of use wear (rubbed surfaces, as on the Novi Pazar and old association between amber and childbirth, it is likely Berlin korai), replacement of suspension holes (as might that 76.AO.77 and her kin served as special ornaments, be argued for the Novi Pazar korai), or enlargement of the ones with fertility aspects, either in direct magic or as stringing holes (as on the Basel kore) suggest a significant powerful danger-averting amulets. The clinging use in life (or lives) before interment with the deceased. transparent clothing and the position of the figure’s hand The ultimate “user” actually may have been the deceased. on the skirt both emphasize the pubic area, the location of These tiny korai also may have been gifts and thus part of the primary sex characteristic. This composition is the funerary rituals. For the works that show no signs of comparable to the Egyptian manner of representing elite wear, it is possible that they were made expressly, or adult female fertility figures in the cases where nudity acquired especially, for setting on the body or for was inappropriate.38 A fertility subject represented in a placement in the grave at the time of burial. In death, the substance associated with fertility would enhance the amber korai might have provided aid and protection meaning of the object, since subject and material are during the fraught journey to the afterworld, if the beliefs inextricably intertwined in all ancient amulets. Here the attendant on such uses were current in Italy as they had subject might well function as did its Egyptian been for millennia in Egypt. counterparts, the fertility figures linking the process of giving birth in this world with that of being reborn into NOTES the next. If 76.AO.77 and the amber animals were originally buried together, the group might be compared 1. The term “kore,” commonly used for the many kinds of images to the more complex precious metal plaques from the of Archaic standing draped females, is misleading but useful. See, for example, Ridgway 1977, pp. 85–86. Cat. no. 8 141