The Toumba building at Lefkandi: some methodological reflections on its plan and function

2000 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 239-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jari Pakkanen ◽  
Petra Pakkanen
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Unit Length ◽  
Building Design ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Proportional Analysis ◽  
And Function ◽  
Exceptional Character

It has been argued that a foot of c. 0.30 m was used in the design of the Early Iron Age building at Lefkandi. However, deriving the foot-unit length from the preserved measurements is not statistically valid; in this case, proportional analysis is more likely to advance understanding of the building design rather than foot-standard studies. Attempts to determine the building function using direct analogical reasoning are problematic because of the exceptional character of the Toumba building. Based on the archaeological evidence of ritualised collective gatherings, however, a transformation in the communal meaning of the monument is proposed.

Material Culture and Making Visible: On the Portrayal of Philistine Gath in the Book of Samuel

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Book Of Samuel

Over the past twenty years our understanding of Philistine Gath's history (Tell es-Safl) has been transformed by what has been revealed through the site's early Iron Age remains. But what has received much less attention is the effect these ruins have on how we read references to the location within the Hebrew Bible. The intent of this study is to draw on the archaeological evidence produced from Tell es-Safl as an interpretive lens by which to consider the biblical portrayal of the site rendered in the book of Samuel, where the material traces of more amicable associations between Gath and highland populations invite us to reconsider the city's depiction in this ancient literary work.

Zebaoth – der Thronende

2006 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siegfried Kreuzer
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Development ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Hebrew Word ◽  
Basic Understanding ◽  
Administrative Center

AbstractZebaoth is the most frequent attribute for Jhwh in the Hebrew Bible. It's connotation is god's majesty and power. Yet its etymology and original meaning are still under debate. In modern research as well as in the OT, sebāot is connected with the root sābā, meaning "host". The changing identifi cations (the hosts of Israel's army, the stars as Jhwh's heavenly hosts, all of Jhwh's creation) and the modern interpretations (esp. as an abstract plural or plural of intensity) as well as the grammatical problems of the combination "Jhwh sebāot", point to the idea, that sebāot had an non-Hebrew origin and was taken over and understood in Hebrew context. The paper then takes up and advances the suggestion of M. Görg, that sebāot has an Egyptian origin, in the sense of "belonging to/owning the throne". This is explained and advanced in its linguistic development, and in relation to the political and religio-historical situation of Canaan at the turn from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, including the archaeological evidence concerning Shilo in relation to nearby Aphek, the Egyptian administrative center at that time. So, Zebaoth designates the enthroned, powerful god in his majesty; this basic understanding is held through, though understood in the light of the Hebrew word for hosts, which were identified in different—appropriate—ways.

A Past No Longer Remembered

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Narrative Prose

Chapter 4 examines the phenomenon of absence in the Hebrew Bible, or why certain early Iron Age locations do not appear in the stories told about this time period in the biblical writings. This study focuses on six locations from the early Iron Age that were of substantial significance during this era, but which are nevertheless not referred to in the Hebrew Bible. After surveying the archaeological evidence from these sites, it is maintained that the absence of these places from the biblical narrative was likely the outcome of Hebrew scribes not having access to information about these settlements, rather than an intentional act of suppressing what knowledge they had. This manner of forgetting was occasioned, it is argued here, because these particular locations had lost their cultural and political significance by the time in which past memories were being textualized by Hebrew scribes into stories of narrative prose.

The Early Iron Age Urban Forms of Cyprus

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Iacovou
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Power Centers

This chapter examines the local conditions, traditions, and forms of urban settlement in Cyprus during the Iron Age. It explains that almost to the very end of the Middle Bronze Age, Cyprus had remained a closed rural society, though it was by then completely surrounded by Mediterranean urban states and it was only by 1100 BC that new social and economic structures started to dictate the establishment and development of new population and power centers. The archaeological evidence of 800–600 BC stands testimony to the culmination of a long process of social evolution and urbanization.

scholarly journals TALISMANIC PRACTICE AT LEFKANDI: TRINKETS, BURIALS AND BELIEF IN THE EARLY IRON AGE

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan T. Arrington
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Explanatory Variable ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
And Function

Excavations at Lefkandi have dispelled much of the gloom enshrouding the Early Iron Age, revealing a community with significant disposable wealth and with connections throughout the Mediterranean. The eastern imports in particular have drawn scholarly attention, with discussion moving from questions of production and transportation to issues surrounding consumption. This article draws attention to some limitations in prevalent socio-political explanations of consumption at Lefkandi, arguing that models relying on gift-exchange, prestige-goods and elite display cannot adequately account for the distribution, chronology, find context and function of imports at Lefkandi. A study of trinkets – small but manifestly foreign imports of cheap material – offers a new perspective. An analysis of their form, context, use and meaning demonstrates that trinkets were meaningfully and deliberately deposited with children as talismans or amulets. Talismanic practice had Late Bronze Age precedents, and in the Early Iron Age was stimulated from personal contact with the Near East or Cyprus and nurtured by the unique mortuary landscape at Lefkandi. This article demonstrates the need for archaeologists to treat mortuary beliefs as a meaningful explanatory variable. Moreover, the ability of non-elite objects to convey powerful ideas has important implications for the nature and dynamics of artistic and cultural exchanges between Greece and the East in the Iron Age.

Ancestral and chthonic cults at Tenos

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 305-329
Author(s):  
Nota Kourou
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Religious Evolution ◽  
Material Evidence

This paper presents the material evidence from two neighbouring Early Iron Age sites at Xobourgo on Tenos, identified as sacred places, and comments on their religious character and evolution. The first, conventionally named the Pro-Cyclopean Sanctuary, has a purely mortuary character. It starts in the Late Protogeometric period with an ancestral cult on a pebble platform over an empty grave, continues with a number of pyre pits inside enclosure walls, and ends up with a chthonic cult at an eschara in the Late Geometric period to be replaced by a small sacred oikos in the 7th century. The second starts as an open-air shrine, named the Pre-Thesmophorion Shrine, with an eschara and a protected place for storing pithoi, and it is turned into a Demeter sanctuary, a Thesmophorion, with a small temple in the Classical period. After considering the development and phases of both sites, it is claimed that they have similar, though not identical, cultic roles. Their different architectural and religious evolution is considered as largely dependent on social changes and historical conditions. They are compared and discussed against contemporary archaeological evidence for ancestral and chthonic cults focusing on such evidence from Tenos.

scholarly journals An Overview of Southern Bohemian Hilltop Settlements from Prehistory to the Late Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 34-61
Author(s):  
Petr Menšík ◽  
Milan Menšík
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Early Stone Age ◽  
And Function

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] The Southern Bohemian Region belongs to regions where many hilltop settlements had been built since the Early Stone Age. However, the first fortified systems were built in the Late Bronze Age, as hilltops, mountain peaks, and promontories were fortified using complex systems of ramparts and ditches. This phenomenon thereafter continued into younger prehistoric periods, especially the Early Iron Age, resulting in the foundation of hilltops in the Early Middle Ages, starting with the 9th century and frequently continuing in the form of castles and manor houses built in the Middle Ages and the Modern Period. This paper is not only an attempt to summarize and survey the use of hilltop sites and the continuity of settlements but also an effort to state their classification, characteristics, and function considering their practical, social and symbolical roles, which can be detected in both prehistoric (sophisticated fortifications with no practical use, relocation) and medieval (show of power, the question of defence) heritage.

scholarly journals Continuatio, Renovatio and Innovatio: The birth of the Doric temple

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 9-38
Author(s):  
Erik Østby
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Retaining Wall ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Temple

The origin of the Doric temple can be explained as a result of a creative process based on traditions and elements from Bronze Age culture. The cella, based on a house type which can be traced from the Mycenaean palace “megara” back to prehistoric periods, may have been modelled on Mycenaean buildings of this type still preserved in the early Iron Age and used for religious purposes; there is some evidence for such situations at Eleusis and Tiryns. The Doric formal apparatus of columns and epistyle is explained as a conscious imitation of Mycenaean decorative architecture still visible in the eight and seventh centuries, initially transposed to wooden architecture. The peristasis reflects ancient religious associations connected with the columns, which when surrounding the temple make its religious status and function evident, even if only the flanks or rear of the building can be seen when the sanctuary is approached. A case can be made for pin-pointing the new synthesis to the Heraion at Argos in the Late Geometric period, where the topographical situation and the location close to the impressive monuments at Mycenae, and the desire to emulate these monuments (demonstrated by the retaining wall of the upper platform datable to this period) together created favourable circumstances for such an invention. In this case, the old temple of Hera may have been the first truly Doric and peripteral temple, dating perhaps as early as the late eight or early seventh century BC.

scholarly journals The Archaeology of Cult of Ancient Israel’s Southern Neighbors and the Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Manuel Tebes
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Arid Areas ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Iron Age I ◽  
History Of

The Midianite-Kenite hypothesis, the idea that the pre-Israelite roots of Yahwism can be traced back to the areas south and southeast of Palestine, has a long pedigree in biblical scholarship. Analyses supporting this view generally agree in three main points. First, they assume that the influence of the southern cultic practices on Yahwism occurred during a restricted period of time, traditionally dated to the Early Iron Age. Second, they see the origins of Yahwism through the lenses of diffusionist perspectives, characterizing this process as a movement or migration of one or a few determined groups to Canaan. And third, adequate analyses of the archaeological evidence of the arid areas to the south of Palestine are few. In this article I will turn the interpretation of the epigraphic and archaeological evidence upside down. Instead of looking to the (mostly biblical) evidence on the origins of the cult of Yahweh and assuming its genesis lies in movements of people from the southern regions to Canaan in the Early Iron Age, I will focus attention on the history of the cultic practices in the Negev, southern Transjordan, and northern Hejaz during the entire Iron Age, and how this information is related to the religious practices known in Judah and Israel during the biblical period, shedding new light on the prehistory of the cult of Yahweh. I will evaluate the evidence not as a single, exceptional event, but as a long-term process within the several-millennia history of cultic practices and beliefs of the local peoples.

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