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The nascent global age at the close of the Middle Ages introduced exotic objects from distant lands into Western Europe. Exotica from the natural world – naturalia – were frequently fashioned into ecclesiastical and seigniorial artifacts and housed in treasuries. The materials were sometimes re-identified in their new contexts, such as narwhal tusks understood as unicorn horns, which bestowed upon them additional meanings associated with those allegorical mythical creatures. This work investigates the movement, alteration, and use of such re-identified naturalia in late medieval society leading up to the Age of Discovery. It focuses on naturalia that retained their distinct morphological features after working, following the hypothesis that the identity of the animal, as indexed by a recognizable form or set of physical characteristics, was important. It additionally considers symbolic connotations and occult properties deriving from allegorization of matter to study the role played by the ornamentation of naturalia. This paper explores the discourse between extant tangible objects and contemporary texts such as bestiaries, lapidaries, and alchemical compendia to examine how the iconography of the artifact’s form and the iconology of the ornamentation contributed to the overall signification of the naturalia.

The paper explores the phenomenon of secondary usage of Roman coins (2nd to 4th century) in Mediaeval necropolises (10th to 15th century) in the territory of Serbia. The research is focused upon the graves in which the coins are used as ornaments on the costume of the deceased, most frequently reshaped as pendants. This type of secondary usage is only registered in female graves. The paper aims to suggest the interpretation of this phenomenon via the analysis of value and importance of secondarily used coins in the formation of family treasures, defined in important and critical moments of the social life. The possibility is explored of the graves in which female individuals were buried with parts of their dowry. The construction of meaning of these objects is analysed through their exchange in the customs linked to marriage and, finally, funerary practices. Since the Roman coins are scarce and exclusively made of bronze, it may be concluded that the definition of their value and importance is based upon the symbolic and representational levels. The starting point of the paper is the concept of the social biography of objects, in order to further investigate the link between the Serbian Mediaeval social structure and evaluation of the coins in rural communities of the Central Balkans.