Parure vestimentaire de l’aristocratie féminine du VIe-VIIe siècle. Les contextes des broches discoïdes montées en boîte de la nécropole de Lezha (Albanie)

International audienceThe article discusses three grave contexts from the 6th to 7th centuries AD documented within the frame of a French-Albanian project in the Eastern cemetery of Lezha (Albania). They belong to western Balkan late-antique women elite, whose fashion dress followed the Roman model. Some of these women hold circular box brooches with Christian and apotropaic representations, common in the early Byzantine world. The Lezha grave contexts allow for contextualising similar finds from Kruja, Milot (Albania), and Virpazar (Montenegro). They highlight the presence of urban aristocracy in the hinterland of Dyrrhachium,whose dress-code, combined with rich standardised jewellery, reflects patterns similar to those known from the whole Mediterranean world. Recycling of these box brooches by later communities of the early Middle Ages, as well as by modern ones, witnesses a transfer of memory of objects. These examples stress the importance of finding contexts for a reliable discourse on populations and their dress-codes