Absolute Dating of the Gihon Spring Fortifications, Jerusalem

Radiocarbon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1171-1193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Regev ◽  
Joe Uziel ◽  
Nahshon Szanton ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Water Source ◽  
The Other ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Absolute Dating

AbstractOne of the most impressive structures in Jerusalem’s ancient landscape is the tower that was built to surround and protect the Gihon Spring, Jerusalem’s perennial water source. The structure, first discovered by Reich and Shukron (2004), encompasses the cave in which the spring sprouts from, with walls 7 m thick built of large boulders. The Spring Tower, along with the other features relating to it, were all attributed to the Middle Bronze Age II, based on their architectural and stratigraphical relationship, the type of architecture, and the pottery found. In the continued excavations carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority along the outer, eastern face of the Spring Tower, it was noted that at least the northeast side of the tower was not built on bedrock, but rather on layers of sediment, which were sealed by the massive boulders at the base of the tower. In order to provide an absolute dating for the structure, two sections were sampled for radiocarbon (14C) dating beneath the foundation stones at two locations. Scenarios for the construction of the tower during Middle Bronze Age (MB) and Iron Age II are considered, based on the new 14C data, yielding a series of dates, the latest of which falls in the terminal phases of the 9th century BCE, alongside previous excavation data.

“To the God Who is in Dan”: The Archaeology and History of Biblical Dan

2009 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-359
Author(s):  
John C.H. Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Northern Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The City

This article consists of two foci. First, the archaeological history of Tel Dan as revealed by the longest running excavation ever conducted in Israel will be surveyed. Emphasis will be given to the major periods of known urbanization of the site: The Early Bronze Age; the Middle Bronze Age; and the Iron Age II. The materials dated to Iron Age II will be especially emphasized because they have the most significance for any attempt to understand the city of Dan during the biblical period. The second issue to be discussed is the thorny one of relating biblical texts to archaeological data or vice-versa. The Bible is not written as straightforward history, whatever that may be. Thus biblical texts cannot often be taken at face value in evaluating their historical content. It will be argued that is especially true of the mostly negative and hostile attitude seen towards the City of Dan in the Bible. It will be concluded that this view of Dan is due to the literary formation and editing of the texts as we now have them in the Bible. This hostility represents a Judean perspective which is very negative of the northern kingdom of Israel that was created after the death of Solomon.

Challenging the Traditional Chronological Framework of Funerary Rituals in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt Region: 14C Results from the Site of Lummen-Meldert (Belgium)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (02) ◽  
pp. 461-468
Author(s):  
Guy De Mulder ◽  
Guido Creemers ◽  
Mark Van Strydonck
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Size Number ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Dating Methods ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Absolute Dating ◽  
Middle Iron Age

Archaeologists tend to use typochronological frameworks to date their sites. These are based on the appearance of certain cultural markers such as grave types or houseplans. In the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region, a chronological framework is used for the cremation cemeteries from the Middle Bronze Age until the Late Iron Age based on the size, number, and presence of different types of cremation graves. Radiocarbon dating of cremated bone from the small cemetery at Lummen-Meldert dates this site to the Late Bronze Age. These results challenge the hypothesis that small cremation cemeteries with mostly “unurned” graves date to the Middle Iron Age. The cremation graves without an urn and grave goods are a specific category that has to be dated by absolute dating methods such as14C. The results also suggest a connection with the funerary traditions in the Atlantic region.

Challenging the Traditional Chronological Framework of Funerary Rituals in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt Region: 14C Results from the Site of Lummen-Meldert (Belgium)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy De Mulder ◽  
Guido Creemers ◽  
Mark Van Strydonck
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Size Number ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
Dating Methods ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Absolute Dating ◽  
Middle Iron Age

Archaeologists tend to use typochronological frameworks to date their sites. These are based on the appearance of certain cultural markers such as grave types or houseplans. In the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region, a chronological framework is used for the cremation cemeteries from the Middle Bronze Age until the Late Iron Age based on the size, number, and presence of different types of cremation graves. Radiocarbon dating of cremated bone from the small cemetery at Lummen-Meldert dates this site to the Late Bronze Age. These results challenge the hypothesis that small cremation cemeteries with mostly “unurned” graves date to the Middle Iron Age. The cremation graves without an urn and grave goods are a specific category that has to be dated by absolute dating methods such as 14C. The results also suggest a connection with the funerary traditions in the Atlantic region.

scholarly journals Animal husbandry from the Middle Bronze Age through the Iron Age in the Shephelah—faunal remains from the new excavations at Lachish

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shyama Vermeersch ◽  
Simone Riehl ◽  
Britt M. Starkovich ◽  
Katharina Streit ◽  
Felix Höflmayer
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Faunal Analysis ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
Subsistence Strategies ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Synchronic Comparison

AbstractLachish (Tell ed-Duweir) is located in the southern part of the Judean foothills, known as the Shephelah, and is one of the larger and most extensively excavated multi-period sites in the southern Levant. We present the faunal results of the first three seasons of the most recent excavations, the Austrian-Israeli Expedition to Tel Lachish. The expedition focusses on two areas of the tell encompassing the Middle Bronze Age III through the Iron Age II, area S (deep section) and area P (palace area). The aims for the faunal analysis are threefold: comparing the results between the two areas, seeing how our results compare to previous analyses, and comparing Lachish to other synchronous sites in the Shephelah. We observe differences in subsistence strategies between the areas in addition to diachronic differences. Ovicaprids dominate all assemblages, but we see shifts in the sheep to goat ratio and mortality profiles through time indicating changes in subsistence strategies. Our new results largely agree with the results from previous analyses, showing the value of previous studies and their potential compatibility with newer research. A synchronic comparison of Lachish within the Shephelah shows the occupants of the site were largely self-sufficient but possibly engaged in an exchange of resources in the vicinity.

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.

The Expansion of Settlement (1100–250 BC)

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Colin Haselgrove ◽  
Marc Vander Linden ◽  
Leo Webley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Main Metal ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Metal Artefacts ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

The previous chapter addressed an important period of change, but this would not have been apparent to the scholars who devised the Three Age Model. The most important developments between 1600 and 1100 BC were most clearly evidenced in the ancient landscape and registered to a smaller extent by the metalwork finds on which the traditional scheme depends. The same is true of the evidence considered in this chapter, for it cuts across the conventional distinction between the Bronze and Iron Ages. It begins in a period when bronze was still the main metal, but also considers a time when a new kind of raw material was employed. Similarly, it ends part way through the phase usually characterized as ‘Iron Age’, so that the drastic economic and political transformations that communities experienced in the late first millennium BC can be considered separately. These provide the subject of Chapter 7. By the late Bronze Age, evidence for settlements and houses is fairly abundant, and some sparsely used parts of the landscape were occupied for the first. This expansion—which continued into the Iron Age—is associated with new agricultural techniques and a wider range of crops. The nature of settlements suggests an emphasis on small household groups as the basic unit of society. New kinds of focal sites also appeared, which may have been used for assemblies and public ceremony. They include hillforts in upland regions, while other communal centres may have played the same role in lowland areas. Meanwhile, the trend towards less elaborate burial practices that had begun during the middle Bronze Age spread increasingly widely. Investment in funerary monuments was generally modest, and mortuary rituals displayed social distinctions in relatively subtle ways. While prestige objects were rarely placed with the dead, the deposition of metalwork in rivers and other places in the landscape increased. These metal artefacts have provided the basis for studies of long-distance interaction, and their styles have been used to define three geographically extensive traditions, in Atlantic, Nordic, and central Europe. Other ritual practices that developed during this time involved feasting and cooking.

A Life Less Ordinary: the Ritualization of the Domestic Sphere in Later Prehistoric Europe

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Archaeology ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
The Past

This article, which is based on the fourteenth McDonald Lecture, considers two tensions in contemporary archaeology. One is between interpretations of specific structures, monuments and deposits as the result of either ‘ritual’ or ‘practical’ activities in the past, and the other is between an archaeology that focuses on subsistence and adaptation and one that emphasizes cognition, meaning, and agency. It suggests that these tensions arise from an inadequate conception of ritual itself. Drawing on recent studies of ritualization, it suggests that it might be more helpful to consider how aspects of domestic life took on special qualities in later prehistoric Europe. The discussion is based mainly on Neolithic enclosures and other monuments, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites and the Viereckschanzen of central Europe. It may have implications for field archaeology as well as social archaeology, and also for those who study the formation of the archaeological record.

Dating Gordion: the Timing and Tempo of Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Political Transformation

Radiocarbon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-514
Author(s):  
Lisa Kealhofer ◽  
Peter Grave ◽  
Mary M Voigt
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Central Anatolia ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Subsequent Formation ◽  
Absolute Dating ◽  
Type Site ◽  
Key Events

ABSTRACTGordion has long served as an archaeological type site for Iron Age central Anatolia and provided pioneering radiocarbon (14C) determinations as reported in the first issue ofRadiocarbon(1959). Absolute dating of key events at Gordion continue to reshape our understanding of regional development and interaction in the Iron Age, with a major conflagration in the late 9th BCE century at this site the most recent focus of attention (DeVries et al. 2003). Here we present the latest series of14C determinations for Gordion from Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age contexts. Fifteen absolute dates provide a critical new framework for establishing the timing and tempo of cultural transformation from the collapse of the Hittite Empire through to the subsequent formation of the Phrygian polity that dominated central Anatolia from the 9th to the 7th c. BCE. This chronometric revision transforms our perspective on the LBA/EIA transition at this site: from disengagement from Hittite hegemony in the 12th c. BCE, to the precocious emergence of the Phrygian capital in the early 9th c. BCE.

The ceramics of centralisation and dissolution: a case study from Rough Cilicia

2007 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 141-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.N. Postgate
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Far East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Control ◽  
The West ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Bronze Age

AbstractStarting from Kilise Tepe in the Göksu valley north of Silifke two phenomena in pre-Classical Anatolian ceramics are examined. One is the appearance at the end of the Bronze Age, or beginning of the Iron Age, of hand-made, often crude, wares decorated with red painted patterns. This is also attested in different forms at Boğazköy, and as far east as Tille on the Euphrates. In both cases it has been suggested that it may reflect the re-assertion of earlier traditions, and other instances of re-emergent ceramic styles are found at the end of the Bronze Age, both elsewhere in Anatolia and in Thessaly. The other phenomenon is the occurrence of ceramic repertoires which seem to coincide precisely with the frontiers of a polity. In Anatolia this is best recognised in the case of the later Hittite Empire. The salient characteristics of ‘Hittite’ shapes are standardised, from Boğazköy at the centre to Gordion in the west and Korucu Tepe in the east. This is often tacitly associated with Hittite political control, but how and why some kind of standardisation prevails has not often been addressed explicitly. Yet this is a recurring phenomenon, and in first millennium Anatolia similar standardised wares have been associated with both the Phrygian and the Urartian kingdoms. This paper suggests that we should associate it directly with the administrative practices of the regimes in question.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document