This disk-shaped ornament highlights the ingenuity of Southeast Asian communities, as they encountered and absorbed a variety of cultural ideas through the long ebb and flow of their history. The beaten gold dishes and plates of Southeast Maluku boldly display emblems of beasts, plants and divine human figures. Communities that had adopted Islam, like the Bugis of South Sulawesi, however, softened these into stylised abstractions. New techniques of filigree, red staining and granulation lent a new intricacy to their ornaments.
