Connected by More Than Exceptional Imports: Performance and Identity in Hallstatt C/D Elite Burials of the Low Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof ◽  
Robert Schumann

The Low Countries' Early Iron Age is marked by the emergence of lavish burials known as chieftains’ graves or princely burials. These extraordinary elite burials of the Hallstatt C/D period contain weaponry, bronze vessels as well as decorated wagons and horse-gear imported from the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe, where the same objects are found in the famous Fürstengräber. While the connection between these regions has long been recognized, the nature of this contact remains poorly understood. Here we present the preliminary results of an on-going re-examination of elite funerary practices in both regions and the likely direct long-distance interactions reflected in them. Similarities and differences in the treatment of objects and the dead in funerary rituals indicate that, to a certain extent at least, these geographically separated social groups were integrated in a specific elite burial practice, indicating frequent contact across hundreds of kilometres.

1989 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 355-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Vagnetti

An askos (BSA 49 [1954] 222, pl. 25:111) found by R.W. Hutchinson in Tomb 2 at Khaniale Tekke near Knossos is recognized as an export from nuragic Sardinia; similar askoi are common there in the same chronological range, c. 850–680 B.C., as that represented by the Cretan context. Although other good parallels have also been found outside Sardinia, notably at Vetulonia in Etruria, the Tekke piece is the first Sardinian artefact of the Early Iron Age to be identified in the Aegean. Its presence there is related to the Phoenician element in the complex pattern of long distance trade that preceded the arrival in Italy of the first Western Greeks.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 312-326
Author(s):  
Federica Sacchetti

In Early Iron Age cultures (the Golasecca, Este and Villanovan/Etruscan of the Po valley in the 7th-4th c. B.C.), a characteristic metal object has often been linked to unspecified ritual practices of protohistoric Italic peoples, raising various archaeological, anthropological and religious questions. This object, a ‘ritual shovel’ (Italian: paletta rituale; German: Bronzepalette) was first described by G. Ghirardini, who published two examples, one from Padua and one in Rome's Pigorini Museum. In 1902, he drew up a catalogue of 13 pieces and attempted to establish the first chronological sequence. During the first half of the 19th c., various pieces were published, but no studies addressed the typological, chronological and functional questions relating to the ritual shovel until M. Zuffa focused on it, providing what is still the most recent catalogue and the only discussion (fig. 1).


Author(s):  
Lyudmila Pletneva ◽  
Irma Ragimkhanova ◽  
Nadezhda Stepanova

Статья продолжает серию публикаций по результатам технико-технологического анализа керамики памятников раннего железного века Томского Приобья, относящихся к шеломокской культуре и к томскому варианту кулайской культурно-исторической общности. Для анализа были взяты фрагменты керамики из могильника Шеломок I, поселений Кижирово и Самусь II. Результаты анализов показали, как сходство, так и отличия в выборе исходного сырья и подготовки формовочных масс. Например, если для поселения Шеломок II – базового памятника шеломокской культуры, характерна примесь дресвы из гранита с белыми и прозрачными включениями кварца (Плетнёва, Степанова, 2018), то в формовочных массах керамики из могильника добавляли гранит с красными (розовыми) включениями кварца. Памятники эти расположены рядом, на расстоянии 500 м друг от друга, то есть природная среда была одинаковой. Датировка поселения Шеломок II укладывается в пределы V–III вв. до н. э., а могильника Шеломок I – IV–III вв. до н. э., что свидетельствует об их синхронном существовании. Предметы из могильника находят ближайшие аналогии в материалах шеломокской культуры. Сравнение предметного ряда изделий из бронзы, кости и рога свидетельствует о контактах оставившего его населения с тагарцами Ачинско-Мариинской лесостепи, а также, возможно, с населением большереченской культуры, по мнению И. Ж. Рагимхановой и возможно, по мнению Л. М. Плетневой, материалы могильника отражают сложные культурные процессы раннего железного века, происходившие в Томском Приобье и фиксируют приход населения из Ачинско-Мариинского района тагарской культуры.This paper continues a series of publications that report the results oftechnical and technological analysis of ceramics from the Early Iron Age monuments of the Tomsk Ob Region, which are attributed to Shelomok and Tomsk variants of the Kulay cultural and historical community. Fragments of ceramics have been taken for analysis from the Shelomok I burial ground, Kizhirovo and Samus II settlements. The results of analysis demonstrate both similarities and differences in the choice of raw materials and the preparation of molding compounds. For example, the addition of granite gruss with white and transparent quartz inclusions to the pottery paste was typical of Shelomok II settlement (Pletneva, Stepanova, 2018), while the pottery paste from the burial ground included granite with red (pink) quartz inclusions. These monuments are located nearby, at a distance of 500 m away from each other, in the same natural environment. Perhaps, the materials of the burial ground reflect the complex cultural processes of the early Iron Age that took place in the Tomsk Ob region and record the arrival of the population from the Achinsk-Mariinsky district of tagar culture.


Author(s):  
Chris Gosden

This chapter challenges prevailing paradigms which have structured discussion of trade and exchange in Iron Age Europe around the dichotomies of gifts vs commodities, or socially generated exchanges in the earlier Iron Age vs production for profit in the later Iron Age. It begins by reviewing the debate on markets and gifts, and what is still useful, and goes on to suggest new directions for research, focusing more on what brought people together as much as the items exchanged. Early Iron Age links between the Mediterranean and Europe north of the Alps are reconsidered in the light of recent work, with a focus on the Heuneburg and Massalia. For the later period, the role of oppida is considered; evidence of production for profit is absent from many areas, and the long-distance exchanges evident at oppida were part of broader European links connected to changes in power and identity.


Antiquity ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Dennys Frenez ◽  
Francesco Genchi ◽  
Hélène David-Cuny ◽  
Sultan Al-Bakri

Abstract


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue You ◽  
Peng Lü ◽  
Jianxin Wang ◽  
Jian Ma ◽  
Meng Ren

Abstract This paper summarizes current zooarchaeological research on the origin of domestic sheep and early sheep exploitation strategies in Xinjiang. The researchers analyze sheep bones excavated from the Shirenzigou ( 石人子沟, lit. Stone Human Statue Gully) Site using zooarchaeological methods, including using pelvises to identify sex, and confirm that the sheep at Shirenzigou were domesticated sheep. Previous discoveries and archaeological research in Xinjiang provide background for the researchers’ arguments that the main ways ancient people exploited domestic sheep during the Bronze Age to early Iron Age included: consuming and producing meat, wool, hide and milk; using sheep in rituals such as funerary practices; and making bone artifacts out of sheep bones.


2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-413
Author(s):  
Maciej Kaczmarek

SummaryLusatian Urnfield communities inhabiting Lubusz Land and western Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages occupy a unique position on the settlement map of the middle Oder basin. For nearly a thousand years, they acted as a kind of buffer between the buoyant Silesian centre, which had achieved its culture-making role thanks to direct exchange contacts with the Transcarpathian and Danubian-Alpine centres of the south, and West Pomeranian groups inspired from the west and northwest by the Nordic circle. The importance of Lubusz-Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) populations to the overall cultural picture of the territories on the banks of the Oder River can hardly be overestimated, so it is worth analysing this phenomenon in more detail. One of the significant cultural elements is the ceramic style. It can be a means of manifesting outside the identity of a group, the identity consolidated by a tradition functioning within this group. It is hard to imagine a relative standardisation of patterns in pottery produced over a certain area to be only the result of more or less random movement of female potters or small groups of people. The standardisation of material culture, resulting from the existence of a style, no doubt enhances homogeneity and stability in everyday life, and therefore can be regarded as a factor integrating neighbouring communities in territorial communities within a supra-local scale. In the Late Bronze Age, in Lubusz Land and western Greater Poland (Wielkopolska), one can notice the same stylistic tendencies in pottery manufacture (bossed style, Urad style, Late Bronze Age style) and in figural art in clay, and a similar repertoire of bronze objects, produced in local metallurgical workshops on the Oder.The formation of Urnfield communities in Lubusz Land and western Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) was no doubt part of a broader process of cultural integration, of supra-local character, which was taking place throughout the upper and middle Oder basin at the transition of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. This was a process of acculturation, based on the reception of the influx of new cultural contents along the River Oder from Lower Silesia and perhaps, although to a much smaller extent, from Lusatia and Saxony. The result was the cultural unification, for the first time to such an extent, of the western part of what is now Poland. The archaeological indicator of the discussed process was the appearance of large cremation cemeteries, with burials furnished with bossed pottery of the Silesia-Greater Polish type, representing a style typical of most of the middle Oder basin. Similar tendencies can be seen in bronze metallurgy, where a nearly complete unification of the repertoire of produced objects can be observed from the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. Here, however, the distributions of particular forms are much broader and encompass almost the entire western part of the Lusatian Urnfields. In Lubusz Land and western Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) the Late Bronze Age saw a very dynamic development of local bronze production, performed primarily within the Oder metallurgical centre. The result was a relatively high percentage of bronze artefacts in the cultural inventory of Urnfield populations inhabiting the region, most of them ultimately deposited in the many hoards buried during that period. A broad spectrum of manufactured designs, their notable standardisation, and the finds of durable casting moulds all seem to confirm that bronze metallurgy, along with pot-making, belonged to the most important areas of production performed by the population inhabiting the middle Oder basin at the conclusion of the 2nd and beginning of the 1st millennium BC, despite it having been carried out by a limited group of initiated specialists. The process of formation of Lusatian Urnfields in the middle Oder basin was most likely not complete before HaA2, and from the subsequent phase onwards one can notice a steady expansion of settled areas, resulting from intensive internal colonisation and the processes of acculturation. The dynamics of this phenomenon are best illustrated by newly established, vast cremation cemeteries, most of which were then continuously used at least until the close of the Bronze Age, with some persisting into the Early Iron Age. With the onset of the Early Iron Age, the Lubusz-Greater Polish territorial community of Lusatian Urnfields started to slowly disintegrate, a phenomenon explained by the adoption of a different model of Hallstatisation by these communities. In Lubusz Land, pottery of the Górzyce style (Göritzer Stil) appears, inspired more by Białowice (Billendorf) than Silesian patterns, while in western Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) ceramic workshops still maintained a close connection with the tendencies set by their Silesian neighbours, who at that time closely followed the East Hallstatt trends. The Lubusz-Greater Polish territorial community, which crystallised and developed throughout the entirety of the Late Bronze Age largely thanks to the unique role of the Oder River as a route of long-distance exchange and at the same time a culturally unifying element of the landscape, ceased to exist with the onset of the Early Iron Age, never to be reborn.


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