摘要：Although cardium (common cockle), the cowry sea snail, and coral have been found only in a few Liburnian inhumations (grave 9, grave-mound 13, Nadin; gravemound Sali-Ćuh, Dugi Otok, grave 8, coela I, Nadin), they, and particularly the cockle, link Liburnian society with the long-lasting prehistoric (and later) use and symbolism of this kind of jewellery. One can argue about the symbolism of the cowry in Liburnian society, because the Liburnians introduced this motif, applied in bronze, into the system of their pectoral type jewellery with the central anthropomorphous (female) figure in the Potnia Theron scheme (Kastav); cowries, natural and shaped in various materials, represented prehistoric jewellery of symbolic significance in the neighbouring cultures from the 7th and 6th centuries BC and during the Late Iron Age (Picenum, Lower Carniola, the Iapodes) and, finally, in North Dalmatian folk costumes of the 19th and 20th centuries, although certainly much older folk costumes were also adorned with cowries. Their symbolism in Liburnian society, as well as in Iapodic society and in Lower Carniola, has primarily to do with the “female” principle. Similar symbolism is most pronounced in Picenian society, where the cowry appears in direct or indirect iconographic and symbolic relations of the motif: “a hatchet - a wild boar’s tusk - a hand - an anthropomorphous female figure,” that is, Potnia Theron. The shell and the cowry, as symbols of fertility, general wealth, and welfare in life (and death), as well as the (curative and life-giving) coral, provide fertility/fecundity and protection to the world of women (and children).
