scholarly journals The Development and Character of Urban Communities in Prehistoric Crete in their Regional Context: A Preliminary Study

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Whitelaw
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Areal Extent ◽  
General Index ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The Bronze Age

This chapter is a preliminary sketch of an approach to analysing Minoan and Aegean urbanism in the Bronze Age. It comprises two sections, the first an outline of urban development, focusing particularly on the Cretan evidence but situating that in its southern Aegean context, on the far western fringe of Eurasian Bronze Age urban societies. The second section is a preliminary comparative exploration of the Cretan data in the context of Bronze Age urbanism in the broader East Mediterranean and Near East. This is aimed at assessing whether, despite its geographical remove, Minoan urbanism shares significant characteristics with other examples of Bronze Age, institutionfocused urbanism, and whether the diversity of the latter, with their more extensive textual documentation, may potentially provide models which can help us to analyse the Cretan evidence. Today, urban status tends to rely on bureaucratic and legal definitions, which vary arbitrarily between jurisdictions (Roberts 1996). They are usually based on population size, sometimes on areal extent, but the underlying idea is that the size of the population interacting in a community has an impact on the nature of those interactions, with larger communities being more complex, with individuals, through spatial propinquity, being able to interact with greater numbers of other individuals, interact in more complicated ways, and require more organization and infrastructure to facilitate these interactions (Bairoch 1988; Mumford 1966). This is well documented through recent analyses that explore the intensification of social interactions in larger cities (not just more, but more per person), whether positively, as measured through, for example, GDP or innovation rates, or negatively, through crime rates (Bettencourt et al. 2007, 2010). Moving away from modern industrial and post-industrial contexts, viewed cross-culturally, it has long been established that the largest community in a culture provides a general index of overall cultural complexity, measured in a variety of ways (Carneiro 1967; Tatje and Naroll 1970; McNett 1970).

scholarly journals Dogs accompanied humans during the Neolithic expansion into Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 20180286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgane Ollivier ◽  
Anne Tresset ◽  
Laurent A. F. Frantz ◽  
Stéphanie Bréhard ◽  
Adrian Bălăşescu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Dna Sequences ◽  
Near East ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Mitochondrial Lineage ◽  
Domestic Species ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Neolithic Expansion ◽  
The Bronze Age

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.

Wool Economy During the European Bronze Age

Światowit ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Sabatini
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Complex Mechanisms ◽  
The Bronze Age

A number of studies over the last decades have considerably increased our knowledge about production and trade of woollen textiles during the Bronze Age in the Near East, the Aegean, and continental Europe. In the wider Mediterranean area, thanks to the abundance of available evidence, it has been possible to use the concept of wool economy as a frame of reference to define the complex mechanisms behind production and trade of wool. The main aim of this paper is to reflect upon using the concept of wool economy to enhance our understanding of the relevant archaeological evidence from Bronze Age continental Europe.

Urartian Irrigation Works.

1972 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Burney
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Eastern Anatolia ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The Bronze Age

If there is one aspect of life in the ancient Near East which may be taken as a common factor between lands and cities so far removed in space and time as Sumer and Urartu, Eridu and Van, it is irrigation. This is a subject crying out for more research, especially on the ground. Here too is a link between Seton Lloyd's excavations at Eridu and in the Diyala region, his publication of Sennacherib's acqueduct and his later interest in Urartu. The writer can claim first-hand knowledge only of the last. Without Seton Lloyd's encouragement in the Institute at Ankara and likewise during the weeks spent as an assistant during the first season's excavations at Beycesultan, the writer would scarcely have set out on his first archaeological survey in northern Anatolia, followed by that in the Pontic region of Tokat and Amasya (1955). These two surveys were but the prelude to those of 1956 and 1957 in eastern Anatolia. These, undertaken initially in the expectation of discovering mounds of the Bronze Age and earlier periods, became instead largely a revelation of the great number of Urartian sites, including numerous fortresses recognizable as such from their surface remains.

Archaeomagnetism at Ebla (Tell Mardikh, Syria). New data on geomagnetic field intensity variations in the Near East during the Bronze Age

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 295-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Gallet ◽  
Marta D'Andrea ◽  
Agnès Genevey ◽  
Frances Pinnock ◽  
Maxime Le Goff ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Field Intensity ◽  
Geomagnetic Field ◽  
Near East ◽  
Geomagnetic Field Intensity ◽  
The Bronze Age

scholarly journals Some Balkan and Danubian Connexions of Troy

1919 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Ida Carleton Thallon
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Near East ◽  
Single Site ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Northern Limit ◽  
The West ◽  
Aegean Area ◽  
The North ◽  
The Bronze Age

Prehistoric research shows us that in the troubled section of Europe known as the Near East there existed as early as the neolithic period several culture groups which may be classified under four heads as follows:—(1) The Aegean, Minoan-Mycenaean group.(2) The Thessalian.(3) The Upper Balkan and Danubian.(4) The South Russian and allied groups.The first of these is so familiar that we need only emphasize its continuity from the neolithic period through the Bronze Age, and the fact that, although eventually it was widely diffused through the Mediterranean from Spain to Cyprus and the coast of Palestine, in the Aegean area itself the northern limit on the west coast was Thessaly, which it reached in the L. M. period, and on the opposite shore the single site toward the north is Troy, where L. M. is contemporary with the VIth city. The sporadic examples on the coast from Thessaly to Troy are very late and apparently had little influence.The excavations by Messrs. Wace and Thompson in prehistoric Thessaly, which included considerably more than one hundred sites, have led them to differentiate a large number of styles of pottery, including red monochrome, red or black incised, or else painted either light on dark or dark on light in many varieties. The designs are predominantly rectilinear and more closely akin to the northern groups than to the Minoan.

The Bronze Age in the Near East: A Review Article [Part II]

1952 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
George M. A. Hanfmann ◽  
Claude F. A. Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Review Article ◽  
The Bronze Age

Philological and Archaeological Evidence for the Use of Emery in the Bronze Age Near East

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Heimpel ◽  
Leonard Gorelick ◽  
A. John Gwinnett
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age
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