Stone Axe-head Manufacture: New Evidence from the Preseli Hills, West Wales

1995 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 433-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. David ◽  
G. Williams ◽  
David Jenkins ◽  
Ian Rigby ◽  
Olwen Williams-Thorpe
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Geochemical Analysis ◽  
Group Viii ◽  
Geological Origin ◽  
Thin Section Analysis ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Section Analysis

Fieldwork by the Dyfed Archaeological Trust during 1989–92 has identified clear evidence for the manufacture of stone axeheads at two locations on the eastern flanks of the Preseli Mountains, Dyfed: at Glyn-y-Fran, Llanfyrnach (SN 186 307) and near Glandy Cross (SN 143 266). At both sites, small quantities of lithic debris were collected from field surfaces after cultivation; unfortunately, no contemporaneous features were found by subsequent, very limited, trial trenching. In this report we describe the fieldwork at these two sites, and the resulting lithic collection, concluding that the latter represents evidence for small-scale and opportunistic exploitation of locally abundant erratics during the Neolithic. The Glandy Cross area was later a focus for the construction of ritual monuments during the Bronze Age, and there is also some evidence for continuing activity at Glyn-y-Fran at this time.Petrological thin section analysis of some of the artefacts is reported and demonstrates a probable identity with petrological Group VIII; geochemical analysis of some of the same artefacts places the likely geological origin of these at local igneous exposures also in the Preselis. These conclusions are reviewed in the light of current discussion on the usage and origins of raw materials in later prehistory.

Making Pots and Potters in the Bronze Age Maros Villages of Kiszombor-Új-Élet and Klárafalva-Hajdova

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostalena Michelaki
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Group I ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article examines the choices potters made while collecting and preparing their raw materials, forming, finishing and firing their pots in the Bronze Age villages of Kiszombor-Új-Élet (2600–2000 cal. bc) and Klárafalva-Hajdova (2000–1650 cal. bc) in present-day southeastern Hungary. Following the one-thousand-year-long ceramic tradition of these villagers, known archaeologically as members of the Maros group, I highlight choices that were shared by all, suggesting deeply engrained ideas about how Maros pots should be made, versus choices that were more restricted in distribution, suggesting a smaller group of potters, of greater skill and possibly greater status within the villages. I argue that, although pot making was one of many small-scale housekeeping tasks, the creation and use of pottery were integrally tied to expressions of status and identity, and that by the Late Maros Phase the identity of ‘potter’ was acknowledged by the community as distinct from other identities, such as those of ‘metalworker’, or ‘weaver’.

The Political Machine

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Bronze Age

This book investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, the book demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. The book looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and it considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. The book shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or “machines” sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortifies political power even in the contemporary world. The book provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, this book sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Scientific Analysis of Metal Objects and Metallurgical Remains from Kastri, Kythera

2007 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 219-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyprian Broodbank ◽  
Thilo Rehren ◽  
Antonia-Maria Zianni
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Preliminary Information ◽  
Surface Survey ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Late Roman

Scientific analysis of samples takes from metal objects and metallurgical products excavated during the 1960s at Kastri on Kythera provide new evidence concerning, variously, the Aegean metals trade and metallurgy on Kythera. The samples date to the Second Palace (Neopalatial), Classical and Late Roman periods. The Bronze Age material comprises fragments of copper ingots and silver cups, neither of which metal is locally available in Kythera, and the later material relates largely to local smelting and possibly smithing of iron, whose origin is uncertain. These activities are related to preliminary information concerning the distribution at each period of metallurgical activity across the island that has been generated by the intensive surface survey of the Kythera Island Project.

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 From the Parochial to the Universal: Comparing Cloth Cultures in the Bronze Age

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Harris
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Textile Fibre ◽  
Eighteenth Dynasty ◽  
Salt Mines ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Chronological Period ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Thread Count

The aim of this research is to compare the cloth cultures of Europe and Egypt in the Bronze Age and New Kingdom. The comparison focuses on the fourteenth century cal BC and includes four geographically separate areas, including the oak coffin burials of southern Scandinavia, the Hallstatt salt mines of central Europe, Late Minoan Crete, and the tombs and towns of the later Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The comparative approach can bring insights even when applied to unconnected cultures or regions. However, in this study I concentrate on a restricted chronological period and areas that were connected, directly or indirectly, by widespread networks of trade or exchange. The concept of cloth cultures is used to include both textiles and animal skins as these were closely related materials in the prehistoric past. Information was gathered according to the following categories: raw materials, including textile fibre, and species of skins; fabric structure and thread count (only for textiles); decoration and finish; and use and context. From this study, it is possible to recognize the universally shared principles of cloth cultures and the great versatility and creativity in the regional cloth cultures of the Bronze Age.

The antiquity of the Greek epic tradition: some new evidence

1980 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.C. Horrocks
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Epic Tradition ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
Greek Epic ◽  
Careful Handling ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age

Since the decipherment of Linear B a number of scholars have argued, on the basis of supposed Mycenaean survivals in the Homeric poems, that the Greek legendary poetic tradition ran continuously from the Bronze Age through the Dark Age down to the singers of the Ionian towns in the ninth and eighth centuries. However, the directness of the connection between the narrative poetry of the Mycenaean Age, if indeed such existed, and the subsequent development of the Epic in Greece has been called into question. Thus Shipp, for example, has argued that most of the items listed by Chadwick in his article Mycenaean elements in the Homeric dialect in fact left their mark for a time at least on forms of Greek other than that of the Epic, and so could well have entered this tradition in post-Mycenaean times and in some other way than through a direct poetical current from the Bronze Age. A similar conclusion has been reached by Kirk, who has expressed his views forcefully in a series of publications. Consider the following:The two objective criteria for dating elements within the Homeric poems, namely archaeology and language, require careful handling and reveal less than is generally claimed for them. They enable certain elements to be recognized as having existed as early as the late Bronze Age, but do not necessarily prove that these all passed into the Ionian Epic tradition by the medium of late Bronze Age poetry.

scholarly journals Tekstylia i pieczęcie. O relacjach pomiędzy produkcją włókienniczą a praktykami stemplowania w Grecji epoki brązu oraz o zupełnie nowych danych z odcisków glinianych pieczęci

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 111-135
Author(s):  
Agata Ulanowska
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Textile Production ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Textile Manufacturing ◽  
Organic Products ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Evidence

This contribution discusses the evidence of textile impressions preserved on the undersides of clay sealings from Bronze Age Greece. A collection of modern casts taken from these sealings, stored in the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel in Heidelberg, is currently being analyzed by the author. The assumed reliability of textile impressions as a source of knowledge about the qualities of actual textiles and raw materials used to produce them has been verified by a series of archaeological experiments and comparative analysis of modern raw materials of various origin. Results ofthe analysis of 199 casts from two Aegean sites: Lerna in Argolid and Phaistos on Crete, have provided new evidence for technical uses of textile and organic products in the daily storage routine and sealing practices, as well as for the specific parameters of threads, cords, and fabrics impressed on clay. Due to the relatively large number of textile imprints, it is possible, for the first time, to make site-specific comparisons of textile production on the basis of products and to tracktechnical developments in textile manufacturing throughout the Aegean Bronze Age.

scholarly journals Transformations of Metal Supply during the Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-330
Author(s):  
Viktória Kiss
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Neutron Radiography ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Isotope Analysis ◽  
Carpathian Basin ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Metal Artifacts ◽  
Mining Sites ◽  
The Bronze Age

This paper presents recent research questions which have been raised and methods which have been used in the study of Bronze Age metallurgy in connection with available natural resources (ores) in and around the Carpathian Basin. This topic fits in the most current trends in the research on European prehistoric archaeology. Given the lack of written sources, copper and bronze artifacts discovered in settlement and cemetery excavations and prehistoric mining sites provide the primary sources on which the studies in question are based. The aim of compositional and isotope analysis of copper and tin ores, metal tools, ornaments, and weapons is to determine the provenience of the raw materials and further an understanding of the chaine operatiore of prehistoric metal production. The Momentum Mobility Research Group of the Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the Humanities studies these metal artifacts using archaeological and scientific methods. It has focused on the first thousand years of the Bronze Age (2500–1500 BC). Multidisciplinary research include non-destructive XRF, PGAA (promptgamma activation), TOF-ND (time-of-flight neutron diffraction) analyses and neutron radiography, as well as destructive methods, e.g. metal sampling for compositional and lead isotope testing, alongside archaeological analysis. Microstructure studies are also efficient methods for determining the raw material and production techniques. The results suggest the use of regional ore sources and interregional connections, as well as several transformations in the exchange network of the prehistoric communities living in the Carpathian Basin.

scholarly journals The impact of ancestral heath management on soils and landscapes: a reconstruction based on paleoecological analyses of soil records in the central and southeastern Netherlands

SOIL ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke Doorenbosch ◽  
Jan M. van Mourik
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Forest Fires ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Cattle Grazing ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Bronze Age

Abstract. The evolution of heathlands during the Holocene has been registered in various soil records. Paleoecological analyses of these records enable reconstruction of the changing economic and cultural management of heaths and the consequences for landscape and soils. Heaths are characteristic components of cultural landscape mosaics on sandy soils in the Netherlands. The natural habitat of heather species was moorland. At first, natural events like forest fires and storms caused small-scale forest degradation; in addition on that, the forest degradation accelerated due to cultural activities like forest grazing, wood cutting, and shifting cultivation. Heather plants invaded degraded forest soils, and heaths developed. People learned to use the heaths for economic and cultural purposes. The impact of the heath management on landscape and soils was registered in soil records of barrows, drift sand sequences, and plaggic Anthrosols. Based on pollen diagrams of such records we could reconstruct that heaths were developed and used for cattle grazing before the Bronze Age. During the late Neolithic, the Bronze Age, and Iron Age, people created the barrow landscape on the ancestral heaths. After the Iron Age, people probably continued with cattle grazing on the heaths and plaggic agriculture until the early Middle Ages. Severe forest degradation by the production of charcoal for melting iron during the Iron Age till the 6th–7th century and during the 11th–13th century for the trade of wood resulted in extensive sand drifting, a threat to the valuable heaths. The introduction of the deep, stable economy and heath sods digging in the course of the 18th century resulted in acceleration of the rise of plaggic horizons, severe heath degradation, and again extension of sand drifting. At the end of the 19th century heath lost its economic value due to the introduction of chemical fertilizers. The heaths were transformed into "new" arable fields and forests, and due to deep ploughing most soil archives were destroyed. Since AD 1980, the remaining relicts of the ancestral heaths are preserved and restored in the frame of the programs to improve the regional and national geo-biodiversity. Despite the realization of many heath restoration projects during the last decades, the area of the present heaths is just a fraction of the heath areal in AD 1900.

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