Material Bricolage? The Afterlife of Gold in the Orphic-Bacchic Lamellae

Abstract This article narrates an object biography for one of the Orphic-Bacchic gold lamellae, “Tablet B” from Pelinna in Thessaly (Graf and Johnston 26b). Following the methodology of the “social life of things,” this biographical narrative focalizes seven stages in the life of the tablet: (1) acquiring gold material; (2) producing sheet gold; (3) cutting sheet gold to shape; (4) wearing as a crown or other jewelery; (5) inscribing; (6) folding and wearing; (7) death and burial. Distinguishing the many manufacturing chapters of a lamella’s life highlights its physical qualities of smallness, thinness, and lightness. The specialized requirements of goldworking technology for such small things suggest that most – if not all – of the gold tablets were recut or repurposed from other objects rather than purpose-made as Orphic amulets. This frequent reuse demonstrates the extent to which individual acts of initiation were a local and idiosyncratic phenomenon.