Brigands and Cruel Kings

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Debbie Felton
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Pass Through

Most of Heracles’ parerga involve not mythological monsters but murderous humans or demigods famous for torturing and murdering travelers unfortunate enough to pass through their territories. Many of these antagonists, such as Cacus, Antaeus, and Cycnus, displayed their victims’ skulls as trophies. Such stories may echo headhunting rituals evidenced by archaeological finds from the Mesolithic through the early Iron Age. Heracles’ victories over these bloodthirsty characters, like his victories over monstrous beasts, may thus not only represent the abstract triumph of “civilized” values but also possibly reflect specific practices of early Mediterranean societies—including skull-taking in battle and human sacrifice related to crop fertility—replaced by more “humane” customs as Hellenic culture developed. These stories, with their extreme concerns about territory and boundaries, may also reflect the xenophobia evident between Greeks and foreigners as Greece expanded her colonial presence in the Mediterranean and beyond.

THE ‘SOS’ AMPHORA: AN UPDATE

2015 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 213-245
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
New Information ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
New Distribution ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin

Research conducted and published over the last 35 years has brought to light much new information concerning the so-called ‘SOS’ amphora, produced primarily in Attica and Euboea in the Archaic period. However, little focused work has been undertaken in the study of these vessels since Johnston and Jones' seminal work in 1978. This paper therefore provides a critical update on the production and distribution of SOS amphorae using the current data available. Included in this update is a discussion of recent research on Early Iron Age amphorae that may help situate the SOS amphora within a broader ceramic milieu. A new distribution of SOS amphorae also necessitates a reappraisal of some previously held ideas concerning their chronological patterns and the specific actors involved in their shipment. Taking into consideration the multiple spatial and temporal varieties of SOS amphorae, it can be shown that these vessels were relatively evenly deposited across the Mediterranean, from Iberia to the Levant, very early in the Archaic period. In combination with other factors, this widespread distribution may support the hypothesis that non-Greek seafarers were involved with transporting Athenian and Euboean SOS amphorae. Ultimately, it is hoped that a fresh look at this ceramic shape, however brief, might contribute to existing scholarly debates on cultural interactions and mobility within the Mediterranean basin during the Archaic period.

scholarly journals Dating the Iron Age I/II Transition in Israel: First Intercomparison Results

Radiocarbon ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
A J Timothy Jull ◽  
Ayelet Gilboa ◽  
Ilan Sharon
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Dating Methods ◽  
Measuring Techniques ◽  
Iron Age I ◽  
Radiocarbon Data ◽  
The Mediterranean

Nearly a decade ago, a different chronology than the conventional absolute chronology for the early Iron Age in Israel was suggested. The new, lower chronology “transfers” Iron Age I and Iron Age IIA contexts in Israel, traditionally dated to the 11th and 10th centuries BCE, to the 10th and 9th centuries, respectively. Thus, it places the Iron I|IIA transition at about 920–900 BCE. This alternative chronology carries important implications for Israelite history, historiography, and Bible research, as well as for the chronologies of other regions around the Mediterranean. Relevant radiocarbon data sets published to date, which were measured at different sites by different laboratories, were claimed to be incompatible. Therefore, the question of agreement between laboratories and dating methods needs to be addressed at the outset of any study attempting to resolve such a tight chronological dilemma. This paper addresses results pertaining to this issue as part of a comprehensive attempt to date the early Iron Age in Israel based on many sites, employing different measuring techniques in 2 laboratories. The intercomparison results demonstrate that: a) the agreement between the 2 laboratories is well within the standard in the 14C community and that no bias can be detected in either laboratory; and b) calculating the Iron I|IIa transition in 3 different ways (twice independently by the measurements obtained at the 2 labs and then by combining the dates of both) indicates that the lower chronology is the preferable one.

Trade and exchange

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gosden
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
For Profit ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Alps ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Trade And Exchange

This chapter challenges prevailing paradigms which have structured discussion of trade and exchange in Iron Age Europe around the dichotomies of gifts vs commodities, or socially generated exchanges in the earlier Iron Age vs production for profit in the later Iron Age. It begins by reviewing the debate on markets and gifts, and what is still useful, and goes on to suggest new directions for research, focusing more on what brought people together as much as the items exchanged. Early Iron Age links between the Mediterranean and Europe north of the Alps are reconsidered in the light of recent work, with a focus on the Heuneburg and Massalia. For the later period, the role of oppida is considered; evidence of production for profit is absent from many areas, and the long-distance exchanges evident at oppida were part of broader European links connected to changes in power and identity.

Urban Sprawl: What is Urbanization and Why does it Matter?

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Osborne
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Way

This chapter explains the importance of studying urbanization in the Mediterranean region. Urbanization has become a somewhat unfashionable topic among archaeologists and this may be because it has become bound up with questions of state formation. This chapter highlights the need to analyse urban settlements in the way that sanctuaries and cemeteries have come to be analysed, and argues that attempts to understand what is going on in the Mediterranean in the early Iron Age are doomed unless the importance of the town as a unit of analysis is reinserted and the variable forms of town as a unit are examined.

Opening the Mediterranean: Assyria, the Levant and the transformation of Early Iron Age trade

Antiquity ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (331) ◽  
pp. 211-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Nathan Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Direct Function ◽  
The Mediterranean

The evidence for structures of exchange in the Early Iron Age Mediterranean has been rationalised in many ways, variable in terms of both the evidence selected and the arguments applied. However, the most pervasive and tenacious explanation has been based upon a coreperiphery model, which approaches the expansion of Phoenician commerce in the Early Iron Age by conceptualising it as flowing from a largely eastern Mediterranean core to the western Mediterranean periphery. Thus the Early Iron Age expansion has been interpreted as a direct function of Neo-Assyrian imperialism (Frankenstein 1979), an idea that has circulated in the work of many scholars (Shaw 1989; Kuhrt 1995: 403’410; Coldstream 2003: 240’41, 359; Fantalkin 2006).

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