A New Study of the Decorated Cists in Kilmartin Glen, Argyll, Scotland

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Aaron Watson ◽  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Complex Scheme

Decorated cists have been identified at three burial cairns in Kilmartin Glen, Mid Argyll. The paper provides a new analysis of the cover slab at Nether Largie North, which features a series of pecked axeheads. Previous studies suggested that they replaced an array of cup marks, but the evidence of photogrammetry suggests a longer sequence and a more complex scheme. The same approach was taken to the decorated cists beneath the Nether Largie Mid cairn and a comparable structure at Ri Cruin. Additional depictions were identified. The carvings within all three cists are organised in similar ways. They date from a period in the Early Bronze Age when metal was imported from Ireland. At the same time, the reuse of older structures suggests a new concern with the past.

Memory and its Demolition: Ancestors, Animals and Sacrifice at Umm el-Marra, Syria

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn M. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Ancestor Veneration ◽  
The Past ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

At Umm el-Marra in western Syria, a sequence of Bronze Age ritual installations facilitates the investigation of how Syrian elites employed memory, ancestor veneration, and animal (and perhaps human) sacrifice to reinforce their position, and how others used countermemory to contest it. Relevant data derive from an Early Bronze Age complex of elite tombs and animal interments and a Middle Bronze Age monumental platform and shaft containing animal and human bodies deposited ritually. Analysis of the spatial landscape, with patterns of access or inaccessibility, facilitates additional insights, as does the consideration of the intentionality or lack of it in ancient references to the past.

scholarly journals Relational Typologies, Assemblage Theory and Early Bronze Age Burials

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense

This article argues that artefact types and typologies are kinds of assemblages, presenting an explicitly relational interpretation of typology grounded in a more-than-representational assemblage theory. In the process it evaluates recent approaches to typology, and the interpretations these typologies have supported, and compares these with approaches which emphasize materiality and experience. It then illustrates the benefit of drawing these two angles of analysis closer together within an approach grounded in a more-than-representational assemblage theory. Throughout, the discussion revolves around British Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age burials and types of artefacts commonly found within them. The core argument is that, if used appropriately, typologies are not constraints to the appreciation of distinctiveness, difference and relationality in the past, but can rather form an important tool in detecting those relations and making sense of different past ways of becoming.

Remembering, forgetting and the invention of tradition: burial and natural places in the English Early Bronze Age

Antiquity ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (289) ◽  
pp. 533-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mullin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Mistaken Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Use Pattern

The author looks at construction and subsequent use-pattern of round barrows in the Cheshire Basin. He argues that the use of natural mounds for burial during the Early Bronze Age may be the result of mistaken identity, indicating a forgetting of the past.

A Henge Too Far? Reinterpreting the Neolithic Monument Complex at Milfield, Northumberland

2007 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 59-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Basis ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
New Framework

This paper reinterprets the archaeological evidence from the Neolithic monument complex in the Milfield Basin, Northumberland; a palimpsest landscape of earlier Neolithic enclosures, later Neolithic henges and Early Bronze Age burial monuments. Recent interpretative accounts of the Early Neolithic use of this complex have stressed economic factors as the driving-forces behind enclosure construction, whilst the six major later Neolithic henges have been integrated into a scheme of ritual processions. These interpretations are critically evaluated and the sites are placed in their regional and national context in an attempt to provide a new framework for the use and development of the complex. It is concluded that, far from having simplistic economic functions, the earlier Neolithic enclosures could be unique to the area. Representing the formalisation of a community's attempts to ensure social reproduction in times of change, through the articulation of the difference between circular and linear monumental forms. The re-examination of the later Neolithic evidence raises interesting questions as to how far we can ‘read’ monument complexes, and critically evaluates the extent to which we can argue a unity of purpose for these enigmatic accumulations of the past. Importantly, the reinterpretation of the Neolithic activity in this area exposes how readily archaeologists export social models from other regions, such as Wessex, and attempt to fit very diverse evidence into their framework. This paper concludes that we must continue the definition of the British Neolithic on a more regional basis and accept that core-periphery models, even if not explicitly articulated, have no place in archaeological explanation.

Regional and Local Schools of Metalwork in Early Bronze Age Anatolia Part I

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 59-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jak Yakar
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Geological Surveys ◽  
Ancient Metallurgy ◽  
Work Done

The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the development of ancient metallurgy in the Near East, and in particular, in Anatolia. Most of the work done in this field however, with the exception of analytical studies conducted in laboratories and geological surveys, hardly goes beyond the re-examination of known historical, archaeological and geological data. The results, as can be expected, are derived mainly from the re-evaluation of previous conclusions on the development of early technologies and the emergence of major production centres in the Aegean, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean.Until a few years ago the origins of southeast European metallurgy were thought to be in northwest Anatolia. This traditional thesis of diffusion from the Troad to the Aegean and into the Balkans had rested on the chronological argument that the Chalcolithic cultures of Old Europe were contemporary with the EB I in Anatolia and the Aegean. The “diffusionists” lost substantial support for their theory when the chronological priority of Old European cultures based on tree-ring calibrated C-14 dates over the more traditional Near Eastern chronology was generally accepted.

Minerals, Metal, Colours and Landscape: Exmoor's Roman Lode in the Early Bronze Age

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Juleff ◽  
Lee Bray
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Ore Deposit ◽  
The Past ◽  
Layered Approach ◽  
New Evidence

Outcrops of metallic mineralization were potentially prominent locations in past landscapes, the characteristics of their constituent minerals granting them distinctive appearances and properties. To date, most treatments have cast humans as exploiters whose prime motivation for engagement with the mineral world was the acquisition of metals. This article examines new evidence for Early Bronze Age activity at Roman Lode, a predominantly iron-rich ore deposit on Exmoor in southwest Britain. In addition to assessing whether this represents metal exploitation, other interpretive avenues are explored including the potential role of the site as a provider of other resources such as pigments and quartz and as an element in a wider conceptual and physical landscape. A layered approach to the interpretation of such sites is advocated. Only by combining a cognitive interpretation with materialist perspectives will we arrive at a more insightful understanding of the past significance of minerals, mining and landscape.

scholarly journals NEW DATA ON SOUTHERN EUBOEAN LANDSCAPES: RESULTS OF THE NORWEGIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY IN THE KARYSTIA

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Žarko Tankosić ◽  
Alexandros Laftsidis ◽  
Aikaterini Psoma ◽  
Rebecca M. Seifried ◽  
Apostolos Garyfallopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
North West ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Town

We present the results of a diachronic survey of the Katsaronio plain in the Karystia, southern Euboea, Greece. The project was organised under the aegis of the Norwegian Institute at Athens with a permit from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture under the official name of the Norwegian Archaeological Survey in the Karystia. Five years of fieldwork (2012–16) covered an area of 20km2 in a large agricultural plain located about 5km north-west of the town of Karystos. The survey identified 99 new findspots with a range of dates spanning from the Final Neolithic to Early Modern times. Here we present the collected prehistoric through Roman data, which represent the bulk of the acquired evidence. One of the notable features of the assemblage is the vast quantity of lithics that were recovered, numbering over 9000 and consisting mainly of obsidian. Certain periods were absent from the evidence, such as post-Early Bronze Age prehistoric and Geometric, while others were represented with varying intensity. We offer an initial interpretation of the patterns observable in the evidence in an attempt to reconstruct the past use and habitation of this part of Euboea.

scholarly journals Tales from the Supplementary Information: Ancestry Change in Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age Britain Was Gradual with Varied Kinship Organization

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Booth ◽  
Joanna Brück ◽  
Selina Brace ◽  
Ian Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Genetic Relatedness ◽  
Genetic Relationships ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Rapid Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
Insight Into

Large-scale archaeogenetic studies of people from prehistoric Europe tend to be broad in scope and difficult to resolve with local archaeologies. However, accompanying supplementary information often contains useful finer-scale information that is comprehensible without specific genetics expertise. Here, we show how undiscussed details provided in supplementary information of aDNA papers can provide crucial insight into patterns of ancestry change and genetic relatedness in the past by examining details relating to a >90 per cent shift in the genetic ancestry of populations who inhabited Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain (c. 2450–1600 bc). While this outcome was certainly influenced by movements of communities carrying novel ancestries into Britain from continental Europe, it was unlikely to have been a simple, rapid process, potentially taking up to 16 generations, during which time there is evidence for the synchronous persistence of groups largely descended from the Neolithic populations. Insofar as genetic relationships can be assumed to have had social meaning, identification of genetic relatives in cemeteries suggests paternal relationships were important, but there is substantial variability in how genetic ties were referenced and little evidence for strict patrilocality or female exogamy.

Chronology and Terminology in the British Bronze Age

1969 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. B. Burgess
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Age Gap ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

SummaryThe paper pleads for an end to persistent misuse of the traditional ‘Three Age’ terminology which still governs the Irish British Bronze Age, and for acceptance of work of the past decade which has either been ignored or misunderstood. Uniform terms of reference are needed, fitted to the new attitudes. Hawkes's Scheme of 1960 provides a framework for this, and is summarized. The Early, Middle, and Late divisions now have a techno-typological, rather than cultural, basis.Traditional cultural and ceramic concepts, based on typology, have resisted changes demanded by a new emphasis on the evidence of associated finds. The various Urn forms and the Deverel—Rimbury complex are particularly relevant here. Associations of Urns, and the few available C14 dates, are examined to demonstrate their existence in the Early Bronze Age, but, because of a remarkable ritual break at c. 1400, not in the Middle Bronze Age, let alone the Late Bronze Age. Similarly, Deverel—Rimbury is now Middle Bronze Age, not Late Bronze Age, its position after c. 1000 uncertain. Since much in our Iron Age is now thought indigenous, already apparent in Deverel—Rimbury, an awkward Late Bronze Age gap is opened up, apparently devoid of settlements and pottery. But much nominally Iron Age material may prove to be Late Bronze Age. There is a need for many more C14 dates to clarify these problems.

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