Middle Bronze Age Enclosures in the Norfolk Broads: a Case Study at Ormesby St Michael, England

2014 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 141-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Gilmour ◽  
Sarah Horlock ◽  
Richard Mortimer ◽  
Sophie Tremlett
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Norfolk Broads ◽  
Field Systems ◽  
Key Indicators ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Remnant field systems and enclosures are key indicators of social change during the 2nd millennium bc – their study has considerable significance in terms of interpreting the Bronze Age in the eastern region. Despite widespread current interest in the topic, little if any evidence for Middle Bronze Age settlement and land division had been found in Norfolk prior to the investigations at Ormesby St Michael which form the focus of this paper. Here, archaeological excavations uncovered evidence for strip field systems, succeeded by a large and well dated enclosure containing at least two structures. These results are supplemented by cropmark evidence for other elements of the enclosure produced by the National Mapping Programme. When combined, the findings are of great significance since they indicate a Middle Bronze Age date for numerous comparable cropmarks recorded across the region as part of the National Mapping Programme, emphasising the crucial value of such work. It can now be suggested that the apparent dearth of Bronze Age field systems in Norfolk is not 'real', but the combined effect of limited excavation of such sites and misinterpretation of those that have been investigated.

scholarly journals MIDDLE BRONZE AGE BARROW BURIALS ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE EYA RIVER IN THE EAST AZOV SEA REGION

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 52-59
Author(s):  
A. KIJASHKO ◽  
◽  
O. LARENOK ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The North ◽  
Azov Sea ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Excavations ◽  
Catacomb Culture

The paper elucidates the results of archaeological excavations of destroyed barrow No. 1 of the Yuzhny VII cemetery situated on the right bank of the Eya river in the East Azov Sea region. Twelve burials were studied in the preserved part of the barrow. Seven of them date from the Mid- dle Bronze Age: two belong to the Catacomb culture, and three are presumably of the post-Cata- comb age. Six Т-shaped and one Н-shaped catacombs were studied, as well as burials Nos. 1 and 10 dating from the final of the Middle Bronze Age. The authors identify the place of the excavated complexes among the Bronze Age sites of the steppe Fore-Caucasus and provide evidence showing the influence exerted by the North Caucasian traditions on the Middle Bronze Age culture of the Eya river.

Regional Coalescence or Further Regionalization?

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Zavodny
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Sociopolitical Development ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
Grave Good ◽  
Burial Practice ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Prehistoric cultural and sociopolitical development in the mountainous region of Lika, Croatia, is still poorly understood, despite over a century of archaeological excavations. Traditional cultural-historical narratives based on grave good typologies suggest that a unified regional culture, the Iapodes, emerged at the end of the Bronze Age and rapidly expanded across the area. This interpretation, however, has yet to be systematically tested. To better identify and understand to the potential processes of identity formation during this period, this article analyzes mortuary contexts and assemblages as proxies for changing relationships between communities and possible materialization of a shared group identity. Results suggest clear but uneven momentum toward standardized burial practice among groups in neighboring valleys, implying that the creation of a true Iapodian group identity likely took longer than previously thought. Unatoč više od stoljeća arheoloških iskopavanja, stupanj istraženosti kulturnog i društveno-političkog razvoja prapovijesnih zajednica u hrvatskoj planinskoj regiji Lici još uvijek je skroman. Po uvriježenom kulturno-povijesnom tumačenju, temeljenom na tipologijama nalaza iz grobova, Japodi su se, kao jedinstvena regionalna kulturna grupa, pojavili na kraju brončanog doba, te su se vrlo brzo proširili područjem Like. Ovakvu interpretaciju, međutim, tek treba sustavno preispitati. S ciljem boljeg utvrđivanja i razumijevanja potencijalnih procesa formiranja identiteta tijekom ovog razdoblja, u ovom su radu analizirani grobni konteksti i pripadajući skupovi nalaza koji su odraz promjenjivih odnosa među zajednicama, kao i moguće materijalizacije zajedničkog grupnog identiteta. Rezultati analize ukazuju na jasnu, premda neujednačenu težnju ka standardizaciji pogrebne prakse između zajednica susjednih dolina, što sugerira da je proces formiranja pravog japodskog grupnog identiteta vjerojatno trajao duže nego što se pretpostavljalo.

scholarly journals How Rocks Die: Changing Patterns of Discard and Re-Use of Ground Stone Tools in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 8869
Author(s):  
Andrew McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ground Stone ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

Cultural objects are thought to have a lifespan. From selection, through construction, use, destruction, and discard, materials do not normally last forever, transforming through stages of life, eventually leading to their death. The materiality of stone objects, however, can defy the inevitable demise of an object, especially durable ground stone tools that can outlive generations of human lifespans. How groups of people deal with the relative permanence of stone tools depends on their own relationship with the past, and whether they venerate it or reject its influence on the present. A case study from the long-lived site of Prasteio-Mesorotsos in Cyprus demonstrates a shifting attitude toward ground stone objects, from the socially conservative habit of ritually killing of objects and burying them, to one of more casual re-use and reinterpretation of ground stone. This shift in attitude coincides with a socio-political change that eventually led to the ultimate rejection of the past: complete abandonment of the settlement.

scholarly journals Emberi ábrázolás a Változások korában, 4000 és 2000 BC között

2014 ◽  
pp. 113-144
Author(s):  
Tünde Horváth
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Late Phase ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Copper Age ◽  
Cultural Impacts ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Cultures ◽  
The Bronze Age

Our survey should by necessity begin earlier, from the close of the Middle Age Copper Age, and should extend to much later, at least until the onset of the Middle Bronze Age, in order to identify and analyse the appearance and spread of the cultural impacts affecting the Baden complex, their in-teraction with neighbouring cultures and, finally, their decline or transformation. Discussed here will be the archaeological cultures flourishing between 4200/4000 and 2200/2000 BC, from the late phase of the Middle Copper Age to its end (3600 BC), the Late Copper Age (ending in 2800 BC), the transi-tion between the Copper Age and the Bronze Age (ending in 2600 BC), and the Early Bronze Age 1–3 (ending in 2000 BC), which I have termed the Age of Transformation.

Social landscapes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Natural Rock ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Field Systems

In 1960 a rock climber found a small Middle Bronze Age pot wedged in a cleft in the rock halfway down the eastern face of Crow’s Buttress, a granite outcrop on the southern edge of Dartmoor in Devon (Pettit 1974, 92). The Middle Bronze Age was a period during which extensive field systems were constructed on Dartmoor (Fleming 1988). As we shall see later in this chapter, these have often been thought to indicate the intensification of agriculture and an increasing concern to define land ownership in response to population pressure (e.g. Barrett 1980a; 1994, 148–9; Bradley 1984, 9; Yates 2007, 120–1; English 2013, 139–40). Such models imply the commodification of the natural world: the landscape is viewed primarily as a resource for economic exploitation. Yet this small pot calls such assumptions into question, for it can surely be best interpreted as an offering to spirit guardians or ancestors associated with a striking natural rock formation. This hints at a quite different way of engaging with and understanding the landscape. In this chapter we will explore the links between people and landscape, beginning with the monumental landscapes of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, moving then to consider what the appearance of field systems during the Middle and Late Bronze Age tells us about human–environment relationships during the later part of the period, and finally considering some of the ways in which animals were incorporated into the social worlds of Bronze Age communities. Funerary and ceremonial monuments of various sorts are the most eye-catching feature of the Early Bronze Age landscape and have dominated our interpretations of the period. By contrast, as we have seen in Chapter 4, settlement evidence of this date is relatively sparse. This, and recent isotope analyses of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age inhumation burials (Jay et al. 2012; Parker Pearson et al. 2016), suggest a significant degree of residential mobility.

The first religious buildings: ‘sacred huts’

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Bronze Age

The votive assemblages that form the primary archaeological evidence for non-funerary cult in the Neolithic, Bronze, and early Iron Ages in central Italy indicate that there is a long tradition of religious activity in Latium and Etruria in which buildings played no discernible role. Data on votive deposits in western central Italy is admittedly uneven: although many early votive assemblages from Latium have been widely studied and published, there are few Etruscan comparanda; of the more than two hundred Etruscan votive assemblages currently known from all periods, relatively few date prior to the fourth century BC, while those in museum collections are often no longer entire and suffer from a lack of detailed provenance as well as an absence of excavations in the vicinity of the original find. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize broad patterns in the form and location of cult sites prior to the Iron Age, and thus to sketch the broader context of prehistoric rituals that pre-dated the construction of the first religious buildings. In the Neolithic period (c.6000–3500 BC), funerary and non-funerary rituals appear to have been observed in underground spaces such as caves, crevices, and rock shelters, and there are also signs that cults developed around ‘abnormal water’ like stalagmites, stalactites, hot springs, and pools of still water. These characteristics remain visible in the evidence from the middle Bronze Age (c.1700–1300 BC). Finds from this period at the Sventatoio cave in Latium include vases containing traces of wheat, barley seed cakes, and parts of young animals including pigs, sheep, and oxen, as well as burned remains of at least three children. The openair veneration of underground phenomena is also implied by the discovery of ceramic fragments from all phases of the Bronze Age around a sulphurous spring near the Colonelle Lake at Tivoli. Other evidence of cult activities at prominent points in the landscape, such as mountain tops and rivers, suggests that rituals began to lose an underground orientation during the middle Bronze Age. By the late Bronze Age (c.1300–900 BC) natural caves no longer seem to have served ritual or funerary functions.

Settlement, space organization and land-use of a small Middle Bronze Age community of central Italy. The case study of Gorgo del Ciliegio (Arezzo-Tuscany)

2020 ◽  
Vol 539 ◽  
pp. 122-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Moroni ◽  
Vincenzo Spagnolo ◽  
Jacopo Crezzini ◽  
Francesco Boschin ◽  
Marco Benvenuti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Space Organization ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

LAND USE IN THE EASTERN ALPS DURING THE BRONZE AGE-AN ARCHAEOBOTANICAL CASE STUDY OF A HILLTOP SETTLEMENT IN THE MONTAFON (WESTERN AUSTRIA)*

Archaeometry ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. SCHMIDL ◽  
W. KOFLER ◽  
N. OEGGL-WAHLMULLER ◽  
K. OEGGL
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Alps ◽  
Hilltop Settlement ◽  
The Bronze Age

scholarly journals Tell Es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results of Short-Lived Cereal and Multiyear Charcoal Samples from the End of the Middle Bronze Age

Radiocarbon ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik J. Bruins ◽  
Johannes Van Der Plight
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean Region ◽  
Weighted Average ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Calibration Curves ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Chronology ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Samples from Tell es-Sultan, Jericho, were selected for high-precision 14C dating as a contribution toward the establishment of an independent radiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology. The material derives from archaeological excavations conducted by K. M. Kenyon in the 1950s. We present here the results of 18 samples, associated stratigraphically with the end of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) at Tell es-Sultan. Six short-lived samples consist of charred cereal grains and 12 multiyear samples are composed of charcoal. The weighted average 14C date of the short-lived grains is 3306 ± 7 bp. The multiyear charcoal yielded, as expected, a somewhat older average: 3370 ± 6 bp. Both dates are more precise than the standard deviation (a) of the calibration curves and the absolute standard of oxalic acid. Calibration of the above Jericho dates is a bit premature, because several groups are currently testing the accuracy of both the 1986 and 1993 calibration curves. Nevertheless, preliminary calibration results are presented for comparison, based on 4 different calibration curves and 3 different computer programs. Wiggles in the calibration curves translate the precise bp dates into rather wide ranges in historical years. The final destruction of MBA Jericho occurred during the late 17th or the 16th century bc. More definite statements about the calibrated ages cannot be made until the accuracy of available calibration curves has been tested. Development of calibration curves for the Eastern Mediterranean region would be important.

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