Bright Lights in the Dark Ages - by Noël Adams (Hardcover)

About the Book

Full of shining artistic gems from a dark period of early medieval history

Book Synopsis

Bright Lights of the Dark Ages is a major new volume on early Medieval art. It features over two hundred stunning and extremely rare early medieval gold and precious stonework objects, including brooches, buckles, shields, clasps, spoons and other "grave goods", that were interred as status symbols with their owners in burials mounds across Europe.

The new societies of the early Medieval period which developed on the periphery of the great Roman Empire - Germanic barbarians in western Europe, Sarmatian and later Alanic tribes around the Black Sea, and the eastern frontier cities bordering the Parthian Empire in Iran - were all shaped by interaction with the Roman Empire, and profoundly influenced by its material culture.

Author Noël Adams surveys the magnificent pieces that were made to advertise power and wealth in these new "barbarian" kingdoms which arose after the fall of the Roman Empire, and in doing so shows the dramatic and surprising relationship
between these "migration era" objects and later medieval art. In a volume full of wonderful images, highlights include Gothic and Visigothic imperial style brooches from modern-day Slovakia and Crimea, superb Gallo-Roman spoons and enamelled domed brooches and buckles from Northern Europe and Britain.

From the Back Cover

Bright Lights of the Dark Ages is a major new volume focused on early Medieval personal ornament. It features over one hundred magnificent objects, many crafted in gold and silver and inlaid with sparkling garnet stones. These splendid brooches, buckles, and pendants, created to advertise power and wealth in the barbarian kingdoms, were later interred with their owners to be used in the afterlife.

The exceptionally broad scope of the Thaw collection, spanning over a millennium, illustrates the continuity and evolution of fine metalworking traditions. It also reveals the profound influence of the classical world on the new political alliances formed during the early Medieval period that united people from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Groups of Iranian Sarmatians and Alans, Turkic tribes from the east, and Germanic and Slavic barbarians in western Europe were all shaped by their interaction with the Roman and Byzantine empires.

Highlights of this volume, replete with sumptuous images, include stunning brooches from the Sarmatian period, rare examples of Hunnic and Gothic garnet cloisonné, exceptional brooches from the Merovingian period, and superb Gallo-Roman enameled brooches and spoons.

Review Quotes

"Major look at a New York jewelry collection"--Eve Kahn, The New York Times

About the Author

Dr. Noël Adams is currently Administrator and Deputy Curator of the Furusiyya Art Foundation. She publishes widely on material culture of the first millennium A.D. and has co-edited and contributed papers to the British Museum Research Publication series, most recently: Recent Research on Byzantine Jewellery (2010) and 'Gems of Heaven' Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity, AD 200-600 (2011). Dr. Adams has organized exhibitions at the National Trust Visitor Centre at Sutton Hoo, the British Museum, and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York.