scholarly journals Connected Histories: the Dynamics of Bronze Age Interaction and Trade 1500–1100bc

2015 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 361-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Kristiansen ◽  
Paulina Suchowska-Ducke
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Use Wear ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Critical Resources

The Bronze Age was the first epoch in which societies became irreversibly linked in their co-dependence on ores and metallurgical skills that were unevenly distributed in geographical space. Access to these critical resources was secured not only via long-distance physical trade routes, making use of landscape features such as river networks, as well as built roads, but also by creating immaterial social networks, consisting of interpersonal relations and diplomatic alliances, established and maintained through the exchange of extraordinary objects (gifts). In this article, we reason about Bronze Age communication networks and apply the results of use-wear analysis to create robust indicators of the rise and fall of political and commercial networks. In conclusion, we discuss some of the historical forces behind the phenomena and processes observable in the archaeological record of the Bronze Age in Europe and beyond.

North European Rock Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Goldhahn
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Migration Period ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Bronze Age

This chapter offers a long-term perspective on rock art in northern Europe. It first provides an overview of research on the rock art traditions of northern Europe before discussing the societies and cultures that created such traditions. It then considers examples of rock art made by hunter-gatherer societies in northern Europe, focusing on the first rock art boom related to Neolithization. It also examines the second rock art boom, which was associated with social and religious changes within farming communities that took place around 1600–1400 bc. The chapter concludes by analysing the breakdown of long-distance networks in the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and its consequences for the making of rock art within the southern traditions, as well as the use of rock art sites during the Pre-Roman Iron Age, Roman Iron Age, and Migration Period.

Personifying Prehistory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.

Moving across the North Sea

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Van de Noort
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
The North ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
The Social ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
The Bronze Age

Movements between different lands around the North Sea have always been taking place. While the North Sea was evolving gradually, over the millennia, following the melting of the Devensian ice sheet, close contacts across what remained of the North Sea Plain never ceased, as evidenced by near-parallel developments of the Maglemosian-type tools in southern Scandinavia and Britain (Clark 1936), and by particular practices such as the deliberate deposition of barbed points (see chapter 3). Connections across the North Sea throughout the Mesolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic would have been made easier because of the number of islands surviving within the rising sea. The polished axes from Dogger Bank and Brown Bank either represent human presence on these islands in the early Neolithic or else indicate that the existence of these islands sometime in the pre-Neolithic past was embedded in the social memory of later periods. Both possibilities emphasize the fact that the North Sea was a knowable and visited place. Movements across the North Sea took various forms: as exchange between elites from different regions of exotic or ‘prestige’ goods, and possibly of marriage partners; as trade in both luxury and bulk commodities; and in the transfer of people, in some cases as individuals such as pilgrims and missionaries, and in other cases as groups of pirates or as part of larger-scale migrations. Over time, connectedness across the North Sea changed both in nature and in intensity; this was due in no small part to changes in the nature of the craft available. An outline of the movement of goods from the Neolithic through to the end of the Middle Ages illustrates this. Contacts across the North Sea for the Neolithic and the Bronze Age are demonstrated in the long-distance exchange of exotic objects and artefacts, including Beaker pottery, jewellery, or other adornments of gold, amber, faience, jet, and tin; also copper and bronze weapons and tools, and flint daggers, arrowheads, and wrist guards (e.g. Butler, 1963; O’Connor, 1980; Bradley 1984; Clarke, Cowie, and Foxon 1985).

scholarly journals Trade, Merchants, and the Lost Cities of the Bronze Age*

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 1455-1503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gojko Barjamovic ◽  
Thomas Chaney ◽  
Kerem Coşar ◽  
Ali Hortaçsu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Gravity Model ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Trade Data ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The Bronze Age

AbstractWe analyze a large data set of commercial records produced by Assyrian merchants in the nineteenth century BCE. Using the information from these records, we estimate a structural gravity model of long-distance trade in the Bronze Age. We use our structural gravity model to locate lost ancient cities. In many cases, our estimates confirm the conjectures of historians who follow different methodologies. In some instances, our estimates confirm one conjecture against others. We also structurally estimate ancient city sizes and offer evidence in support of the hypothesis that large cities tend to emerge at the intersections of natural transport routes, as dictated by topography. Finally, we document persistent patterns in the distribution of city sizes across four millennia, find a distance elasticity of trade in the Bronze Age close to modern estimates, and show suggestive evidence that the distribution of ancient city sizes, inferred from trade data, is well approximated by Zipf’s law.

Highland fortress-polities and their settlement systems in the southern Caucasus

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (341) ◽  
pp. 757-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Mountainous Terrain ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Settlement Systems ◽  
The Core ◽  
Strategic Trade ◽  
Southern Caucasus ◽  
The Bronze Age

Recent survey work in western Azerbaijan has revealed that hilltop fortresses of the Bronze Age and Iron Age may have been parts of larger walled complexes and could have functioned as the urban centres of small independent polities. On the Şərur Plain long lengths of stone wall link the major fortress Oğlanqala it to its smaller neighbour Qızqala 1, with evidence of a substantial settlement on the lower ground between the two. The southern Caucasus lies beyond the core area of Near Eastern states but these new discoveries suggest that major centres of power arose here, controlling both the fertile plains and strategic trade routes through mountainous terrain.

scholarly journals The Earliest Balance Weights in the West: Towards an Independent Metrology for Bronze Age Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Ialongo
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
Use Wear ◽  
Mediterranean Regions ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Standard Weight

Weighing devices are the earliest material correlates of the rational quantification of economic value, and they yield great potential in the study of trade in pre-literate societies. However, the knowledge of European Bronze Age metrology is still underdeveloped in comparison to Eastern Mediterranean regions, mostly due to the lack of a proper scientific debate. This paper introduces a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of standard weight-systems in pre-literate societies, and tests it on a large sample of potential balance weights distributed between Southern Italy and Central Europe during the Bronze Age (second–early first millenniumbc). A set of experimental expectations is defined on the basis of comparisons with ancient texts, archaeological cases and modern behaviour. Concurrent typological, use-wear, statistical and contextual analyses allow to cross-check the evidence against the expectations, and to validate the balance-weight hypothesis for the sample under analysis. The paper urges a reappraisal of an independent weight metrology for Bronze Age Europe, based on adequate methodologies and a critical perspective.

scholarly journals Examination and possible interpretations of a Middle Bronze Age structured deposition

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-285
Author(s):  
László Gucsi ◽  
Nóra Szabó
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Carpathian Basin ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Use Wear ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Age Structured ◽  
The Bronze Age

Ceramic depositions occur frequently in the Bronze Age throughout the Carpathian Basin, however, their characteristics and composition can vary between periods, cultures and regions. Thus there could be many theories and interpretations offered for the reasons behind hiding these depots. At the site of Budajenő, Hegyiszántók a structured deposition dating to the final phase of the Middle Bronze Age came to light, which is not only unique in terms of the quantity of the vessels but also of their quality, both on an intra-site level and from the perspective of the Hungarian Middle Bronze Age. The aim of this paper is to present a complex and multi-faceted analysis, which helps not only to understand the possible reasons behind the concealment of the vessels, but also to offer an interpretation for the chain of events in which they could have played a central role. Besides the examination of the quantity and the cultural characteristics of the vessels, traces of use-wear,along with the phenomena of secondary burning and deliberate fragmentations are also discussed.

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