TALISMANIC PRACTICE AT LEFKANDI: TRINKETS, BURIALS AND BELIEF IN THE EARLY IRON AGE Nathan T. Arrington* Princeton University, USA Excavations at Lefkandi have dispelled much of the gloom enshrouding the Early Iron Age, revealing a community with significant disposable wealth and with connections throughout the Mediterranean. The eastern imports in particular have drawn scholarly attention, with discussion moving from questions of production and transportation to issues surrounding consumption. This article draws attention to some limitations in prevalent socio-political explanations of consumption at Lefkandi, arguing that models relying on gift-exchange, prestige- goods and elite display cannot adequately account for the distribution, chronology, find context and function of imports at Lefkandi. A study of trinkets – small but manifestly foreign imports of cheap material – offers a new perspective. An analysis of their form, context, use and meaning demonstrates that trinkets were meaningfully and deliberately deposited with children as talismans or amulets. Talismanic practice had Late Bronze Age precedents, and in the Early Iron Age was stimulated from personal contact with the Near East or Cyprus and nurtured by the unique mortuary landscape at Lefkandi. This article demonstrates the need for archaeologists to treat mortuary beliefs as a meaningful explanatory variable. Moreover, the ability of non-elite objects to convey powerful ideas has important implications for the nature and dynamics of artistic and cultural exchanges between Greece and the East in the Iron Age. Introduction Archaeologists and historians are still coming to terms with the remarkable discoveries in the 1980s and 1990s at the cemeteries of Lefkandi in Euboea. 1 An enormous apsidal building, elaborate and costly burials of a man and a woman inside the structure and a cemetery teeming with imports were among the startling finds that made the * Email: nta@princeton.edu 1 I am thankful to John K. Papadopoulos and Joanna S. Smith for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Any errors that remain are my own. The Cambridge Classical Journal, Page 1 of 30. doi:10.1017/S175027051500010X © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Cambridge University Press