A Life Less Ordinary: the Ritualization of the Domestic Sphere in Later Prehistoric Europe

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Archaeology ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
The Past

This article, which is based on the fourteenth McDonald Lecture, considers two tensions in contemporary archaeology. One is between interpretations of specific structures, monuments and deposits as the result of either ‘ritual’ or ‘practical’ activities in the past, and the other is between an archaeology that focuses on subsistence and adaptation and one that emphasizes cognition, meaning, and agency. It suggests that these tensions arise from an inadequate conception of ritual itself. Drawing on recent studies of ritualization, it suggests that it might be more helpful to consider how aspects of domestic life took on special qualities in later prehistoric Europe. The discussion is based mainly on Neolithic enclosures and other monuments, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites and the Viereckschanzen of central Europe. It may have implications for field archaeology as well as social archaeology, and also for those who study the formation of the archaeological record.

Barbarian Europe and Early Iron Age Greece

1965 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Aegean Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Relationship

This paper is concerned with the nature of the relationship that existed between Central Europe and the Aegean area in the early 1st millennium B.C. Interest in Aegean-continental connections has been strong for a considerable time, but has been intensified, particularly from the continental standpoint, in the past fifteen years. Although some of these studies have been concerned with the contacts between 2nd millennium (Late Bronze Age) Greece and the north, others have examined in detail the evidence for the links between the Urnfield culture and Greece during the 10th, 9th and 8th centuries. For Greece, this is an utterly different period from the preceding one; the evidence for foreign contacts suddenly becomes scarce and that for military disasters is virtually non-existent. Yet some scholars have reached very similar conclusions, involving the transmission of objects and of the people who carried them from Central Europe into Greece, for this period as for the preceding Late Bronze Age. Such arguments have a recent exponent in Professor W. Kimmig, whose paper Seevölkerbewegung und Urnenfelderkultur ranges over the whole period from about 1200 to 700. His list of objects and practices in this period, which he considers to have been donated by the Danube-Balkan peoples to the Mediterranean world, is comprehensive indeed: it would include bronze shields and body armour, the equipment of Goliath, the knobbed ware of Troy VII B, the practice of cremation in the Iron Age, the ritual spoliation of weapons in graves, iron swords, spears, knives, bits, lugged axes, spits, fire-dogs, bronze personal objects generally, clay idols, the maeander pattern and the swans of Apollo.

scholarly journals Cultivating Corpses: A Comparative Approach to Disembodied Mortuary Remains

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Anders Kaliff ◽  
Terje Oestigaard
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
The Past ◽  
Funeral Practices ◽  
Traditional Understanding

Disembodied remains of corpses are often found in the archaeological record but seldom interpreted and understood. This mortuary practice challenges our traditional understanding of funerals and what constitutcs a "grave". Through a comparative analysis of prehistoric Bronze Age and Iron Age mortuary remai ns and contemporary funeral practices in Nepal, it is argued that the disembodiment is a cosmogonic act whereby the corpse is an intrinsic part of the agricultural and hydrological cycle. An explicit combination of the past and present for interpretations of the past is a premise for understanding and knowledge production in archaeology, and this theoretical stance is developed and explored.

Holocene evolution of closed depressions and its relation to landscape dynamics in the loess areas of Poland

The Holocene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Kołodyńska-Gawrysiak
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Soil Erosion ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Landscape Dynamics ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Atlantic Period

Past Pleistocene topography of the loess uplands is rich in local sinks (closed depressions (CDs)) influencing sediment fluxes. Soil-sediment sequences from CDs constituting geoarchives where landscape changes under natural and anthropogenic conditions have been recorded. Pedo-sedimentary archives from 10 CDs in the Polish loess belt and human settlements were analysed. Phases of the Holocene evolution of the CDs were correlated with landscape dynamics in loess areas in Poland and Central Europe. Phases of infilling of CDs occurring (2) from the late Boreal/early Atlantic Period until the (middle) late Bronze Age/early Iron Age and (4) since the early Middle Ages until today were documented. These were phases of long-term soil erosion and colluviation corresponding to the increasing agricultural land use of Polish loess uplands. Phases of soil formation related to geomorphic stabilization of CDs occurred (1) from the late Vistulian until the late Boreal/early Atlantic Period and (3) from the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age until the early/high Middle Ages. These were phases of decreased soil erosion and landform conservation in a considerable part of Poland’s loess areas. Pedo-sedimentary archives from the CDs have recorded soil erosion strongly related with human-induced land-use changes. The mean soil erosion rate in the catchment of CDs was 0.33 t·ha−1·yr−1 during prehistory and 4.0 t·ha−1·yr−1 during the last approximately 1000 years. Phases of CD evolution are representative for the main phases of sediment and landscape dynamics in Poland’s loess areas recorded in various archives, and are not synchronous with some of these phases in Central Europe.

The ceramics of centralisation and dissolution: a case study from Rough Cilicia

2007 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 141-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.N. Postgate
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Far East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Control ◽  
The West ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Bronze Age

AbstractStarting from Kilise Tepe in the Göksu valley north of Silifke two phenomena in pre-Classical Anatolian ceramics are examined. One is the appearance at the end of the Bronze Age, or beginning of the Iron Age, of hand-made, often crude, wares decorated with red painted patterns. This is also attested in different forms at Boğazköy, and as far east as Tille on the Euphrates. In both cases it has been suggested that it may reflect the re-assertion of earlier traditions, and other instances of re-emergent ceramic styles are found at the end of the Bronze Age, both elsewhere in Anatolia and in Thessaly. The other phenomenon is the occurrence of ceramic repertoires which seem to coincide precisely with the frontiers of a polity. In Anatolia this is best recognised in the case of the later Hittite Empire. The salient characteristics of ‘Hittite’ shapes are standardised, from Boğazköy at the centre to Gordion in the west and Korucu Tepe in the east. This is often tacitly associated with Hittite political control, but how and why some kind of standardisation prevails has not often been addressed explicitly. Yet this is a recurring phenomenon, and in first millennium Anatolia similar standardised wares have been associated with both the Phrygian and the Urartian kingdoms. This paper suggests that we should associate it directly with the administrative practices of the regimes in question.

What have Reconstructed Roundhouses Ever Done for Us..?

2007 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 97-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Townend
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Vernacular Architecture ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The One

The reconstructed roundhouse is everywhere: on the television, in the literature, in the landscape. It has powerful currency in both the public and academic understandings of the vernacular architecture of later British prehistory, in particular for the Iron Age. However, because the focus of these reconstructions is normally on technologies and engineering principles on the one hand, or on the experience of their occupation on the other, the roundhouse reconstruction — even after more than 30 years research around them — in fact currently tells us remarkably little about the past and a great deal about who we understand ourselves to be. This paper will explore what insight roundhouse reconstructions currently do and do not give into later British prehistory and what they may be able to indicate if the act of building is taken as a theme over the technologies of their construction or the experience of their space.

Tranchet Axe Manufacture from Cliffe, Kent

1988 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 315-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Ashton
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Discrete Group ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The South ◽  
Small Trial

In the summer of 1978 pottery and flintwork were noticed in the sections to the south of Cliffe Village during the laying of a pipeline by British Gas (TQ 734744) (fig. 1). This led to the excavation of a series of small trial trenches by Mr David Thomson with the help of local volunteers in the same year. The retrieval of a Beaker and Collared Urn suggested an early Bronze Age site, and excavations by Dr Ian Kinnes for the British Museum were done in September 1979. Although the excavated features contained mainly Iron Age pottery and metalwork, both seasons' work also produced a large quantity of flint artefacts ranging from Mesolithic to Bronze Age in date. The following report is an analysis of the Mesolithic tranchet axe manufacturing debitage which could be distinguished as a discrete group from the other flintwork. It is not intended to present a comprehensive flint report for Cliffe, but to provide a framework for analysis at other sites where tranchet axe production has been shown to take place (Wymer 1962; Parfitt and Halliwell 1982).

A Late Bronze Age Hoard from Blackrock in Sussex and its Significance

1949 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 107-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
List Type ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
British Isles ◽  
The Past ◽  
North Germany ◽  
Cross Dating

The hoard of bronzes from Blackrock near Brighton, was first published in 1916, and later received treatment by Curwen in his Archaeology of Sussex. The obviously foreign elements in the hoard have not been clearly recognised in the past, and in view of their significance it is desirable that a more detailed description of the finds should be put on record, and that some attempt should be made to fit them into the existing pattern of the Late Bronze Age of the British Isles.The following objects (all of bronze) were found in the hoard:I. Three ‘Sussex Loops.’II. Two plain armlets.III. Eight unlooped palstaves.IV. Rapier blade with three rivet holes.V. Dirk handle.VI. Decorated spiral finger-ring.Unfortunately the exact locality and conditions of finding cannot be determined with certainty, but there is good reason to believe that the discovery was made at Blackrock, about two miles to the east of Brighton. There is little doubt that all these objects were found together, and that they comprised the whole hoard.Of these objects, the Sussex loops can be fairly closely dated in the British Bronze Age, and the bronze dirk handle and decorated spiral finger-ring are imports from Schleswig-Holstein or North Germany. The origin of the other objects is less certain, but it is immediately clear that a study of this hoard may be of value in cross-dating between our own Bronze Age and that of the Northern Countries.First we will discuss the ‘Sussex Loops’ and their chronological position in the British Isles.

Dead Sea Levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Joy Kagan ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
Frank Herald Neumann ◽  
Mordechai Stein
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organic Debris ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The history of lake-level changes at the Dead Sea during the Holocene was determined mainly by radiocarbon dating of terrestrial organic debris. This article reviews the various studies that have been devoted over the past 2 decades to defining the Dead Sea levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages (≃5.5 to 2.5 ka cal BP) and adds new data and interpretation. In particular, we focus on research efforts devoted to refining the chronology of the sedimentary sequence in the Ze'elim Gully, a key site of paleoclimate investigation in the European Research Council project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel. The Bronze and Iron Ages are characterized by significant changes in human culture, reflected in archaeological records in which sharp settlement oscillations over relatively short periods of time are evident. During the Early Bronze, Intermediate Bronze, Middle Bronze, and Late Bronze Ages, the Dead Sea saw significant level fluctuations, reaching in the Middle Bronze an elevation of ≃370 m below mean sea level (bmsl), and declining in the Late Bronze to below 414 m bmsl. At the end of the Late Bronze Age and upon the transition to the Iron Age, the lake recovered slightly and rose to ≃408 m bmsl. This recovery reflected the resumption of freshwater activity in the Judean Hills, which was likely accompanied by more favorable hydrological-environmental conditions that seem to have facilitated the wave of Iron Age settlement in the region.

scholarly journals 1. Necklaces and Pendants of the Metal Age on the Territory of Romania

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-138
Author(s):  
Ioana-Iulia Olaru
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Metal Age

Abstract The present paper will refer to an aspect of processing metals on the territory of Romania, in Bronze Age and Iron Age (the second age habing been studied up to the moment when Prehistory ended: 1st century B.C., being continued by Antiquity). Unfortunately, few pieces were found in settlements and in necropoleis, so it is difficult to attribute the artifacts of the Metal Age to one or other of the existing cultures, though the region where they were produced can be mentioned. Consequently, their study can lead to another classification than the chronological one, and that is of the field of ornamental arts in metal. We will focus only on two types of objects that embellish the neck and the chest: necklaces and pendants, which help us create a vivid image of this important artistic field of the Iron Age on the territory of our country, these two joining the other important types of jewels: bracelets, rings, fibulae, phaleras.

scholarly journals Hillforts, rocks and warriors

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Javier Rodriguez-Corral
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
The Bronze Age

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.

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