Domestic architecture in the Early Bronze Age of western Anatolia: the row-houses of Troy I

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 17-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariya Ivanova
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Vernacular Architecture ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Western Anatolia ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
The Social ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors ◽  
Row Houses

AbstractExcavators have put forward opposing interpretations of the architectural sequence at the Early Bronze Age site of Troy. C.W. Blegen suggested that freestanding ‘megaron’ houses determined the visual pattern of the earliest settlement, while M.O. Korfmann compared Troy I to the circular layout of the Early Bronze Age site at Demircihüyük (the ‘Anatolian settlement plan’). Post-excavation analysis of the archaeological record from the excavations (1987–1992) in ‘Schliemann's Trench’ at Troy suggests a modification of the views of both Blegen and Korfmann. The local building tradition at Troy I was characterised by flat-roofed, long-room dwellings arranged in rows and sharing lateral walls. This peculiar settlement layout, recurrent at coastal and inland sites in the western part of Anatolia during the early centuries of the third millennium BC but unfamiliar at this time in the neighbouring regions of central Asia Minor and the Aegean, can be described as an Anatolian ‘row-house’ style. The present study applies the concept of vernacular architecture to the architectural record of Troy I and other contemporary ‘row-house’ sites to elucidate the social and cultural factors that shaped the domestic architectural traditions of early third-millennium western Asia Minor.

Organization of Flint Sickle Blade Production at an Early Bronze Age Workshop in Anatolia

2002 ◽  
Vol 712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt E. Hartenberger
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Complete Sequence ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
Period 2 ◽  
The Social ◽  
Titris Hoyuk ◽  
Administrative Center ◽  
Local Farmers

ABSTRACTA specialized workshop for the manufacture of flint sickle blades has recently been excavated at the site of Titris Hoyuk in southeastern Anatolia [1]. This paper will examine the sequence of production for the blades as well as the social context of this craft within the site. The workshop is the first example found containing evidence of the complete sequence of production for the ‘Canaanean blade,’ a type commonly used across the Near East in this period [2]. Since bronze was still new and relatively expensive, high-quality flint was used to manufacture sickle blades. Tabular flint was imported in the form of large slabs from several sources in the nearby hills. Specialists then prepared the blade cores, removed the blades, and then traded the final products to local farmers. A range of manufacturing debris has been found to illustrate the production sequence, including chunks of raw flint, core-shaping pieces, debitage pits, and stacks of exhausted and used cores. The large sample of over 1000 blade cores collected ensures a sizable data set for statistical analyses. Several types of raw flint were utilized for making the blades and production appears to vary slightly by these material types. The workshop is located within a household setting and is the only area within the excavated site containing debris from this craft. Spatial analyses of the types of flint used within the household workshop reveal its division into largely distinct areas for domestic versus specialist craft activities. The placement of the workshop in the suburbs far from the site's administrative center may indicate that its activities were independent of any elite. An estimate of the volume of blades produced combined with the location of the workshop at a major regional center suggest that it also supplied blades to other sites in the region.

Restoring the balance: an Early Bronze Age scale beam from Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, Lebanon

Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (329) ◽  
pp. 839-850 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Genz
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Faunal Assemblages ◽  
Economic Complexity ◽  
The People ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bc ◽  
Small Bone

The author reports an object of modest appearance but great significance — a small bone beam for weighing precious commodities. Weighing indicates the regulation of quantities for exchange or manufacture and is thus a key agent of social and economic complexity. Well-stratified and dated to the early third millennium BC, this find puts the people of the Levant among the earliest to quantify mass. We are rightly urged to inspect faunal assemblages for similarly subtle modifications of bones.

The Early Bronze Age in Southeastern Anatolia

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Tuba Ökse
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bce

This article presents data on the Early Bronze Age (EBA) of southeastern Anatolia. The EBA chronology of southeastern Anatolia is parallel to northern Syrian chronologies. The traditional EBA I-III chronology of Anatolia is based on the Tarsus sequence and the EBA I-IV chronology of northwestern Syria on the Amuq and Tell Mardikh sequences. The distribution of ceramic groups and special vessel types reflects geographical and chronological differences throughout the third millennium BCE. The relative chronologies of geographical zones and individual periods are based mainly on ceramic distributions; absolute dates obtained from radiocarbon analyses are rare.

scholarly journals The Social Role of Non-metal ‘Valuables’ in Late Bronze Age Britain

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück ◽  
Alex Davies
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
The Social

Bronze Age metal objects are widely viewed as markers of wealth and status. Items of other materials, such as jet, amber and glass, tend either to be framed in similar terms as ‘prestige goods’, or to be viewed as decorative trifles of limited research value. In this paper, we argue that such simplistic models dramatically underplay the social role and ‘agentive’ capacities of objects. The occurrence of non-metal ‘valuables’ in British Early Bronze Age graves is well-documented, but their use during the later part of the period remains poorly understood. We will examine the deposition of objects of amber, jet and jet-like materials in Late Bronze Age Britain, addressing in particular their contexts and associations as well as patterns of breakage to consider the cultural meanings and values ascribed to such items and to explore how human and object biographies were intertwined. These materials are rarely found in burials during this period but occur instead on settlements, in hoards and caves. In many cases, these finds appear to have been deliberately deposited in the context of ritual acts relating to rites of passage. In this way, the role of such objects as social agents will be explored, illuminating their changing significance in the creation of social identities and systems of value.

Figurines of the Anatolian Early Bronze Age: the assemblage from Koçumbeli-Ankara

2017 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 85-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Çiğdem Atakuman
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Comparative Review ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Third Millennium Bc

AbstractThrough analysis of a figurine assemblage from the site of Koçumbeli-Ankara, this study aims to re-evaluate the origins, meanings and functions of the Early Bronze Age (third millennium BC) anthropomorphic figurines of Anatolia. Conventional typological approaches to figurines are often focused on their origins and sex; however, such approaches hinder an understanding of the context of the norms of production, display and discard within which the figurines become more meaningful. Following an examination of breakage patterns and the decorative aspects of the Koçumbeli assemblage, a comparative review of figurine find contexts, raw materials and abstraction scales in Anatolia is provided, so that the social concerns underlying the use of these figurines can be explored. It is concluded that the origins of the figurines are difficult to pinpoint, due to the presence of similar items across a variety of regions of the Near East from the later Neolithic onwards. The sex of the figurines is equally ambiguous; while some human sexual features can be discerned, it is difficult to decide whether these features are ‘male’, ‘female’, both or beyond classification. Alternatively, the decoration, breakage and find contexts of the figurines suggest that the imagery was embedded in more complex perceptions of social status, death and social regeneration. The need for materialisation of these concerns in the form of the figurines could be related to the development of a new social landscape of interaction leading to political centralisation by the second millennium BC. Furthermore, the figurines were produced through a meaningful linking of particular raw materials and particular abstraction scales to particular use contexts, which seems to have shifted during the centralisation process.

Metals and Metallurgy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Muhly
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Molten Copper ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Western Anatolia ◽  
Late Chalcolithic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article reviews the impact of metals and metallurgy on Anatolian societies, from the first emergence of metal experimentation in the Neolithic to the full-blown metallurgical societies of the Bronze Age. Evidence suggests that Late Chalcolithic metalworkers thought of tin as a metal to be used for coating the surface of a copper artifact, presumably to imitate the appearance of silver, before they thought of adding tin to molten copper to produce bronze. During the transition from Late Chalcolithic to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, ca. 3000 BCE, the main focus of metallurgical development in Anatolia shifted from the eastern part of the country to central and western Anatolia.

The Development of Embossed Goldwork in Bronze Age Europe

2000 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Needham
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Parallel Development ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Third Millennium Bc ◽  
Craft Skills

The discovery of a pair of armlets from Lockington and the re-dating of the Mold cape, add substance to a tradition of embossed goldworking in Early Bronze Age Britain. It is seen to be distinct in morphology, distribution and decoration from the other previously defined traditions of goldworking of the Copper and Early Bronze Ages, which are reviewed here. However, a case is made for its emergence from early objects employing ‘reversible relief to execute decoration and others with small-scale corrugated morphology. Emergence in the closing stages of the third millennium BC is related also to a parallel development in the embossing of occasional bronze ornaments. Subsequent developments in embossed goldwork and the spread of the technique to parts of the Continent are summarized. The conclusions address the problem of interpreting continuity of craft skills against a very sparse record of relevant finds through time and space.

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