Late Bronze Age Greece - Søren Dietz: The Argolid at the Transition to the Mycenaean Age: Studies in the Chronology and Cultural Development in the Shaft Grave Period. Pp. 336; 93 figs, (line drawings and tables). Copenhagen: The National Museum of Denmark, Department of Near Eastern and Classical Antiquities, 1991. Paper, D. kr. 240.

1992 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-396
Author(s):  
R. A. Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Age Studies

Creating a Community

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niall Sharples
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Family Member ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Metal Detector ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
Television Programme

In the summer of 1979, when I was working on my undergraduate dissertation in the National Museum, I became involved in an interesting piece of field-work that has direct relevance to the material that we are going to examine in this chapter. A Mrs MacDonald came into the museum to enquire whether some objects she had in her possession were of any archaeological significance. She had been encouraged to make this visit by a recent television programme where the presenter discussed and exhibited objects that were similar to those in her possession. She explained to the curator that the objects had been found by a family member during ploughing and had been kept in the kitchen drawer for the last two decades, though they were often brought out for the children to play with. She then removed, from her shopping bag, a gold bracelet and a gold ‘dress fastener’ of distinctive Late Bronze Age type. This had the immediate effect of rendering the museum curator speechless—these were in the days before metal detecting had become a popular hobby, and new finds of this significance were seldom made. The most recent discovery of comparable objects was in the nineteenth century. Further discussion of the nature of the discovery revealed that the location of the find was still remembered; it was just behind the farmhouse. It was also thought that other objects were discovered at the time, but these were discarded, as they were not so interesting. As there was a possibility that objects were still present in the field it was decided that a team would be sent by the museum to explore the finds location. I was dispatched, with two other students then working in the museum, and a metal detector, purchased specially for the occasion, to see what we could find. I have to say that metal detecting must be one of the most boring pastimes ever invented. In our youthful enthusiasm, we decided to be thorough and systematic. We set out a grid that covered the area where the gold had been discovered and began work.

The Ritual Background of the Dying God in Cyprus and Syro-Palestine

1982 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
General Type ◽  
Urban Society ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Common Culture ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Roman Literature

In Frazer'sGolden Boughthe leading instance of the central figure whom he called “the dying god” was Adonis, famous from Greco-Roman literature and art but firmly localized in Semitic Phoenicia, Syria, and Cyprus. Since Frazer wrote, his other Near Eastern instances have been so transformed by increasing knowledge that it can be doubted whether they severally belong to the same type or indeed whether any general type exists. Adonis has hardly shared in these discoveries and debates, for research has emphasized instead the large developments which overtook his worship within the Greco-Roman world. Most of this research does not bear at all on the origins of Adonis, but scholars have sometimes been so bemused by the Greek elements as to forget or deny the Semitic. Everything has been called into question at different times. Such features of his myth as the boar and the myrrh tree and the incest are discounted as Greek embroidery; his peculiar festival, with mourning women and miniature gardens of lettuce, is traced to the preoccupations of Greek urban society; even the Semitic derivation derivation of his name is disputed. This Greek exclusivism cannot be sustained. All accounts of Adonis' life and lineage, and all analogies for his worship converge in the Levant — not in a single site or land, but in Phoenicia, coastal Syria and Cyprus together, lands which from the Late Bronze Age onward display a distinctive common culture, above all with respect to religion. This is where Adonis is at home, and where we may look for evidence to explain the figure of the dying god.

scholarly journals An Archaeometallurgical Explanation for the Disappearance of Egyptian and Near Eastern Cobalt-Blue Glass at the end of the Late Bronze Age

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wood ◽  
Yi-Ting Hsu
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Glass Production ◽  
Glass Frit ◽  
Ore Deposits ◽  
Western Desert ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Blue Glass ◽  
Native Silver ◽  
Cobalt Blue

A recent compositional study of Egyptian cobalt-blue glass from museum collections in Japan (18th Dynasty) and from the site of Dahshur (18th and 19th-20th Dynasties) concluded that a new source of cobalt was exploited for the later Dahshur glass, thereby suggesting that glass production continued into the Ramesside period (Abe et al. 2012). It is shown in the current article that some of this 18th Dynasty glass and the majority of the 19th-20th Dynasty glass had been recycled, not only supporting the general consensus that glass production virtually disappeared by 1250 BC, but that the cobalt source did not necessarily change. It is further proposed, however, that the generally accepted cobalt source for Egyptian glass was not the alum deposits of Egypt's Western Desert, but derived from cobaltiferous siliceous ores, possibly from central Iran. Re-analysis of the compositions of cobalt-blue glass frit found at Amarna, as well as Egyptian and Mesopotamian glass, suggests that the cobalt colourant was a by-product of silver extraction from these ores and can therefore be considered as a concentrated cobalt glass slag, which travelled in the form of a frit to glass producers who added it to locally derived base glasses and/or their precursors. Experiments conducted on ore containing cobalt-nickel arsenides with native silver demonstrate that not only can silver be extracted and that concentrated cobalt glass can be produced simply by adding a flux, but that some components of the ore partition preferentially into the silver or the glass slag, thereby weakening their associations with the other components in archaeological glass. Treating the cobalt-blue colourant as a slag composed of the gangue of a smelting system provides an explanation for the unique elevated levels of alumina and lower levels of potash found in cobalt-blue glasses, as well as providing an explanation for the cessation of cobalt exploitation at the end of the Late Bronze Age. It is suggested that the exhaustion of native silver and siliceous silver ore deposits during the Bronze Age, with argentiferous lead ores becoming the main source of silver, depleted the amount of cobalt available, thereby reducing the amount of glass produced which, in turn, led to increases in recycling during the New Kingdom period.

The Role of the Lukka People in Late Bronze Age Anatolia

Antichthon ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. Bryce
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
General Character ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western Anatolia ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Population Groups ◽  
Near Eastern

In a number of Near Eastern texts dating to the period of the Hittite New Kingdom, the term Lukka appears as a geographical and/or ethnic designation for one of the Late Bronze Age population groups of western Anatolia. Unfortunately we have no documents which deal primarily or specifically with the Lukka people; what we know of them rests essentially on incidental references in Hittite treaties, letters, prayers and historical records, along with several references in non-Hittite sources. Yet although the evidence is meagre, it still provides a relatively clear picture of the general character of the Lukka people and the role they played in the political and military affairs of Hittite Anatolia.

Early Shipbuilding in the Eastern Mediterranean

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Polzer
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Artistic Representation

This article focuses on early shipbuilding in the Eastern Mediterranean provided by shipwreck and terrestrial excavations. The study of the construction of early watercraft is mainly in the form of artistic representation. Egypt is the largest depository of early watercraft. The details of Near Eastern ships are painted on the Theban tomb of Kenamun. Hull remains from Late Bronze Age shipwrecks excavated off the coast of Turkey provide archaeological evidence for Levantine ships. The only pre-classical Aegean shipwreck to be excavated and studied by nautical archaeologists is that of a trading vessel, that sank on the southwestern Turkish coast. Greek builders strengthened their hulls transversely with internal framing comprised of preassembled “made-frames” alternating with top-timbers. The ancient seafaring cultures of the eastern Mediterranean each developed their own unique set of solutions to create elegant, sturdy, and capable boats and ships well suited to their environments and intended purposes.

scholarly journals The Spatial Dimensions of Early Mesopotamian Urbanism: The Tell Brak Suburban Survey, 2003–2006

Iraq ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Ur ◽  
Philip Karsgaard ◽  
Joan Oates
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Surface Survey ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Field Systems ◽  
Remote Sensing Methods ◽  
Final Settlement

The 2003–2006 Suburban Survey at Tell Brak investigated the spatial dimensions of the city's urban origins and evolution via intensive systematic surface survey. This report places this research in the broader context of research on Near Eastern urban origins and development, describes the survey and remote sensing methods and summarises the results, which challenge several long-held models for the timing and geographical origins of urbanism in the Near East. Urbanism at Brak coalesced over the course of several centuries in the late fifth and early fourth millennia BC, when it evolved from a series of spatially discrete settlement zones into a 130-hectare city, without the benefit of irrigated agriculture. Other urban phases occurred in the late third millennium (70 hectare) and in the Late Bronze Age (45 hectare), all with different urban morphologies. Brak's final settlement occurred in the Abbasid period, when a 14-hectare town grew around the Castellum. In addition to the timing, growth and variability of urban form at the site, the Suburban Survey also documented well preserved off-site ancient landscapes of tracks, field systems and irrigation canals.

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