A Hundred Years of Mycenaean Archaeology

1978 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Sp. Iakovidis
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Coherent Picture

SummaryA survey of progress in Mycenaean archaeology during the century since Schliemann's address to the Society on 22 March 1877 shows that we now have a coherent picture of material culture and historical events in Late Bronze Age Greece between 1500 and 1100 B.C. Having outstripped Schliemann's faith in Homer and Arthur Evans's hypothesis of a Minoan conquest from Crete, Mycenaean archaeology can now be traced back to the Middle Bronze Age before the introduction of the shaft graves, when the Achaeans had already made contact by sea with Egypt and other advanced centres in the East Mediterranean. The volcanic eruption of c. 1500 B.C, which left the mainland unscathed, enabled them to expand their influence and power to Crete and throughout the Aegean so that by the thirteenth century Mycenaean culture was ubiquitous, though political and territorial divisions remained. Finds of Linear B tablets enable us to form a distinct picture of the political, social, and economic life of the period. The close relationships between Helladic and Minoan art and religion have been systematically studied, while the Homeric poems may describe only one episode, the siege of Troy, in a series of attempts by the Achaeans to establish themselves on the coast of Asia Minor during the temporary collapse of Hittite power. By the end of the thirteenth century Mycenaean centres were being abandoned and destroyed, partly because of the breakdown of their trading links in the East Mediterranean with centres overrun by the Land-and-Sea Peoples, and the civilization as a whole had collapsed.

Jaffa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Isaac
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Eastern Shore ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The City

The city of Joppe/Jaffa/Yafo on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, immediately south of modern Tel Aviv, has a long history of importance as an urban centre, from the Middle Bronze Age onward until the 20th century. It was one of the few sites along the Palestinian coast that had a usable anchorage. The present article focuses on the Hellenistic, Roman, and late Roman periods, giving a brief survey of the major events, the political, social, and administrative history, and the major sources of information.

scholarly journals Negotiating Imperialism and Resistance in Late Bronze Age Ugarit: The Rise of Alphabetic Cuneiform

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-199
Author(s):  
Philip J. Boyes
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Near East ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Writing System ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
Local Language ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The City

Ugarit was a highly cosmopolitan, multilingual and multiscript city at the intersection of several major Late Bronze Age political and cultural spheres of influence. In the thirteenth centurybc, the city adopted a new alphabetic cuneiform writing system in the local language for certain uses alongside the Akkadian language, script and scribal practices that were standard throughout the Near East. Previous research has seen this as ‘vernacularization’, in response to the city's encounter with Mesopotamian culture. Recent improvements in our understanding of the date of Ugarit's adoption of alphabetic cuneiform render this unlikely, and this paper instead argues that we should see this vernacularization as part of Ugarit's negotiation of, and resistance to, their encounter with Hittite imperialism. Furthermore, it stands as a specific, Ugaritian, manifestation of similar trends apparent across a number of East Mediterranean societies in response to the economic and political globalism of Late Bronze Age élite culture. As such, these changes in Ugaritian scribal practice have implications for our wider understanding of the end of the Late Bronze Age.

scholarly journals Christianity and Islam under the Sultans of Konia

1913 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 191-197
Author(s):  
F. W. Hasluck
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Social ◽  
Artistic Achievement ◽  
History Of

At the first appearance of the Ottomans, towards the close of the thirteenth century, Christian and Turk had already been living for two centuries side by side in the interior of Asia Minor under the rule of the Seljouk Sultans of Roum. The political history of this period is still emerging from obscurity: the social and religious history has hardly been touched. The Byzantine historians, concerned only incidentally with provinces already in partibus, give us no more than hints, and we have none of those personal and intimate records which are apt to tell us much more of social conditions than the most elaborate chronicle.The golden age of the Sultanate of Roum is undoubtedly the reign of Ala-ed-din I. (1219–1236), whose capital, Konia, still in its decay bears witness by monument and inscription to the culture and artistic achievement of his time. Ala-ed-din was a highly-educated man and an enlightened ruler. He was familiar with Christianity, having spent eleven years in exile at Constantinople. One of his predecessors, Kaikhosru I. (1192–6, 1204–10) who likewise spent an exile in Christendom, nearly became a Christian and married a Christian wife.

Traditions of Metal-Working in the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Britain: Part I

1963 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 258-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Britton
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Metal Working ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The One

This paper is concerned with the earliest use in Britain of copper and bronze, from the first artifacts of copper in the later Neolithic until the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age, as marked by palstaves and haft-flanged axes. It does not attempt to deal with all the material, but instead certain classes of evidence have been chosen to illustrate some of the main styles of workmanship. These groups have been considered both from the point of view of their archaeology, and of the technology they imply.Such an approach requires on the one hand that the artifacts are sorted into types, their associations in graves and hoards studied, their distributions plotted, and finally a consideration of the evidence for their affinities and chronology. On the other hand there are questions also of interest that need a different standpoint. Of what metals or alloys are the objects made? Can their sources be located? How did the smiths set about their work? Over what regions was production carried out? If we are to understand as much as we might of the life of prehistoric times, then surely we should look at material culture from as many view-points as possible—in this case, the manner and setting of its production as well as its classification.

Landscapes of the body: Burials of the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Louise Stig Sørensen ◽  
Katharina Rebay-Salisbury
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Prehistoric Landscapes ◽  
Body Practices

Middle Bronze Age Hungary provides an opportunity to investigate prehistoric ‘landscapes of the body’, as perceptions and attitudes to the body affect burial practices and other body practices, including the wearing of dress and the use of pottery. This article explores the cultural diversity expressed by the roughly contemporary and neighbouring groups of the Encrusted Ware, Vatya, and Füzesabony Cultures. Amongst others, differences between the three groups are articulated through their burials (scattered cremations, urn burials as well as crouched inhumations) and the diverse use of material culture. At the same time, despite formal differences in the burials, the analysis shows that cremations and inhumations in this area share a number of characteristics, and it is the other practices through which the dead body is manipulated that are the primary means of expressing regional differences. Simultaneously, whilst being a means of formulating understandings of the deceased body, burial practices are also tied into subtle differences in lifestyles, daily routines and regional subsistence strategies, as the landscapes of the living provide metaphors, know-how and practical understanding.

New Evidence for the Early History of Palaepaphos

1983 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 229-233
Author(s):  
F. G. Maier
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
New Evidence

Material from earlier as well as recent excavations at Palaepaphos is considered; it is now clear that a considerable quantity of pottery was imported from the Aegean during the thirteenth century and earlier; this is summarily described. Evidence for a Chalcolithic settlement is analysed. Finally, pottery from the intervening Middle Bronze Age is advanced as an indication of occupation at Kouklia in MC II–MC III times.

The burden of being Mycenaean

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis A. De Mita
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Objective Assessment ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
Classical World ◽  
Theoretical Evolution ◽  
City States ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Analytical Frameworks ◽  
Highly Evolved

Van Wijngaarden offers an important and instructive attempt to re-situate the study of Bronze Age ‘imports’ away from the dominance of prestige commodity studies, using the particularly thorny example of Mycenaean ceramics. Traditional approaches, as van Wijngaarden points out, have tended to assign a uniformity of value and unchallenged prestige status to all Mycenaean imports. The reason for this reflexive recourse to prestige in the presence of Mycenaean pottery has more perhaps to do with the evolution of the discipline of archaeology in the East Mediterranean and a desire to find a precursor to the highly evolved city states of the Classical world than to any objective assessment of the objects themselves. Analytical frameworks which contextualize imports and exotica into the greater scheme of a robust and diverse material culture are critical steps in the development of the theoretical evolution of the study of the Late Bonze Age. However, van Wijngaarden's efforts also illustrate the methodological challenges encountered when isolating a single subcategory of artefact for examination. The blame lies not so much with van Wijngaarden's analysis as with the problem of what can be said to constitute value in a prehistoric context and how value, once defined, can be kept separate from other interrelated concepts.

Homer and History: Iliad 9.381-4

Mnemosyne ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Economic Climate ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe description of Orkhomenos and Egyptian Thebes in Akhilleus' famous comparison at Iliad 9.381-4 seems to reflect the political and economic climate of the Late Bronze Age, and not the seventh century as Walter Burkert has argued in an influential article (1976). A Mycenaean context is indicated by two factors: (1) the idea that wealth 'goes into' (πoτινíσεται, 9.381) a city fits well with Mycenaean economics, but is individual within the Homeric poems; (2) the history of the thirteenth century explains both the onomastic equation between Egyptian and Boiotian Thebes and the replacement of the latter by the former in the comparison.

scholarly journals Bronze Age and Iron Age Archaeology at Thainstone Business Park, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Sue McGalliard ◽  
Donald Wilson ◽  
Laura Bailey ◽  
H E M Cool ◽  
Gemma Cruickshanks ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Excavation ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Age Structures

Headland Archaeology (UK) Ltd was commissioned by Axiom Project Services to undertake an archaeological excavation in advance of a commercial development at Thainstone Business Park, Aberdeenshire. Excavation identified the remains of a Middle Bronze Age roundhouse and a contemporary urned cremation cemetery. Evidence of Late Bronze Age cremation practices was also identified. A large roundhouse and souterrain dominated the site in the 1st or 2nd century ad. Material culture associated with the Iron Age structures suggested a degree of status to the occupation there.

The formation of collective, political and cultural memory in the Middle Bronze Age: foundation and termination rituals at Toprakhisar Höyük

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 77-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Akar ◽  
Demet Kara
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Near East ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Community Living ◽  
The Political ◽  
Administrative Structure ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

AbstractConstructing and deconstructing public spaces in second-millennium BC Anatolia, the Near East and the Levant was not only a collaborative physical act but also involved deeply embodied ritual symbolism. This symbolism is materialised in the practice of conducting public foundation and termination rituals that unified individual memories in space and time, transforming the physical act into a collective memory: a process that contributed to the formation of political and cultural memory. The recent rescue excavations conducted by the Hatay Archaeological Museum at the hinterland site of Toprakhisar Höyük in Altinözü (in the foothills above the Amuq valley) add to the understanding of the practice of foundation and termination rituals during the Middle Bronze Age and how these moments may have contributed to the political and cultural memory of a rural community living away from the centre. The practice of foundation/termination rituals is archaeologically documented by caches of artefacts from votive contexts stratigraphically linked to the construction and termination of a Middle Bronze Age administrative structure.

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