Memory in a Time of Prose

Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske

Memory in a Time of Prose investigates a deceptively straightforward question: what did the biblical scribes know about times previous to their own? To address this question, the following study focuses on matters pertaining to epistemology, or the sources, limits, and conditions of knowing that would have shaped biblical stories told about a past that preceded the composition of these writings by a generation or more. The investigation that unfolds with these interests in mind consists of a series of case studies that compare biblical references to an early Iron Age world (ca. 1175–830 BCE) with a wider constellation of archaeological and historical evidence unearthed from the era in which these stories are set. What this approach affords is the opportunity to examine the relationship between the past disclosed through these historical traces and that past represented within the biblical narrative, thus bringing to light meaningful details concerning the information drawn on by Hebrew scribes for the prose narratives they created. The results of this comparative endeavor are insights into an ancient world of oral, living speech that informed biblical storytelling, where knowledge about the past was elicited more through memory and word of mouth than through a corpus of older narrative documents. For those Hebrew scribes who first set down these stories in prose writing, the means for knowing a past and the significance attached to it were, in short, wed foremost to the faculty of remembrance.

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 105-125
Author(s):  
Elif Koparal ◽  
Rik Vaessen

AbstractOver the past two decades or so, excavations at Klazomenai have unearthed a wealth of information about the Early Iron Age, showing it to have been a thriving settlement at this time. Accordingly, it is intriguing that systematic surveys in the chora of Klazomenai have turned up very few sites that can be dated to this period. In this contribution, we discuss the implications of this discrepancy between the excavation data and the survey data in terms of the relationship between the settlement and its surrounding countryside. We argue that the lack of identified sites in the chora does not mean a lack of movement or that Klazomenai was an isolated spot in an otherwise desolate landscape. Furthermore, we discuss briefly how the developments that took place during the Early Iron Age ultimately led to the emergence of the polis at the beginning of the Archaic period. Our principal aim is to highlight the importance of the survey data, not only in terms of exploring the web of relations in which Klazomenai was tangled during the Early Iron Age, but also for highlighting in more detail the diversities that existed in ancient Ionia


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cezary Namirski

The book is a study of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Nuragic settlement dynamics in two selected areas of the east coast Sardinia, placing them in a wider context of Central Mediterranean prehistory. Among the main issues addressed are the relationship between settlement and ritual sites, the use of coastline, and a chronology of settlement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske

Over the past twenty years our understanding of Philistine Gath's history (Tell es-Safl) has been transformed by what has been revealed through the site's early Iron Age remains. But what has received much less attention is the effect these ruins have on how we read references to the location within the Hebrew Bible. The intent of this study is to draw on the archaeological evidence produced from Tell es-Safl as an interpretive lens by which to consider the biblical portrayal of the site rendered in the book of Samuel, where the material traces of more amicable associations between Gath and highland populations invite us to reconsider the city's depiction in this ancient literary work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-355
Author(s):  
Jie Li ◽  
Wenyi Xue ◽  
Fang Yang ◽  
Yakun Li

AbstractWith the development of the electronic commerce, the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has become important reference information for consumer shopping. EWOM has attracted considerable interest from researchers in the past decade. In this paper, a research review is conducted and an integrated framework is proposed on the effect of eWOM. The effect of eWOM are influenced by its characteristics, communicators, and other factors. The characteristics of eWOM include the source, the volume and the valence. The communicators of eWOM refer to the sender, the receiver and the relationship between them. In addition, dispersion and consistency, persistence and observability, anonymity and deception, and community engagement are related factors for the effect of eWOM.


Antiquity ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 13 (49) ◽  
pp. 58-79
Author(s):  
R. E. M. Wheeler

In recent years considerable attention has been devoted to the problems of the Early Iron Age in the British Isles; and, amongst these problems, that of the relationship between the insular and the continental cultures of the period has not become simpler or clearer as the British evidence has accumulated. How far, and in what manner, were the various Iron Age cultures of Britain derived from the continent? How far, and under what conditions, were they due to local initiative in Britain itself? Until questions such as these can be answered approximately, it will remain impossible alike to estimate the real achievement of the later prehistoric civilization of the island and to visualize the full significance of the adjacent civilization of northwestern Europe. The problem is not an easy one. The agricultural and therefore local basis of most of the Iron Age economy of Britain encouraged the strong local differentiation of cultural forms, and this local individuality was enhanced by the fashion in which the major tracts of open and habitable chalk or greensand tended, in ancient times, to be isolated by expanses of dense and often impassable forest. And, similarly, an intrusive element from overseas might easily take root in a particular area of southern or eastern Britain without directly affecting other areas within a relatively short map-distance.


1970 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 172-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Phillipson

Considerable attention has recently been paid to the start of the Iron Age in East and Central Africa. One of the most interesting problems concerning this period is that of the relationship of the Early Iron Age farming people to the hunter-gatherers of the Late Stone Age whom they eventually displaced. Very few archaeological sites are known, and none have yet been published, which illustrate the Late Stone Age/Iron Age transition in Central Africa, and discussions of this and related problems have so far been largely based on conjecture. Evidence concerning this important transition was recently unearthed at Nakapapula rockshelter in the Serenje District of central Zambia. Here a long and relatively homogeneous Late Stone Age sequence of Nachikufan type was seen to continue into the 2nd millennium A.D., that is, well after the first appearance of Early Iron Age pottery at this site and elsewhere in Zambia. Nakapapula has also yielded the first archaeological evidence for the date of schematic rock art in Central Africa and confirmed its contemporaneity with the Early Iron Age.


2006 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 183-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassilis P. Petrakis

The present study explores the possible interpretation of the terracotta cylindrical models found in Late Minoan to Early Iron Age contexts (generally known as “(circular) hut models”) as reduced-scale models of tholos tombs. Theoretical issues concerning the relationship of an ‘architectural model’ with the archaeological context in which it is found are examined in order to support the above-mentioned suggestion. Archaeological data concerning the morphology, chronology, distribution, use and significance of the Late Minoan and Early Iron Age tholos tombs are explored in order to contribute to the discussion. The possible connection between the presence of the LM III tomb models in domestic contexts and the absence of contemporary intramural burials allows us to expand on the possible significance of these artefacts for our knowledge of LM mortuary practices and beliefs, especially those concerning the possible practice of ‘ancestor worship’. The presence of terracotta figurines of the ‘Minoan Goddess with Upraised Arms’ type attached in the interior of two examples (from SM Knossos and PG B Archanes) is considered as a late development within the tradition of these models and linked with the practice of placing MGUA figures in Early Iron Age tholos tombs (Rhotasi, Kourtes).


Starinar ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Kapuran

Archaeological research at the site of Hisar in Leskovac began more than a decade ago and has initiated numerous papers on the relationship between the Mediana and Brnjica cultural groups and cultures that marked the transition from the Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the Central Balkans. This paper seeks to highlight and correct some of the key mistakes which have emerged in the stratigraphic interpretation of this multi-horizon site, and in such a way contribute to the better understanding of cultural movements at the transition from the 2nd to the 1st millennium BC.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
A. P. Medvedev ◽  
R. S. Berestnev

The article is devoted to the characterization of pre-Scythian time monuments in the forest-steppe course of the Don. The authors come to the conclusion about the regional specificity of the process of cultural genesis in this territory at the beginning of the early Iron Age. The authors analyze the new treasure of Novocherkassk type. It was opened in 2016 in the Podgorensky district of the Voronezh region. This treasure includes psalms, hatchet, metal plates, bracelet-like rings, spearheads. In inventory, it is close to the pre-Scythian burials in the forest-steppe Ukraine (Butenki, Kvitki). Obviously, the population that left the treasure penetrated into the territory of the Middle Don region from the steppes between the Dnieper and Ciscaucasia — the place where the Cimmerian culture was formed in the 9th century. Objects close to the Proto-Meotian, Novocherkassk complexes, their diversity show this process. It remains an open question about the relationship in the studied region of the funerary monuments of Novocherkassk type and Middle-Don mounds of the Scythian time.


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