When Zendaya stepped onto the red carpet for the London photocall of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey earlier this month, the discourse surrounding her ensemble was supposed to be about the aesthetic vision of her stylist and the glamour of the film industry. Instead, it became a lightning rod for a burgeoning global controversy. Adorning the actress’s ears were two 3,000-year-old gold discs—archaeological artifacts from ancient Iran, now set in 18-karat gold and diamonds.
While the fashion world saw a bold statement in "wearable art," the archaeological and academic communities saw something far more insidious: the physical dismantling of history for the sake of luxury. The incident has cast a harsh light on a pervasive, often unquestioned practice in the global art market: the routine conversion of funerary, ethnographic, and ancient objects into high-end jewelry and decorative housewares.
The Anatomy of an Ethical Breach
The earrings in question were crafted by jeweler Glenn Spiro as part of his Materials of the Old World collection. They were subsequently acquired by the London-based jewelry house Barron London, which holds them as part of a private collection. The company maintains that the items are not for sale, yet their appearance on a global superstar’s ears served as a high-profile endorsement of a process that scholars argue is inherently destructive.
Spiro, described in various features as a "voracious collector," has championed the idea of giving ancient artifacts a "second life." In public comments, he has argued that wearing objects that date back millennia is a way to make history "contemporary and cool." This sentiment, while marketed as an appreciation of antiquity, is viewed by experts as a form of "performative exoticism." By taking fragments of forgotten empires and drilling, cutting, or mounting them into modern accessories, the market does not "save" these objects; it strips them of their scientific and historical context.
A Chronology of Contention
The controversy is not an isolated event but rather the latest chapter in a long history of cultural property disputes involving Iran and the Western art market.
- 1947: The "Ziwiye treasure"—a hoard of gold, silver, and ivory artifacts—is reputedly discovered by local villagers in the Kurdistan province of northwestern Iran. The site is looted before any professional archaeological survey can be conducted, leaving the provenance of the objects permanently fractured.
- 2001: The Bronze Age site of Jiroft in southeastern Iran is discovered. Like Ziwiye, it falls victim to immediate and systematic looting.
- 2005: The Islamic Republic of Iran initiates a landmark lawsuit against the London-based Barakat Gallery, arguing that objects sold by the dealership were looted from Jiroft.
- 2007: The UK Court of Appeal upholds Iran’s title under its national patrimony law, a ruling that remains a bedrock precedent for source countries attempting to reclaim stolen heritage.
- July 2026: Zendaya wears the Ziwiye-attributed gold discs at the Odyssey photocall, sparking immediate backlash from the archaeological community and the Forensic Archive of Iran.
The Mechanics of Erasure
The primary issue with the "repurposing" of antiquity is that it is a terminal, one-way process. Conservation, as practiced by reputable museums, aims to stabilize an object to preserve its integrity for future research. In contrast, the luxury market’s repurposing requires irreversible alterations: drilling, soldering, painting, and setting.
Once a 3,000-year-old disc is drilled to accommodate a diamond setting, its value as an archaeological data point is significantly diminished. The microscopic traces of residue, the specific position of the object in its original burial, and the chemical composition of the surrounding earth—all of which could help researchers understand the culture that created it—are polished away.
Furthermore, the art market uses the term "ancient" as a marketing credential rather than a warning label. By compressing centuries of unknown biography into a single word, dealers effectively "launder" the provenance of objects that lack documented chains of custody. When these objects appear in the catalogs of high-end jewelers, they are presented as trophies of taste, obscuring the fact that their journey from the soil to the red carpet likely involved illicit excavation and the destruction of cultural heritage.
The Complicity of the "Art-Dealer-Artist"
The practice is not limited to jewelry. Many prominent galleries have pivoted toward what can only be described as "re-creation" or "intervention." A notable example is the Barakat Gallery, which has faced significant criticism for its "Painted African Sculptures" series. In this collection, dealer-turned-artist Fayez Barakat has taken 19th- and early 20th-century carved figures from the Songye, Luba, and Metoko peoples of Central Africa and painted over them.
These figures, which originally served vital ritual and community functions, are sold at prices often reaching six figures. By imposing his own artistic vision onto ethnographic masterworks, Barakat is effectively silencing the original makers. The "bridge between old and new" touted by the gallery is, to many critics, a bridge built on the erasure of colonial-era stolen goods. When Hyperallergic reached out for comment on these practices, the gallery’s long-standing history of operating in legally and ethically grey areas remained a central point of contention for activists.
Implications: A Call for Transparency
The backlash against Zendaya’s earrings, which began on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, signifies a shifting tide in public awareness. For the first time, the critique originated not from fashion editors, but from archaeologists and researchers who recognized the earrings as symptoms of a broader, systemic failure to respect the rights of source nations.
The Forensic Archive of Iran has launched a petition demanding transparency regarding the provenance of the Ziwiye plaques. This call is part of a growing movement—articulated by thinkers like Zirrar Ali—that challenges the Western celebrity and fashion industries to reckon with their "deafness" to the ethics of the Global South.
The core of the problem lies in the commodification of "the ancient." As long as the market can extract value from the physical destruction of history, the practice will continue. To combat this, the international community must move toward:
- Stricter Due Diligence: Auction houses and private dealers must be held to higher standards of provenance research that go beyond "good faith" purchases.
- Cultural Heritage Legislation: Strengthening the enforcement of national patrimony laws, such as those used by Iran to reclaim its stolen antiquities, is essential to deterring the trade of looted items.
- Public Accountability: Consumers and celebrities must recognize that wearing, displaying, or purchasing repurposed ancient artifacts is not an act of appreciation, but an act of participation in a market that survives by dismantling the collective human past.
Zendaya’s red-carpet appearance was, as many observers noted, a "viral instance" of a much larger, darker reality. The question now is whether the scrutiny directed at these earrings will fade when the news cycle moves on, or whether it will serve as the catalyst for a fundamental change in how the luxury world handles the remains of our shared history. Antiquity is not a raw material for the next season’s accessories; it is the evidence of human existence, and it deserves to be treated with far more gravity than a diamond setting.
Jia Lissa
Nana Wu
