Eye List#17

Narrator

This grouping of objects features a number of different stylized animals and weapons, including this striking diamond-shaped eye.

Suzanne Cahill

Another weird, weird thing. I mean, people all over the world focus on the eye. That's a pretty universal cultural thing, right? That the eye is the window of the soul, et cetera. When you think of horror movies, or a story where somebody's getting hypnotized, what are they looking at? They're looking at the eye. So the eye has always been imagined as a seat of great power.

Narrator

These diamond shapes have been found at both sites. All have holes cast into them, which might mean the bronze was once mounted on a pole, wall, or on another surface. But can we even be certain it's an eye?

Suzanne Cahill

Until we dig up a piece that has a label on it that says 'eye' we're not entirely gonna be sure.

There is no written language so far discovered from these excavations. That is, there's marks that could be something, but if they are anything, nobody knows how to read them. So for all intents and purposes, we have no written language from these sites, which means we have no self-narrative from the people who buried these things, from the people who lived there. We have no way to read in their own words, their own story. And that's why we're looking at these things and just comparing them to things in other places, and sort of guessing what we might do with them.

Narrator

What do you think the eye could symbolize?