6. The long interlude: (12th century to 7th century bc )

Author(s):  
Trevor Bryce

In the early twelfth century bc, the Greek and Near Eastern worlds were shaken by a series of catastrophic upheavals that brought the Bronze Age to an end. ‘The long interlude’ outlines the period of Babylonian history spanning the centuries from the fall of the Kassite dynasty in the mid-twelfth century to the rise of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom in the late seventh. In the course of these centuries, a number of dynasties rose and fell in Babylonia, most of them weak and short-lived, reflecting the frequent ebb and occasional flow of Babylonia’s political and military fortunes. Environmental factors, new tribal groups, and the preservation of Babylonian cultural traditions are discussed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 20180286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgane Ollivier ◽  
Anne Tresset ◽  
Laurent A. F. Frantz ◽  
Stéphanie Bréhard ◽  
Adrian Bălăşescu ◽  
...  

Near Eastern Neolithic farmers introduced several species of domestic plants and animals as they dispersed into Europe. Dogs were the only domestic species present in both Europe and the Near East prior to the Neolithic. Here, we assessed whether early Near Eastern dogs possessed a unique mitochondrial lineage that differentiated them from Mesolithic European populations. We then analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 99 ancient European and Near Eastern dogs spanning the Upper Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age to assess if incoming farmers brought Near Eastern dogs with them, or instead primarily adopted indigenous European dogs after they arrived. Our results show that European pre-Neolithic dogs all possessed the mitochondrial haplogroup C, and that the Neolithic and Post-Neolithic dogs associated with farmers from Southeastern Europe mainly possessed haplogroup D. Thus, the appearance of haplogroup D most probably resulted from the dissemination of dogs from the Near East into Europe. In Western and Northern Europe, the turnover is incomplete and haplogroup C persists well into the Chalcolithic at least. These results suggest that dogs were an integral component of the Neolithic farming package and a mitochondrial lineage associated with the Near East was introduced into Europe alongside pigs, cows, sheep and goats. It got diluted into the native dog population when reaching the Western and Northern margins of Europe.


Author(s):  
Yitzchak Jaffe ◽  
Anke Hein ◽  
Andrew Womack ◽  
Katherine Brunson ◽  
Jade d’Alpoim Guedes ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Xindian culture of northwest China has been seen as a prototypical example of a transition toward pastoralism, resulting in part from environmental changes that started around 4000 years ago. To date, there has been little available residential data to document how and whether subsistence strategies and community organization in northwest China changed following or in association with documented environmental changes. The Tao River Archaeology Project is a collaborative effort aimed at gathering robust archaeological information to solidify our baseline understanding of economic, technological, and social practices in the third through early first millennia BC. Here we present data from two Xindian culture residential sites, and propose that rather than a total transition to nomadic pastoralism—as it is often reconstructed—the Xindian culture reflects a prolonged period of complex transition in cultural traditions and subsistence practices. In fact, communities maintained elements of earlier cultivation and animal-foddering systems, selectively incorporating new plants and animals into their repertoire. These locally-specific strategies were employed to negotiate ever-changing environmental and social conditions in the region of developing ‘proto-Silk Road’ interregional interactions.


Author(s):  
A.I. Yudin ◽  

The paper contains an analysis of the ceramic collection of the bronze age sanctuary Malaya Sopka. The sanctuary is located in the Oktyabrsky district of the Rostov region and was investigated in 2017. A little more than 10,000 square meters of the cultural layer of the сentral part of the monument were studied, which is about two-thirds of the total area. On the entire territory of the excavation, there were no dwellings, buildings, household pits, and hearths. However, 10 religious complexes were studied on the site, in the form of a system of ditches of various configurations (ring, rectangular, double ring), 12 objects (stone slabs and layouts, ruins of vessels), which gave reason to call Malaya Sopka a place of worship or a sanctuary. The weakly saturated cultural layer contained tools and products made of stone, bone and bronze. The main part of the finds is represented by ruins and fragments of bronze age ceramics and fragments of cattle bones. The ceramic complex of the site was formed at the turn of the middle and late Bronze age at the base of two different cultural traditions: the local Babino (multi-ribbed) and the newcomer Don-Volga Abashevo culture. The syncretic ceramic complex marks the stage of formation of the early Srubnaya (Timber-grave) culture and supplements the data on the cultural genesis of the middle-late Bronze age with the materials of the cult site.


Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (341) ◽  
pp. 757-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Hammer

Recent survey work in western Azerbaijan has revealed that hilltop fortresses of the Bronze Age and Iron Age may have been parts of larger walled complexes and could have functioned as the urban centres of small independent polities. On the Şərur Plain long lengths of stone wall link the major fortress Oğlanqala it to its smaller neighbour Qızqala 1, with evidence of a substantial settlement on the lower ground between the two. The southern Caucasus lies beyond the core area of Near Eastern states but these new discoveries suggest that major centres of power arose here, controlling both the fertile plains and strategic trade routes through mountainous terrain.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 150645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Graça da Silva ◽  
Jamshid J. Tehrani

Ancient population expansions and dispersals often leave enduring signatures in the cultural traditions of their descendants, as well as in their genes and languages. The international folktale record has long been regarded as a rich context in which to explore these legacies. To date, investigations in this area have been complicated by a lack of historical data and the impact of more recent waves of diffusion. In this study, we introduce new methods for tackling these problems by applying comparative phylogenetic methods and autologistic modelling to analyse the relationships between folktales, population histories and geographical distances in Indo-European-speaking societies. We find strong correlations between the distributions of a number of folktales and phylogenetic, but not spatial, associations among populations that are consistent with vertical processes of cultural inheritance. Moreover, we show that these oral traditions probably originated long before the emergence of the literary record, and find evidence that one tale (‘The Smith and the Devil’) can be traced back to the Bronze Age. On a broader level, the kinds of stories told in ancestral societies can provide important insights into their culture, furnishing new perspectives on linguistic, genetic and archaeological reconstructions of human prehistory.


Author(s):  
М. Pedracki ◽  
◽  
G. Bukesheva ◽  
М. Khabdulina ◽  
◽  
...  

It seems that there are some events in the history of Ancient Near Eastern civilizations directly related to the Bronze Age of Kazakhstan. Those events have taken place in the first half of the second millennium BC and were associated with the invasion of mobile groups chariot warriors who brought with themselves a cult of a horse, a war chariot, advanced weapons, and some new ideologies to the Ancient Near East. Those chariotry men became the military aristocracy in many new founded states in Ancient Near East They propagated a heroized image of a warrior- king ride in a chariot, which was widely used in the palace reliefs of the countries of the Ancient Near East. During the last fifty years the archeologists discovered many Bronze Age monuments in Kazakhstan, with cultural indicators which coincided with the characteristics of the historical tribes that invaded early agricultural civilizations of Near East at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and created new dynasties of rulers. The names of those incomers are preserved in the writing sources of the Near Ancient East states. They are mentioned as: Hyksos, Kassites, Amorites, Mariannu. It is known that some part of them were Indo-Aryans by language. For many decades, linguists, historians and archaeologists have been searching for their ancestral home. The purpose of the article is to characterize the main cultural factors of the Bronze Age cultures of Ural-Kazakhstan steppes and to investigate the possibility of the steppe origin of the chariot warriors income to the Near East in the first half of second millennium BC and thus show the contribution of the ancient population of the Kazakhstan steppes to the world historical process.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-136
Author(s):  
Elena Vitalievna Volkova

Due to the Historical-and-Cultural approach to ancient ceramics studies the development of mixed pottery traditions reflects the amalgamation of the very bearers of these traditions. Taken as a problem, the study of populations contacts with different levels of pottery production is specific for a wide variety of territories and chronological periods. In the Upper and Middle Volga region the problem manifests itself in appearance of the mixed pottery traditions (morphological as well as technological ones) as a result of contacts between the Fatyanovo-Balanovo population and the late Volosovo population. So-called Fatyanoid (or Fatyanovo-like) pottery that demonstrates features of the Volosovo and the Fatyanovo-Balanovo cultural traditions emerges in the process of amalgamation. A.A. Spitsyn, M.E. Foss, N.N. Gurina, I.V. Gavrilova, O.S. Gadzyatskaya and other researchers paid their attention to the problem. Based on the study of pottery collected at a number of archeological monuments including pottery from unfortified settlements - Nikolo-Perevoz I and II, Sakhtysh I, II, IV, Dikarikha, Iberdus I, Lipovka I and Galankina Gora - the author distinguishes three groups of the Fatyanoid (Fatyanovo-like) pottery: group I includes pottery with mixed Fatyanovo and Oshpandino traditions, group II includes pottery with mixed Fatyanovo and late Volosovo traditions, and group III includes pottery with the Fatyanovo traditions mixed with traditions of the population that consisted of bearers of the Bronze Age culture which is hard to define. These groups are present nearly at all archeological monuments though Fatyanovo-like pottery predominates at every monument. The author distinguishes pottery traditions common to the second group and explains the reason of their differences found at different monuments.


Author(s):  
Andrey Alekseev

The “Kuban” type helmet was found in the “Meotian” grave of small kurgan 15 (with the main and primary grave of the Bronze Age) in 1993 by the Kelermes archaeological expedition of the State Hermitage Museum. It is an object included in one of the components of the so-called “Scythian triad” and relates to the 7th – 6th centuries BC. The helmet has a shape that is close to hemispherical, it is corroded and in the front part it has superciliaryarcuate cuts, forming a small nose triangular plate, and a rectangular cutout in the back. On the edge of the helmet, there are 10 holes for fastening or lining of the helmet or leather earflaps. The helmet was cast on a wax model with a loss of a mould, and made of good tin bronze (Cu – base, Sn – 7–8%, As – 0.4%, Pb – 0.4%, Fe < 0.4%, Sb – traces), like many other items of this category of weapons. Regarding the origin of the “Kuban” type helmets, many of which are irregular finds, there are three versions of the origin of such helmets, which can be called the North Caucasian one, the Near Eastern one, and the Central Asiatic–North Chinese one. In the 1980s, a summary of such helmets, compiled by L.K. Galanina, consisted of 16 copies. Currently, it can be increased due to several new finds that have become known in recent decades, the area of which covers the territory of Eurasia from Mongolia to the Dnieper-river forest-steppe region. This allows to link their origin to the territory of Central Asia and North China more confidently, and typologically connect them with bronze helmets of the Western Zhou dating to the 11th – 8th centuries BC.


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