Landscape and geology as controls on Bronze Age human dispersal: a case study from Sardinia (Italy)

We document and show a state-of-the-art methodology that could allow geoheritage sites (geosites) to become accessible to scientific and non-scientific audiences through immersive and non-immersive virtual reality applications. This is achieved through a dedicated WebGIS platform, particularly handy in communicating geoscience during the COVID-19 era. For this application, we selected nine volcanic outcrops in Santorini, Greece. The latter are mainly associated with several geological processes (e.g., dyking, explosive, and effusive eruptions). In particular, they have been associated with the famous Late Bronze Age (LBA) eruption, which made them ideal for geoheritage popularization objectives since they combine scientific and educational purposes with geotourism applications. Initially, we transformed these stunning volcanological outcrops into geospatial models—the so called virtual outcrops (VOs) here defined as virtual geosites (VGs)—through UAV-based photogrammetry and 3D modeling. In the next step, we uploaded them on an online platform that is fully accessible for Earth science teaching and communication. The nine VGs are currently accessible on a PC, a smartphone, or a tablet. Each one includes a detailed description and plenty of annotations available for the viewers during 3D exploration. We hope this work will be regarded as a forward model application for Earth sciences' popularization and make geoheritage open to the scientific community and the lay public.

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Isotopes, Plants, and Reservoir Effects: Case Study from the Caspian Steppe Bronze Age

Radiocarbon ◽

10.1017/s0033822200047408 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 54 (3-4) ◽

pp. 749-760 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

N Shishlina ◽

E Zazovskaya ◽

J van der Plicht ◽

V Sevastyanov

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Alternative Explanation ◽

Bone Collagen ◽

Human Diet ◽

Human Bones ◽

Animal Bone ◽

Different Types ◽

C And N ◽

East And West

Bronze Age human and animal bone collagen from several steppe Bronze Age cultures (i.e. Early Catacomb, East and West Manych Catacomb, and Lola cultures) shows large variations in δ13C and δ15N values. In general, we observed that the older the sample, the lower the δ13C and δ15N values. We hypothesize that more positive values of δ13C and δ15N are caused by change in diet and a more arid climate. For ancient sheep during drier periods of the Early Catacomb, East and West Manych Catacomb, and Lola cultures, we observed 2 groups with different C and N isotopic compositions, reflecting consumption of different types of fodder. During periods of aridization, C4 and C3 plants with high δ15N values appeared in the vegetation, also influencing bone collagen values. Human bones show reservoir effects, caused by aquatic diet components. These effects can be quantified by paired dating of human bone and associated terrestrial samples. Reservoir corrections have revised chronologies for the region. Some paired dates do not reveal reservoir effects. This can be explained in 2 alternative ways. One is that the human diet did not include aquatic components; rather, the diet was based on C3 vegetation with high δ15N values (13–15‰), and flesh/milk of domesticated animals. An alternative explanation is that humans consumed food from freshwater resources without reservoir effects.

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How Rocks Die: Changing Patterns of Discard and Re-Use of Ground Stone Tools in Middle Bronze Age Cyprus

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12218869 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (21) ◽

pp. 8869

Author(s):

Andrew McCarthy

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Political Change ◽

Stone Tools ◽

Cultural Objects ◽

The Past ◽

Ground Stone ◽

Changing Patterns ◽

Middle Bronze Age

Cultural objects are thought to have a lifespan. From selection, through construction, use, destruction, and discard, materials do not normally last forever, transforming through stages of life, eventually leading to their death. The materiality of stone objects, however, can defy the inevitable demise of an object, especially durable ground stone tools that can outlive generations of human lifespans. How groups of people deal with the relative permanence of stone tools depends on their own relationship with the past, and whether they venerate it or reject its influence on the present. A case study from the long-lived site of Prasteio-Mesorotsos in Cyprus demonstrates a shifting attitude toward ground stone objects, from the socially conservative habit of ritually killing of objects and burying them, to one of more casual re-use and reinterpretation of ground stone. This shift in attitude coincides with a socio-political change that eventually led to the ultimate rejection of the past: complete abandonment of the settlement.

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Through the Gloomy Vale: Underworld Alignments at Stonehenge

10.46472/cc.01221.0203 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (1 and 2) ◽

pp. 11-30

Author(s):

Lionel Sims ◽

David Fisher

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Mirror Image ◽

Landscape Model ◽

Late Neolithic ◽

The World ◽

The Dead

Three recent independently developed models suggest that some Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments exhibit dual design properties in monument complexes by pairing obverse structures. Parker Pearson’s1 materiality model proposes that monuments of wood are paired with monuments of stone, these material metaphors respectively signifying places of rituals for the living with rituals for the dead. Higginbottom’s2 landscape model suggests that many western Scottish megalithic structures are paired in mirror-image landscape locations in which the horizon distance, direction and height of one site is the topographical reverse of the paired site – all in the service of ritually experiencing the liminal boundaries to the world. Sims’3 diacritical model suggests that materials, landscapes and lunar-solar alignments are diacritically combined to facilitate cyclical ritual processions between paired monuments through a simulated underworld. All three models combine in varying degrees archaeology and archaeoastronomy and our paper tests them through the case study of the late Neolithic/EBA Stonehenge Palisade in the Stonehenge monument complex.

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Social Relations and the Local: Revisiting Our Approaches to Finding Gender and Age in Prehistory. A Case Study from Bronze Age Scotland

Norwegian Archaeological Review ◽

10.1080/00293652.2018.1517821 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 51 (1-2) ◽

pp. 64-77 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Mark Haughton

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Social Relations ◽

Gender And Age

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The Elders of Early Dilmun

Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Bronze Age Arabia ◽

10.5744/florida/9781683400790.003.0011 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 220-239

Author(s):

Alexis T. Boutin ◽

Benjamin W. Porter

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Persian Gulf ◽

University Of California ◽

Mortuary Archaeology ◽

Near Eastern ◽

Adult Men ◽

The Third ◽

Second Millennium Bce ◽

The University

This chapter draws on bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology to investigate three adult men in a brief case study from Early Dilmun, a Bronze Age polity that spanned the western edge of the Arabian/Persian Gulf at the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium BCE. We draw our evidence from the Peter B. Cornwall Collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on the University of California, Berkeley campus. Cornwall (1913–1972) excavated this evidence from Bahrain during his expedition to the region in 1940 and 1941. Cornwall later analyzed these mortuary contexts in several works—including his doctoral dissertation and a handful of articles—and then eventually deposited the skeletal remains and objects in the Hearst Museum. Since 2008, we have been analyzing and publishing materials from this collection under the auspices of the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project. Using this evidence, we demonstrate both the possibilities and limitations of investigating masculinity in one specific ancient Near Eastern society.

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The Pigi Athinas Tumuli Cemetery of Macedonian Olympus

Bones of Complexity ◽

10.5744/florida/9780813062235.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Paraskevi Tritsaroli

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Social Rank ◽

Comparative Case Study ◽

Small Scale ◽

Late Bronze Age ◽

The People ◽

Gender And Health ◽

Funerary Treatment ◽

Over Time

The Middle-Late Bronze Age (1620–1500 B.C.) was a period of emerging and intensifying social complexity involving small-scale settlement hierarchies, but the archaeological understanding of social organization at this time has remained limited. In a comparative case study of funerary treatment and skeletal biology, the authors consider the distribution of multiple skeletal pathological conditions between distinct tumuli-style burials at Pigi Athinas. Though social rank may have started to displace the centrality of kinship, subtle variations in both funerary and bioarchaeological data indicated the most important structuring factors were sex and age distinctions. Over time, the influence of differential diets, divisions of gender, and ritual feasting appear as the people participated in a widespread Mycenaean system that shaped both gender and health in ancient Greece.

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