"The Salerno ivories clearly lie at the very heart of the complex nature of 'Mediterranean art' at a time of intense commercial and cultural exchange....So many essential questions are still subject to debate: whether they were commissioned by a pope, an archbishop, or a powerful secular ruler; if they were carved in the eleventh of twelfth century; if this occurred in Salerno, Amalfi, Palermo, or Rome, in a monastery, at a court, or in an independent workshop; if they were part of an archiepiscopal throne, an antependium, a set of doors, or a reliquary."--Preface, p. 10.