Hoarding and the Deposition of Metalwork from the Bronze Age to the 20th Century: A British Perspective. Edited by J. Naylor and R. Bland . BAR British Series 615. Archaeopress, Oxford, 2015. Pp. v + 202, illus (incl. col.), maps. Price: £49.50. isbn 978 1 407313 83 2. - Late Iron Age Gold Hoards from the Low Countries and the Caesarian Conquest of Northern Gaul. Edited by N. Roymans , G. Creemers and S. Scheers . Amsterdam Archaeological Studies 18. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam / Gallo-Roman Museum, Tongeren, 2012. Pp. vii + 239, illus (incl. col.), maps. Price: €70.00. isbn 978 9 089643 49 0 (AUP); 978 9 074605 50 2 (Tongeren). - The Beau Street Hoard. By E. Ghey . The British Museum Press, London, 2014. Pp. 48, illus (incl. col.), maps, plans. Price: £4.99. isbn 978 0714118 26 0.

Britannia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 428-430
Author(s):  
Rachel Wilkinson
2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Javier Rodriguez-Corral

During the Late Iron Age, monumental stone statues of warriors were established in the northwest of Iberia, ‘arming’ landscapes that ultimately encouraged specific types of semiotic ideologies in the region. This paper deals with how these statues on rocks not only worked in the production of liminality in the landscape – creating transitional zones on it –, but also how they functioned as liminal gateways to the past, absorbing ideas from the Bronze Age visual culture up to the Late Iron Age one, in order to create emotional responses to a new socio-political context.


AmS-Varia ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Marianne Lönn

This article discusses the meaning of stones and the practice of gathering stones, in graves, clearance cairns and stone-covered hillocks. The emphases are on stone-covered hillocks and their long-term usage (up to 1500 years), analyzed using the concept of longue durée. In this paper I propose that the stones in themselves have a cultic meaning as well as the actions, i.e. the remodeling of hillocks and the placing of clearance cairns among graves. In this, I see a connection between stone-covered hillocks, graves and clearance cairns. The underlying concept is a stable, but slowly changing, prehistoric religious tradition that lasted from the Bronze Age to the Migration Period and possibly also through the Late Iron Age. A basic change in this does not take place until the coming of Christianity in the Medieval Period. The reason that Medieval and later clearance cairns were placed together with graves is probably due to their similar appearance.


Author(s):  
Gerald Cadogan

Mervyn Popham was a questioning, quiet person, driven by an uncompromising honesty to find the truth, and always ready to doubt accepted explanations or any theory-driven archaeology for which he could find no evidential basis. He was probably the most percipient archaeologist of the Late Bronze Age of Crete and the Aegean to have worked in the second half of the 20th century, and became almost as important in the archaeology of the Early Iron Age, which succeeded the Bronze Age. In his archaeology he took an analytical-empirical approach to what he saw as fundamentally historical problems, reaching unprecedented peaks of intelligent, and commonsensical, refinement.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Newton ◽  
Kate Domett

This chapter synthesizes documented evidence of intentional dental modification in prehistoric mainland Southeast Asia. Through previously published work, potential reasons for the practice of ablation and filing are explored, examining archaeological sites spanning the Neolithic to late Iron Age. Cases of intentional ablation have been documented throughout prehistoric Southeast Asia, however, evidence to date indicates cases have been limited to Neolithic and Iron Age sites with only four tentative cases of intentional ablation in the Bronze Age. The increasing number of samples from newly documented sites in Cambodia, including the first evidence of filing in this region, and previously documented evidence from other parts of Southeast Asia, such as Thailand and Vietnam, allows the opportunity to systematically examine ablation and filing patterns from a regional perspective and put it into worldwide context.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Stijn Arnoldussen ◽  
Hannie Steegstra

Discussions on the presence, nature and apparel of (presumed) European Bronze Age warriors has traditionally focused on weapon graves, armour and rock art – the latter two regrettably absent in the Low Countries. This means that for this area, warrior identities need to be reconstructed on the basis of funerary assemblages that may even lack actual weapons. Since Paul Treherne’s seminal (1995) paper, particularly razors and tweezers have been recognized as reflecting the personal care typical of the warrior life-style. In this paper, Bronze Age and Early Iron Age razors and tweezers from the Netherlands are discussed as part of their wider West-European distribution. Razors of different shapes (pegged, tanged, symmetrical and asymmetrical) can be shown to date to different phases in the period of c. 1600 – 600 BC. Moreover, in variations in handle and blade shape, regional groups and supra-regional contact networks can be identified. Tweezers too show ample diachronic and regional variations: in addition to presumably local types, Nordic and Hallstatt imports are discernible. Razors and tweezers were part of toilet sets that differed in meaning and composition within the time-frame of 1600-600 BC. We argue that the short-hafted awls frequently found in association may represent tattooing needles. In the Hallstatt period, nail-cutters and ear-scoops complement the set (now often suspended from a ring and worn in leather pouches closed with rings or beads).Contextual analysis of the objects shows that razors could be placed in hoards, yet most originate from graves. Several urnfield razors (and some tweezers) originate from funerary monuments that must have stood out for their age, shape or dimensions (e.g. older tombs, long-bed barrows), hinting at a special status for those interred with the toilet sets. Remarkably, the association of razors and tweezers with weapons is infrequent for the Low Countries during most phases of the Bronze Age. Associations with swords are limited to the Ploughrescant-Ommerschans dagger from the famous Ommerschans hoard and the Gündlingen sword from the Oss chieftain’s grave. This means that in the Low Countries, a pars-pro-toto approach to the expression of warrior identity prevailed – one in which the interment of toilet sets instrumental to the expression of warrior identity took precedence over the interment of weaponry.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Javier Rodriguez-Corral

During the Late Iron Age, monumental stone statues of warriors were established in the northwest of Iberia, ‘arming’ landscapes that ultimately encouraged specific types of semiotic ideologies in the region. This paper deals with how these statues on rocks not only worked in the production of liminality in the landscape – creating transitional zones on it –, but also how they functioned as liminal gateways to the past, absorbing ideas from the Bronze Age visual culture up to the Late Iron Age one, in order to create emotional responses to a new socio-political context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-132
Author(s):  
Mateusz Jaeger ◽  
Jakub Niebieszczański ◽  
Mateusz Stróżyk

Abstract Thus far, prehistoric rock art has not been featured in the discourse concerned with the archaeology of Poland due to the absence of finds there belonging to this category. This text presents the very first identified specimens of cup marks in the present-day territory of Poland; all differ significantly in terms of context, which consequently determines the potential for interpreting the finds. The first is a boulder which was put in place as grave-marker at a Wielbark Culture site dated to Late Iron Age. The find appears to overlap with the general pattern of regularities observed in the funerary rituals of the Wielbark communities. The second instance is an isolated boulder with cup marks – most likely positioned ex situ – discovered at Wilcza (Greater Poland). Regarding the latter, available information contributes little to determination of chronology of the cup marks and the original location of the boulder in the landscape, thus obscuring the primary function of the feature. The third boulder yielded the most contextual information; it is situated within a complex of numerous Middle Bronze Age barrows in Smoszew, at a site which constitutes a part of the Bronze Age cultural landscape that has survived in the Krotoszyn Forest in southern Greater Poland. For the authors, this very feature served as a basis for a contextual and chronological analysis of rock art which has hitherto remained unknown in Poland. In light of obtained data, the cup-marked boulder from Smoszew should be approached as an element of the funerary landscape created by the Tumulus Culture community and evidence of broader cultural processes which linked particular regions of Europe in the Bronze Age.


Author(s):  
Elsa Neveu ◽  
Véronique Zech-Matterne ◽  
Cécile Brun ◽  
Marie-France Dietsch-Sellami ◽  
Frédérique Durand ◽  
...  

2011 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 251-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Armit ◽  
Rick Schulting ◽  
Christopher J. Knüsel ◽  
Ian A.G. Shepherd

Excavations at the Sculptor's Cave (north-east Scotland) during the 1930s and 1970s yielded evidence for activity in the Late Bronze Age, Late Iron Age, and early medieval periods, including a substantial human skeletal assemblage with apparent evidence for the removal, curation, and display of human heads. The present project, combining osteological analysis and a programme of AMS dating, aimed to place the surviving human remains from the site into their appropriate chronological context and to relate them to the broader sequence of human activity in the cave. A series of AMS determinations has demonstrated that the human remains fall into two distinct chronological groups separated by a millennium or more: one from the Mid-Late Bronze Age and one from the Late Iron Age. Osteological analysis suggests that while the Bronze Age group may, as previously suggested, include the remains of the heads of juveniles formerly displayed at the cave entrance, this was not the sole mechanism by which human remains arrived in the cave at this time. The Late Iron Age group provides evidence for decapitation and other violent treatments within the cave itself.


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