The emergence of different social systems in Early Bronze Age Anatolia: urbanisation versus centralisation

2007 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 131-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Özlem Çevik
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
High Mountain ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Transformational Process ◽  
Cultural Regionalism ◽  
City States ◽  
River Valleys

AbstractThe second half of the third millennium BC has generally been accepted as the period in which urbanisation took place in Anatolia. Prominent sites of this period are described by scholars as ‘towns’, ‘town-like settlements’, ‘city-states’ and ‘proto-city-states’. The use of a variety of terms for the same type of site implies that there is no clear consensus on the conceptualisation of this transformational process. It is generally accepted that, from the Neolithic period onwards, Anatolia did not display a great degree of cultural homogeneity, both in terms of material culture and social systems. The topography of Anatolia is divided by deep river valleys and high mountain chains, and this may well have been a crucial factor in stimulating cultural regionalism. This article suggests that Early Bronze Age populations in Anatolia did not just experience the process of urbanisation, but also centralisation. Furthermore, it has been argued that certain areas of Anatolia at this time experienced neither urbanisation nor centralisation, but remained rural. This paper utilises archaeological evidence, such as settlement patterns, settlement layouts and types of material culture that have social implications, to explain these phenomena.

The Forgotten Child of the Wider Corded Ware Family: Russian Fatyanovo Culture in Context

2020 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 65-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerkko Nordqvist ◽  
Volker Heyd
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Volga River ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
European Part Of Russia ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
River Valleys

The Fatyanovo Culture, together with its eastern twin, the Balanovo Culture, forms part of the pan-European Corded Ware Complex. Within that complex, it represents its eastern expansion to the catchment of the Upper and Middle Volga River in the European part of Russia. Its immediate roots are to be found in the southern Baltic States, Belarus, and northern Ukraine (the Baltic and Middle-Dnepr Corded Ware Cultures), from where moving people spread the culture further east along the river valleys of the forested flatlands. By doing so, they introduced animal husbandry to these regions. Fatyanovo Culture is predominately recognised through its material culture imbedded in its mortuary practices. Most aspects of every-day life remain unknown. The lack of an adequate absolute chronological framework has thus far prevented the verification of its internal cultural dynamics while overall interaction proposed also on typo-stratigraphical grounds suggests a contemporaneity with other representations of the Corded Ware Complex in Europe. Fatyanovo Culture is formed by the reverse movement to the (north-)east of the Corded Ware Complex, itself established in the aftermath of the westbound spread of Yamnaya populations from the steppes. It thus represents an important link between west and east, pastoralists and last hunter-gatherers, and the 3rd and the 2nd millennia bc. Through its descendants (including Abashevo, Sintashta, and Andronovo Cultures) it becomes a key component in the development of the wider cultural landscape of Bronze Age Eurasia.

TRAVELLING WITH THE POTTER'S WHEEL IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE AEGEAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 59-104
Author(s):  
Maria Choleva
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Linear Diffusion ◽  
Craft Knowledge ◽  
Technological Tradition ◽  
Technological Study ◽  
Comparative Examination ◽  
Shed Light

By adopting the chaîne opératoire approach as a dynamic theoretical and methodological framework for studying ancient technologies, this paper investigates the modalities behind the appearance of the potter's wheel in the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age II (c. 2550–2200 bc). Based on the comparative examination of ceramic assemblages from different Aegean sites, an extended technological study has been carried out in order to track the earliest wheel-made pottery and reconstruct the craft behaviours perpetrated by the use of the potter's wheel across the Aegean. The paper presents the results of this multi-site study and aims to (a) trace out the wheel-based technological traditions, (b) explore the contexts of the learning and transmission of the new tool, (c) shed light on the connectivity among Aegean and western Anatolian communities that enabled the transfer of the new craft knowledge, and, finally, (d) bring into view the mechanisms behind its emergence and appropriation. By considering technologies as representing an entire social system of knowing, perceiving and acting on the material world, it will be argued that the spread of the potter's wheel in the Aegean does not reflect a moment of linear diffusion of a technological innovation, adopted thanks to certain techno-functional advantages. Instead, it discloses the resilience of social identities and values embedded through the practical engagement of individuals in the production of their material culture. The potter's wheel, in fact, emerges as a socially and culturally mediated practice, specific to small groups of potters trained within a technological tradition of Anatolian origin, performing their craft in the Aegean socio-cultural milieus. Furthermore, its transfer reveals a multidirectional and dynamic crossing of material cultures that designated a navigable world where traditions, objects and people travelled, mixed and merged in unpredictable ways.

scholarly journals Ancient genomes reveal social and genetic structure of Late Neolithic Switzerland

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Furtwängler ◽  
A. B. Rohrlach ◽  
Thiseas C. Lamnidis ◽  
Luka Papac ◽  
Gunnar U. Neumann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Population Genetic ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Genetic Changes ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Southern Central

Abstract Genetic studies of Neolithic and Bronze Age skeletons from Europe have provided evidence for strong population genetic changes at the beginning and the end of the Neolithic period. To further understand the implications of these in Southern Central Europe, we analyze 96 ancient genomes from Switzerland, Southern Germany, and the Alsace region in France, covering the Middle/Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age. Similar to previously described genetic changes in other parts of Europe from the early 3rd millennium BCE, we detect an arrival of ancestry related to Late Neolithic pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Switzerland as early as 2860–2460 calBCE. Our analyses suggest that this genetic turnover was a complex process lasting almost 1000 years and involved highly genetically structured populations in this region.

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.

scholarly journals RADIOCARBON DATING THE 3RD MILLENNIUM BC IN THE CENTRAL BALKANS: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE EARLY BRONZE AGE SEQUENCE

Radiocarbon ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1163-1191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulatović ◽  
Maja Gori ◽  
Marc Vander Linden
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Pannonian Basin ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
Age Sequence ◽  
Funerary Treatment

ABSTRACTLong-standing archaeological narratives suggest that the 3rd millennium cal BC is a key period in Mediterranean and European prehistory, characterized by the development of extensive interaction networks. In the Balkans for instance, the identification of such interactions relies solely upon typological arguments associated with conflicting local terminologies. Through a combination of 25 new radiocarbon (14C) dates and re-examination of the existing documentation, this paper defines the absolute chronology for groups which were previously only broadly framed into the 3rd millennium BC central Balkans (modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia). These absolute dates allow us to establish with greater clarity the chronological relations between different cultural groups that represent the main cultural units of the central Balkans sequence for the 3rd millennium cal BC: Coţofeni-Kostolac, Bubanj-Hum II, Belotić-Bela Crkva, Armenochori, and Bubanj Hum III. When comparing together the chronologies for material culture, funerary treatment of the body, and funerary architecture, there are no easily discernible patterns. We observe instead a complex mix of traits criss-crossing over a wide area encompassing the Pannonian basin, the central Balkans and the Greek peninsula.

Changing Patterns in Objects and in Perception

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Over Time

The preceding chapters examined three categories of objects—pottery, fibulae, and swords with their scabbards—and two ways of manipulating objects—arrangements in graves and performances involving human bodily action with objects—over the two-thousand-year period from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The focus has been on visual aspects of objects and the changes in their visual character over time. This chapter synthesizes the material laid out in chapters 5 through 10. It draws attention to the consistency of the patterns in the visual character of material culture in each of the three main periods of time considered in this book, and to the character of the changes that took place in the fifth century BC and in the second century BC.

Migration and ethnicity in prehistoric Cyprus: Technology ashabitus

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Frankel
Keyword(s):  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Technology And Economy ◽  
Culture Technology

During the third millennium cal BC, there were major changes in many aspects of Cypriot material culture, technology and economy which characterize the division between the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age on the island. Many innovations can be traced to Anatolian antecedents. These include a very wide array of domestic as well as agricultural and industrial technologies. Their nature and range make it possible to argue strongly for the movement of people to the island, rather than for other mechanisms of technology transfer and culture change. This identification of an intrusive group, with distinctive patterns of behaviour (habitus), opens up questions of prehistoric ethnicity, and the processes by which the initial maintenance of different lifeways by indigenous and settler communities eventually gave way to a common cultural system.

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.

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