Pierced-work jewellery constitutes a specific group of gold ornaments produced in the coastal regions of the Mediterranean between the third and the seventh century AD.[...] [...]The present study is based on over six hundred pieces of pierced-work jewellery dispersed in various museums and collections. The number is quite large and the pieces are sufficiently representative of diffusion over time and diversity of provenance, forms and decorative types, to lead to useful conclusions and the reconstruction of a fairly full picture. [...] (from the introduction of the book)