Irish Bronze Age Horns and their relations with Northern Europe

1963 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 326-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Coles

One of the features of the Irish Late Bronze Age is the appearance of wind instruments, commonly called ‘Trumpets’, often found in groups and only rarely in association with other material. Being conical and curved, these are therefore members of the horn family, to which the other large musical group of the Bronze Age, the north Europeanlurer, also belong.The Irish horns have attracted the attention of antiquarians for over 100 years, with the principal collection and listing of these beginning in 1860. Evans devoted a section of his 1881 book to the ‘trumpets’, and was followed by Day, Allen and Coffey. The latest treatment, which brought together most of the previous lists of horns, was by MacWhite in 1945. All of these later works were primarily concerned with the typology of the horns, and attention was paid neither to their actual production nor to their music. In the present study, all previously published horns have been examined where possible, as well as a number of unpublished finds, and an attempt will be made not only (i) to describe the typological variations and dating of the horns, but also (ii) to discuss their production as objects from Late Bronze Age workshops and (iii) to consider for the first time their musical potential.

2020 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 175-245
Author(s):  
Vassilis L. Aravantinos ◽  
Ioannis Fappas ◽  
Yannis Galanakis

Questions were raised in the past regarding the use of Mycenaean tiles as ‘roof tiles’ on the basis of the small numbers of them recovered in excavations and their overall scarcity in Mycenaean domestic contexts. The investigation of the Theodorou plot in 2008 in the southern part of the Kadmeia hill at Thebes yielded the single and, so far, largest known assemblage per square metre of Mycenaean tiles from a well-documented excavation. This material allows, for the first time convincingly, to identify the existence of a Mycenaean tiled roof. This paper presents the results of our work on the Theodorou tiles, placing emphasis on their construction, form and modes of production, offering the most systematic study of Mycenaean tiles to date. It also revisits contexts of discovery of similar material from excavations across Thebes. Popular as tiles might have been in Boeotia, and despite their spatially widespread attestation, their use in Aegean Late Bronze Age architecture appears, on the whole, irregular with central Greece and the north-east Peloponnese being the regions with the most sites known to have yielded such objects. Mycenaean roof tiles date mostly from the mid- and late fourteenth century bc to the twelfth century bc. A study of their construction, form, production and contexts suggests that their role, apart from adding extra insulation, might have been one of signposting certain buildings in the landscape. We also present the idea that Mycenaean tile-making was guided by a particular conventional knowledge which was largely influenced by ceramic-related technologies (pottery- and drain-making). While production of roof tiles might have been palace-instigated to begin with, it does not appear to have been strictly controlled. This approach to Mycenaean tile-making may also help explain their uneven (in terms of intensity of use) yet widespread distribution.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Shishlina ◽  
Johan Plicht ◽  
Elya Zazovskaya

AbstractBone catapult and hammer-headed pins played one of very specific roles in funerary offerings in the Bronze Age graves uncovered in the Eurasian Steppes and the North Caucasus. Scholars used different types of pins as key grave offerings for numerous chronological models. For the first time eight pins have been radiocarbon dated. 14C dating of bone pins identified the catapult type pin as the earliest one. They marked the period of the Yamnaya culture formation. Then Yamnaya population produced hammer-headed pins which became very popular in other cultural environments and spread very quickly across the Steppe and the Caucasus during 2900–2650 cal BC. But according to radiocarbon dating bone pins almost disappeared after 2600 cal BC.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Peter Skoglund ◽  
Joakim Wehlin

The paper compares the Bronze Age ship settings of Gotland with the vessels portrayed in rock carvings on the Scandinavian mainland. It also makes comparisons with the drawings of vessels on decorated metalwork of the same period. It considers their interpretation in relation to two approaches taken to the depictions of ships in other media. One concerns the use of boats to transport the sun, while the other emphasises the close relationship between seagoing vessels and the dead. A third possibility concerns the distinctive organisation of prehistoric communities on Gotland. It seems possible that the largest of the ship settings were equivalent to the Bronze Age cult houses found on the mainland and that they may even have represented the island itself.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-146
Author(s):  
S. V. Ivanova ◽  
A. G. Nikitin ◽  
D. V. Kiosak

This article is dedicated to the problem of the origin and spread of the Yamna cultural-historical community (YCHC) in the context of the hypothesis recently expressed by geneticists about the massive migration of population groups genetically related to YCHC and carrying the genetic determinants of the Iranian Neolithic agrarians and hunters and fishers of the North Caucasus from the Ponto- Caspian steppe to central and northern Europe at the beginning of the Bronze Age. Based on an in-depth archeological and genetic analysis, we propose that the genetic «invasion» of the Iranian-Caucasian genetic element into Europe at the beginning of the Bronze Age, recently proposed by paleogenetisits on the basis of a large-scale study of ancient DNA, was not the result of a large-scale migration of representatives of YCHC from the Ponto-Caspian steppes to central and northern Europe, but the result of global population and cultural changes in Eurasia at the end of the Atlantic climatic optimum. We further suggest that before the steppe genetics appeared in Europe at the beginning of the Bronze Age, central European genetic determinants appeared in the steppe in the Eneolithic, and that the movement of the steppe genetic element to Europe was at least in part the second phase of the «pendular» migration of European expatriates, returning to the historical zone of habitation. We also come to the conclusion that the very concept of distinguishing YCHC as a monolithic entity is inappropriate, and that the groups of nomadic tribes of the Ponto-Caspian steppe most likely existed as discrete communities, although united by a common ideology and a genetic relationship that included both the Iranian-Caucasian (throughout the entire range), and European / Anatolian agricultural (locally) genetic elements.


Author(s):  
Richard Moore ◽  
Claire Lingard ◽  
Melanie Johnson ◽  
Ann Clarke ◽  
Mhairi Hastie ◽  
...  

Archaeological monitoring of works on a gas pipeline route in Aberdeenshire, north-west of Inverurie, resulted in the discovery and excavation of several groups of Neolithic pits and four Bronze Age roundhouses. The Neolithic pits were concentrated around the Shevock Burn, a small tributary of the Ury, and in the East and North Lediken areas to the north. They produced significant assemblages of Early Neolithic Impressed Ware and of Modified Carinated Bowl. The Bronze Age roundhouses included the heavily truncated remains of a post-built structure near Pitmachie, the remains of a pair of ring ditch structures near Little Lediken Farm, and another ring ditch structure close to Wrangham village.


Antiquity ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 34 (135) ◽  
pp. 166-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. F. Hood

Among the most impressive monuments of the earlier part of the Bronze Age in Crete are the great circular communal tombs which began to be built, notably in the Mesara plain but also in other parts of the island, before 2000 B.C., and flourished in use throughout the first half of the 2nd millennium. Similarly, the most magnificent surviving architectural creations of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean area are the stupendous beehive or tholos tombs of the chief Mainland centres like Mycenae. Tombs of this type, with corbelled stone vaults sunk in the ground and approached by long entrance passages (dromoi), seem to appear for the first time in the Aegean about 1600 B.C., and reach their finest and grandest expression on the Mainland of Greece in the two centuries between 1500 and 1300 B.C. A map of the Aegean area showing the distribution of these two types of tombs accompanies this article (FIG. I).


1970 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 47-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Hope Simpson ◽  
J. F. Lazenby

SummaryOur campaigns of 1967 and 1968 have confirmed and supplemented that of 1960, especially concerning the Late Bronze Age habitation of the Dodecanese. Pottery of Mycenaean type has been found for the first time on Patmos, Leros, and Syme, and further Mycenaean settlements have been identified in the northern part of Kos, at Asklúpi and Palaiópyli. On many sites it has not been possible to determine from the surface finds the exact period of prehistoric habitation, but pre-Mycenaean material has been noted for the first time on the islands of Patmos, Leros, Telos (?), Syme, and Kasos. A particularly interesting early phase is represented by the sherds from Troúlli on Kos. Among the finds from periods subsequent to the Bronze Age, the most interesting are perhaps the Geometric sherds from Kastélli on Patmos and from the Kástro at Pólin on Kasos. A remarkable phenomenon also is the size and strength of the Hellenistic fortifications on some of the smaller islands, namely Patmos, Telos, Syme, and Castellorizo. It would appear that these islands probably enjoyed at this time a prosperity disproportionate to their size and agricultural resources.


1987 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Briggs ◽  
Kevin Leahy ◽  
Stuart P. Needham

The discovery in 1719, at Brough-on-Humber [North Humberside, SE 93 26], of a hoard of Late Bronze Age weapons and casting matrices is described from contemporary manuscript and printed sources. The subsequent passage of its component artefacts through antiquarian collections is carefully documented, and four pieces are recognized as surviving in the British Museum. These comprise two rare two-piece casting moulds together with one example of each casting product. One mould is a Welby, the other a Meldreth, type, formerly provenanced respectively to ‘Yorkshire’ and ‘Quantock Hills, Somersetshire’. All are described in detail and suggestions made as to the casting techniques in which they were employed. The hoard, possibly originally comprising more artefacts than were recorded, was accompanied by a spearhead, a socketed chisel and a tanged awl or spike, now lost. These are attributed to Burgess's ‘Ewart Park phase’ of LBA2, with parallels scattered throughout the north-east, east, south-east and south of England.


Author(s):  
Eugen Kolpakov ◽  

The paper deals with the histo- ry of appearance and usage of the concept of Early Metal Period in the archaeology of Northern Europe. The concept appears to have been conceived in the 1920s by V. I. Ra- vdonikas and A. Ya. Bryusov, but the term it- self was irst introduced into archaeologi- cal literature by N. N. Gurina in the 1940s af- ter the discovery in the Lake Onega region of a number of assemblages seemingly com- bining Late Neolithic pottery with iron- and bronze-making. However, the existence of such assemblages has not been conirmed by subsequent researches, and as early as 1947 the Early Metal Period was redeined as a period comprising the Bronze and Ear- ly Iron Ages. The original basis of the concept disappeared, but the term has become natu- ralized, though with a diferent sense. Thus, as applies to the northern part of Europe, the Three-Age system as if bifurcates in the Neo- lithic and unites again in the Iron Age. The North European Early Metal Period is a pe- ripheral variant of the Bronze Age. Therefore, it would be logical and rational to abandon the concept of the Early Metal Period in favor of the Bronze Age.


2019 ◽  
pp. 210-243
Author(s):  
Matthew Rutz

Syria and the southern Levant has a long and rich epigraphic tradition that was rediscovered in the last century through archaeological excavation. Written remains stretching from the Bronze Age (Ebla, Mari, Alalakh, Ugarit, and Emar) down into the Roman period (Qumran) provide ample evidence for the collecting of literary texts, broadly conceived, and the formation of ancient libraries. This survey gives an overview of the archaeological distribution of what modern scholarship has termed ‘libraries’ and considers the chronological, geographic, and textual depth of the data from the region as whole. It then considers the principal case studies from ancient Syria and the Levant—cuneiform libraries from the north Syrian sites of Ugarit and Emar dating to the last centuries of the second millennium BCE.


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