Amber & Gold

The Mycenaean royal burial goods from the Shaft Graves at Mycenae (Grave Circles A and B, c.1600–1400 BCE), excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 and now held in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens — which include the most spectacular and the most completely preserved collection of Bronze Age Greek gold-and-amber luxury objects in the world, including gold death masks, amber necklaces, and gold-and-amber composite jewelry pieces — create the amber-and-gold combination at the most archaeologically significant and the most historically dramatic ancient-material scale. The Shaft Grave assemblages (particularly Shaft Grave IV, Grave Circle A, which contained the famous 'Mask of Agamemnon' gold death mask and numerous amber-and-gold jewelry pieces) are the most extensively studied and the most frequently cited example of Bronze Age amber-and-gold luxury material combination in the history of European archaeology.

The Nordic Bronze Age amber-and-gold tradition — the specific period of Northern European Bronze Age culture (approximately 1500–500 BCE) during which the Baltic amber trade and the gold-working traditions of Scandinavia and Northern Germany produced the most concentrated and the most artistically refined collection of amber-and-gold ornaments in Northern European archaeology, including the great amber necklaces and golden sun discs now held in the National Museum of Denmark (Copenhagen), the Swedish History Museum (Stockholm), and the Museum of Natural History (Berlin) — creates the amber-and-gold combination at the most geographically concentrated and the most specifically Northern European prehistoric-luxury scale.

The 'Gold of Troy' — the collection of pre-Homeric gold objects discovered by Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik (Troy, northwestern Turkey) during the 1870s excavations, which included amber-coloured gold objects and amber beads found in the same contexts as gold jewelry, and which Schliemann controversially identified as 'Priam's Treasure' — created the most famous 19th-century amber-and-gold archaeological discovery and established the amber-and-gold warm-warm as the most iconic warm combination in the 19th-century popular understanding of ancient luxury material culture. The controversy surrounding the Gold of Troy, its eventual transfer from the Pushkin Museum (Moscow) where it had been held since World War II, and the ongoing diplomatic claims by Turkey, Germany, and Russia, makes the amber-and-gold combination simultaneously the most archaeologically valuable and the most politically contested warm-warm material combination in modern times.