MINOANISATION IN THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE: EVALUATING THE ROLE OF CYCLADIC PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS

2016 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 71-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Abell
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Ceramic Assemblage ◽  
New Production ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

Minoanisation – the process by which Cretan ways of doing things spread throughout the Aegean – is a major focus of study in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Cycladic islands, but debate about the primary causes of the phenomenon has been concerned chiefly with its Late Bronze Age phases. In this article, the author considers the earliest phase of Minoanisation at Ayia Irini on Kea, Period V. The ceramic assemblage is considered holistically, including local and imported as well as Minoanising and non-Minoanising pottery. The Keian assemblage is compared with recently published discussions of Phase C at Akrotiri on Thera and City II-iii at Phylakopi on Melos. New, non-Minoanising features of the Keian assemblage in Period V, particularly in the form of new shapes and increased importation of Melian and/or Theran pottery, suggest that Melian and/or Theran communities engaged in new production and exchange strategies at this time. It is likely that these new intra-Cycladic relationships played an important role in changing local tastes and practices at Ayia Irini, spurring the adoption of new Minoanising as well as non-Minoanising forms of material culture and practice.

scholarly journals Bronze Age and Iron Age Archaeology at Thainstone Business Park, Inverurie, Aberdeenshire

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Sue McGalliard ◽  
Donald Wilson ◽  
Laura Bailey ◽  
H E M Cool ◽  
Gemma Cruickshanks ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Excavation ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Age Structures

Headland Archaeology (UK) Ltd was commissioned by Axiom Project Services to undertake an archaeological excavation in advance of a commercial development at Thainstone Business Park, Aberdeenshire. Excavation identified the remains of a Middle Bronze Age roundhouse and a contemporary urned cremation cemetery. Evidence of Late Bronze Age cremation practices was also identified. A large roundhouse and souterrain dominated the site in the 1st or 2nd century ad. Material culture associated with the Iron Age structures suggested a degree of status to the occupation there.

Redating Rams Hill and reconsidering Bronze Age enclosure

1994 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Needham ◽  
Janet Ambers
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Regional Economy ◽  
Phase 1 ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
High Status ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
First Time ◽  
Precise Role

A new set of radiocarbon measurements for the three phases of Bronze Age enclosure at Rams Hill allows refinement of their chronology. Phase 1 is radiocarbon dated for the first time and appears, contrary to previous indications, not to be very much earlier than phases 2 and 3. The dates are on carefully selected bone samples and give a rather later timespan overall than an earlier set of dates on charcoal, within the 13th–10th centuries cal BC. This span bridges the formal Middle–Late Bronze Age transition, overlapping the use ofPenard and Wilburton metalwork. The opportunity is taken to clarify some confused aspects of Bronze Age periodization.The development of Bronze Age enclosure in Britain is reviewed. A former suggestion that Rams Hill is representative of a class of Middle Bronze Age high-status enclosure is re-examined. Current evidence does not support the idea of a coherent set of sites either functionally or chronologically. It is considered likely that Rams Hill represents an emergent state of larger-scale enclosure, perhaps after the regular embanking of small domestic sites. However, the precise role of Rams Hill in the regional economy remains enigmatic.

scholarly journals MIGRATION PROCESSES IN THE SOUTHERN URALS DURING THE TRANSITION TO THE LATE BRONZE AGE

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
Stanislav A. Grigoriev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Near East ◽  
Southern Urals ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Southern Urals ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Reliable Sign

The article is devoted to the problem of identifying migrations on the base of archaeological and paleogenetic data during the transition from the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) to the Late Bronze Age (LBA) in the Southern Trans-Urals. It discusses the methodological problems of detecting migrations from archaeological sources. Their most reliable sign is the appearance in some area not of separate features, but a complex of features of material culture from some remote area, as well as those features that reflect the introduction of new social relations and religious ideas. Such a complex could not be borrowed, and it is a reliable sign of migration. During the transition to the LBA in the Trans-Urals, new cultures appeared (Sintashta, Petrovka, and Alakul) and the penetration of features is recorded that had previously been formed in the Near East and Eastern Europe. These features are irregularly distributed: those from the Near East — mainly in the Sintashta culture, and Eastern European and Near Eastern features form a mixture in the Petrovka and Alakul cultures. These archaeological data correspond exactly to the results of paleogenetic studies: a significant contribution of Anatolian farmers was revealed in the genes of the Sintashta population, and it decreases in the Andronovo genes in favor of the Yamnaya-Poltavka component.

scholarly journals Non-discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Budden ◽  
Joanna Sofaer
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Differential Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article explores the relationship between the making of things and the making of people at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary. Focusing on potters and potting, we explore how the performance of non-discursive knowledge was critical to the construction of social categories. Potters literally came into being as potters through repeated bodily enactment of potting skills. Potters also gained their identity in the social sphere through the connection between their potting performance and their audience. We trace degrees of skill in the ceramic record to reveal the material articulation of non-discursive knowledge and consider the ramifications of the differential acquisition of non-discursive knowledge for the expression of different kinds of potter's identities. The creation of potters as a social category was essential to the ongoing creation of specific forms of material culture. We examine the implications of altered potters' performances and the role of non-discursive knowledge in the construction of social models of the Bronze Age.

scholarly journals New evidence for prehistoric copper metallurgy in the vicinity of Bor

Starinar ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 173-191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Kapuran ◽  
Dragana Zivkovic ◽  
Nada Strbac
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Ore ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Metallurgical Furnaces ◽  
Copper Metallurgy ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age

The last three years of archaeological investigations at the site Ru`ana in Banjsko Polje, in the immediate vicinity of Bor, have provided new evidence regarding the role of non-ferrous metallurgy in the economy of the prehistoric communities of north-eastern Serbia. The remains of metallurgical furnaces and a large amount of metallic slags at two neighbouring sites in the mentioned settlement reveal that locations with many installations for the thermal processing of copper ore existed in the Bronze Age. We believe, judging by the finds of material culture, that metallurgical activities in this area also continued into the Iron Age and, possibly, into the 4th century AD.

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.

Introduction and Background

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna K. Hodgkinson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
High Status ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
New Kingdom ◽  
The Status ◽  
Status Goods ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
And Control

This book aims to establish knowledge of the infrastructure and organization of the excavated cities in Late Bronze Age (LBA), or New Kingdom Egypt (c.1550–1069 BC), and provide an understanding of the accessibility and control of the high-status products and the raw materials and tools used for their manufacture. This is done by analysing the distribution of the artefactual and structural evidence of the manufacture of high-status goods from three sites used as case-studies, namely Amarna, in Middle Egypt, Gurob, in the Faiyum region, and Malqata, in ancient Thebes (Chapters 2–5). It attempts to achieve some knowledge of the control and distribution of the finished goods, highlighting buildings and areas in the settlements that were involved in the production, and others that would be the consumers of high-status goods. By detecting some mutual patterns between the sites analysed, it has been possible to achieve an understanding of urban high-status manufacture throughout the New Kingdom and its influence on the internal organization and status of settlements. Moving inwards, the study then focuses on workshops, their layouts and functionality (Chapters 6 and 7). A number of research questions will be answered, which address the issues of settlement status, craft production and its social context, the character of workshops as well as their influence on LBA settlements. These questions are presented in Sections 1.1–1.6 together with the data and methods used to address them. In the discussion of the status of a larger settlement we have to take into account the work and opinions of previous scholars. Trigger, for instance, differentiates between two approaches to settlement archaeology as a whole: (a) one focusing on the location, size, spacing, material culture, and activities, as opposed to another (b) focusing on the interactions of their environmental, economic, and technological determinants. While much information concerning the first approach existed by this date, he states that at the time of publication (in the early 1970s) there was still a lack of understanding concerning the economic and technological interactions within the settlements.

Mycenaean civilization

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Rutter
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean

Mycenaean civilization takes its name from the hilltop citadel of Mycenae in the Argolid, celebrated in Homer’s epics as “rich in gold” and the capital of Agamemnon. In 1876, Heinrich Schliemann, fresh from his excavations at Troy, which in his view had established the historical reality of the Greeks’ legendary siege and sack of that city, unearthed five astonishingly rich tombs at Mycenae and claimed them to contain the burials of Agamemnon and his followers, thus inaugurating the study of Greece’s Late Bronze Age (LBA) past. One and a half centuries of subsequent fieldwork have exposed the remains of hundreds of settlements and thousands of tombs characterized by the distinctive material culture termed Mycenaean that flourished for over six centuries (c. 1700–1050 bce). This lengthy duration of the mainland Greek LBA (better known as the Late Helladic [LH] or Mycenaean era) is conventionally subdivided into three major stages of development: pre-palatial or early Mycenaean (LH I–IIB; c. 1700–1425/1400 bce); palatial (LH IIIA1–LH IIIB2; c. 1425/1400–1200/1190 bce); and post-palatial (LH IIIC; c. 1200/1190–1050 bce). The regions within which Mycenaean material culture was dominant changed significantly as a function of time, as did the culture’s external contacts within the Mediterranean world and continental Europe.

Revisiting the Fosse Temple at Tel Lachish

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ido Koch
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural World

This paper reconsiders the Late Bronze Age history of the Fosse Temple at Lachish and reconstructs its context vis-à-vis the broader role of the local Canaanite cult. During the reign of Amenhotep iii the structure’s plan was modified to conform to Egyptian-style and there was a profusion of Egyptian imports to the site, primarily associated with the cult of Hathor. These facts reflect the cultic innovations that were taking place in Egypt itself—the self-deification of Amenhotep iii and his consort, Tiye, including her depiction and worship as Hathor. It is consequently argued that the translation of Hathor/Tiye into the local goddess, Elat, and its continuous practice until the late 13th century bc echo the integration of Egypt within the indigenous cultural world.

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