scholarly journals Complex Pathways Towards Emergent Pastoral Settlements: New Research on the Bronze Age Xindian Culture of Northwest China

Author(s):  
Yitzchak Jaffe ◽  
Anke Hein ◽  
Andrew Womack ◽  
Katherine Brunson ◽  
Jade d’Alpoim Guedes ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Xindian culture of northwest China has been seen as a prototypical example of a transition toward pastoralism, resulting in part from environmental changes that started around 4000 years ago. To date, there has been little available residential data to document how and whether subsistence strategies and community organization in northwest China changed following or in association with documented environmental changes. The Tao River Archaeology Project is a collaborative effort aimed at gathering robust archaeological information to solidify our baseline understanding of economic, technological, and social practices in the third through early first millennia BC. Here we present data from two Xindian culture residential sites, and propose that rather than a total transition to nomadic pastoralism—as it is often reconstructed—the Xindian culture reflects a prolonged period of complex transition in cultural traditions and subsistence practices. In fact, communities maintained elements of earlier cultivation and animal-foddering systems, selectively incorporating new plants and animals into their repertoire. These locally-specific strategies were employed to negotiate ever-changing environmental and social conditions in the region of developing ‘proto-Silk Road’ interregional interactions.

Radiocarbon ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (2B) ◽  
pp. 629-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
A L Alexandrovskiy ◽  
J van der Plicht ◽  
A B Belinskiy ◽  
O S Khokhlova

Chrono-sequences of paleosols buried under different mounds of the large Ipatovo Kurgan, constructed during the Bronze Age, have been studied to reconstruct climatic changes in the dry steppe zone of the Northern Caucasus, Russia. Abrupt climatic and environmental changes in the third millennium BC have been reconstructed, using morphological and analytical data of the soil. Based on accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates of small charcoal fragments from the soil chrono-sequence, we concluded that two upper paleosols (with the clearest evidence of arid pedogenesis) developed between about 2600–2450 BC.


Author(s):  
Trevor Bryce

In the early twelfth century bc, the Greek and Near Eastern worlds were shaken by a series of catastrophic upheavals that brought the Bronze Age to an end. ‘The long interlude’ outlines the period of Babylonian history spanning the centuries from the fall of the Kassite dynasty in the mid-twelfth century to the rise of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom in the late seventh. In the course of these centuries, a number of dynasties rose and fell in Babylonia, most of them weak and short-lived, reflecting the frequent ebb and occasional flow of Babylonia’s political and military fortunes. Environmental factors, new tribal groups, and the preservation of Babylonian cultural traditions are discussed.


2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Kristiansen

In this article I examine how long-term economic strategies in the Bronze Age of northern Europe between 2300 and 500 BCE transformed the environment and thus created and imposed new ecological constraints that finally led to a major social transformation and a "dark age" that became the start of the new long-term cycle of the Iron Age. During the last 30 years hundreds of well-excavated farmsteads and houses from south Scandinavia have made it possible to reconstruct the size and the structure of settlement and individual households through time. During the same period numerous pollen diagrams have established the history of vegetation and environmental changes. I will therefore use the size of individual households or farmsteads as a parameter of economic strength, and to this I add the role of metal as a triggering factor in the economy, especially after 1700 BCE when a full-scale bronze technology was adopted and after 500 BCE when it was replaced by iron as the dominant metal. A major theoretical concern is the relationships between micro- and macroeconomic changes and how they articulated in economic practices. Finally the nature of the "dark age" during the beginning of the Iron Age will be discussed, referring to Sing Chew's use of the concept (Chew 2006).


2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia I. Shishlina

This article is devoted to the understanding of the importance of seasonal use of grasslands in the occupation of the Eurasian steppe during the Bronze Age. The pilot section of the research is Kalmykia – a steppe situated between the lower Volga and the Don rivers. We have to look at specific strategies of using local environments, river valleys, upland plateaux, and open steppe lands. During the third millennium BC, pastoralists of the Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures began to exploit the Eurasian steppe grasslands and they had to take advantage of the seasonal variation in steppe vegetation to create a sustainable economy. Seasonal use of grasslands became the main feature of the definition of pastoralism. This is the first time that early steppe materials have been analysed for seasonal data. On the basis of a combination of the seasonal data, settlement data and recent chronological information, a preliminary reconstruction is presented of two contrasting periods of land use for the third millennium BC.


Author(s):  
Е.В. Суханов ◽  
Е.В. Волкова

The geometrical morphometry represents a modern method of statistical analysis of objects’ morphology. The article is dedicated to discussion of opportunities and limitations of geometrical morphometry methods for study of earthenware shapes. The article deals with three examples of geometrical morphometry use for analysis of vessel shapes study in solving research problems of various complexity. Every of these examples differs in amount of known source data on objects of study. In the first example results of analysis of two types of early Byzantine amphorae forms are considered. By dint of geometrical morphometry it became possible to establish legitimacy of these types detachment and to explain that the principal differences between these types consist in the general proportionality of vessels. In the second example 252 shapes of vessels from the Balanovo burial ground of the Bronze Age are analyzed. An attempt is undertaken to detach peculiarities of shapes specific to two culturally different groups of population that left the burial ground. We succeeded in solving the task with the aid of geometrical morphometry in about a half of cases. In the third example an attempt is made to determine earthenware produced by different potters. For that purpose 30 vessels made by 6 professional potters of high skills and 15 vessels made by three potters who had no stable skills of earthenware production were used. In result of geometrical morphometry method application several conditional arrays of vessels have been detached. As it happens, vessels that have virtually nothing in common in their morphology, technology of production and skill level of potters who made the vessels allotted these arrays. Data considered allow making the conclusion that the biggest efficiency of geometrical morphometry application is achieved in search of peculiarities built in general proportionality of earthenware shapes. But an inefficiency of geometrical morphometry method is marked in solution of more complicated tasks related to analysis of detailed peculiarities of vessel outlines. The results obtained put in question possibilities to consider the geometrical morphometry as a sound method of archeological vessel shapes study.


Antiquity ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Wace

The Treasury of Atreus is one of the most important monuments of the Bronze Age in Greece and is universally recognized as the supreme example of Mycenaean architecture. It is also the finest of all the many beehive or tholos tombs which are such a striking feature of Mycenaean culture. The beehive-tomb is essentially a creation of the architecture of the Greek mainland and of Mycenaean as opposed to Minoan building. In Crete so far three beehive-tombs of Bronze Age date are known, two of which—one at Hagios Theodoros and another just found at Knossos—date from late L.M. III, the very end of the Bronze Age. The third, found at Knossos in 1938, is not to be dated earlier than 1500 B.C. All three are small and poorly constructed. The Early Bronze Age circular ossuaries of Mesarà in Crete, often erroneously described as beehive-tombs, are, as Professor Marinatos has provel nothing of the kind. On the other hand, on the Greek Mainland and in the islands immediately adjacent to it, at least forty beehive-tombs are so far known. These figures are enough to indicate that the beehivetomb is a product of Mainland or Mycenaean rather than of Cretan or Minoan architecture. More accurate information about the date and construction of the Treasury of Atreus, the finest of all the beehivetombs, cannot fail to enlarge our knowledge of the history and art of the Mycenaean civilization.


2002 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 165-183
Author(s):  
Robin Skeates

Using the approach of visual culture, which highlights the embeddedness of art in dynamic human processes, this paper examines the prehistoric archaeology of the Lecce province in south-east Italy, in order to provide a history of successive visual cultures in that area, between the Middle Palaeolithic and the Bronze Age. It is argued that art may have helped human groups to deal with problems in subsistence and society, including environmental changes affecting the cultural landscape and its resources, the breaking up of old social relations and the establishment and maintenance of new ones. More specifically, art appears to have become increasingly related to the expression of religious and even mythical beliefs, and in particular to the performance of ceremonies and rituals in selected spaces such as caves. This may reflect the existence of a long-term tradition of performance art in prehistory, involving performers and viewers, in which art helped to structure and heighten the sensual and social impact of the acting human body.


Antiquity ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 87 (335) ◽  
pp. 79-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henriette Hafsaas-Tsakos

The author revisits the celebrated cemetery of the Bronze Age Kerma culture by the third cataract of the Nile and re-examines its monumental tumuli. The presence of daggers and drinking vessels in secondary burials are associated with skeletal remains that can be attributed to fighting men, encouraging their interpretation as members of a warrior elite. Here, on the southern periphery of the Bronze Age world, is an echo of the aggressive aristocracy of Bronze Age Europe.


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