Food, foodways, and subsistence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hansjörg Küster
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Farming System ◽  
New Crops ◽  
The North ◽  
System P ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Oil Plant ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Agricultural Innovations

In the first millennium BC, three major subsistence ‘belts’ can be distinguished in Europe: one around the Mediterranean, a second in temperate Europe, and the third in the north. Shifting colonization was still practised in places, but cereal farming was well developed across most of the continent, with less amenable soils now brought into cultivation. Farmers relied on at least two cereal crops, sometimes with millet cultivated as a third cereal, possibly for fodder. Cultivated legumes included beans, peas, and lentils, while linseed was the predominant oil plant, and was also used for textiles, along with hemp. Rare finds of exotica, such as walnuts, figs, vines, and spices were imports from the Mediterranean zone. Woodland exploitation is also considered. During the Roman Iron Age, new crops and agricultural innovations are seen in areas beyond the limes. Along with iron technology, these laid the foundations for the early medieval farming system.

Edges and interactions beyond Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells ◽  
Naoise Mac Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The North Atlantic

Iron Age Europe, once studied as a relatively closed, coherent continent, is being seen increasingly as a dynamic part of the much larger, interconnected world. Interactions, direct and indirect, with communities in Asia, Africa, and, by the end of the first millennium AD, North America, had significant effects on the peoples of Iron Age Europe. In the Near East and Egypt, and much later in the North Atlantic, the interactions can be linked directly to historically documented peoples and their rulers, while in temperate Europe the evidence is exclusively archaeological until the very end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The evidence attests to often long-distance interactions and their effects in regard to the movement of peoples, and the introduction into Europe of raw materials, crafted objects, styles, motifs, and cultural practices, as well as the ideas that accompanied them.

The Excavation of a Settlement of the Later Bronze Age and Iron Age at Myrehead, Falkirk District

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
G J Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Farming System ◽  
Activity Period ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Ring Groove ◽  
Domestic Activity ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Millennium Bc ◽  
Actual Settlement

SUMMARY Myrehead has revealed the eroded remnants of activity from the Beaker period (Period A) onwards, with actual settlement evinced only from about the early first millennium be. The three houses and the cooking pits of Period B may have been constructed and used sequentially. This open settlement was probably replaced during the mid first millennium bc, possibly without a break, by a palisaded enclosure (Period C), which may have contained a ring-groove house and a four-post structure. Continued domestic activity (Period D) was suggested by a single pit outside the enclosure, dated to the late first millennium bc/early first millennium ad. The limited evidence of the economy of the settlements suggests a mixed farming system.

New Media in the Late Iron Age

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Middle Iron Age

This chapter analyzes coins and writing in late prehistoric Europe. The development of coinage in temperate Europe and the first regular signs of writing are innovations that share some important features. Both were introduced from outside the region, specifically from the Mediterranean world, toward the end of the Middle Iron Age. Although both had existed in the Mediterranean world for centuries before their introduction and adoption in temperate Europe, both appear in temperate Europe at about the same time, during the third century BC and more abundantly during the second and first centuries. They were both adopted at a particular time in Europe's developmental trajectory, and under specific economic and political circumstances.

The Archaeology of Nunge Site: An Ancient Salt Making Settlement and Trading Centre in Bagamoyo, Tanzania

Utafiti ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-52
Author(s):  
Emanuel T. Kessy
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Single Type ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium

Abstract The Bagamoyo area is among the Tanzanian coastal locations where evidence of intercontinental trade dates back to the last few centuries of the first millennium AD. Previous investigations have indicated that the region’s earliest settlement is represented by Early Triangular Incised Ware [TIW] around 600 to 700 AD, at Bwembweni site located two kilometres south of Kaole. During the Later TIW, the population shifted to Kaole Hill during the period noted by the use of Plain Ware, and later moved to the adjacent Kaole Ruins by the thirteenth century. Traditionally, the majority of earlier investigations for such conclusions have been restricted to Bwembweni and Kaole sites, and to a limited extent to Bagamoyo Town itself and its vicinity. However, recent reconnaissance and excavation of Nunge, a single type pottery tradition site located to the north, suggests that although Bagamoyo’s involvement in intercontinental exchange dates back to the seventh century AD, the narrative is more complicated than previously assumed. It appears that between the subsequent ninth to eleventh centuries, the area lost such links, before resurfacing again in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Within that time frame, Nunge developed into an extensive urban centre whose prosperity was based on salt production for exchange. This discovery suggests that the development to urbanism at (Later Iron Age phase) Nunge-Bagamoyo predates that of the Kaole town, when the area is known to have had a few links with the outside world. These findings contribute crucially to the debate regarding early urbanisation along the Swahili coast, by challenging the conventional view that Arab or Asian settlements were the earliest urban centres along the coast of East Africa.

scholarly journals Child burials in domestic contexts at an Iron Age hillfort: The Oppidum of Monte Bernorio (Villarén, Palencia)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Carnicero-Cáceres ◽  
Jesús F. Torres-Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
European Origin ◽  
The North ◽  
Cantabrian Region ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Funerary Ritual ◽  
Archeological Site

The practice of child burials underneath house floors in the Late Prehistory has been considered a characteristic trait of the Iberian religion. However, this custom has also been documented in different archaeological sites both in the Mediterranean and Central Europe as well as Celtic areas of the Iberian Peninsula, so we can explain this funerary practice by an Indo-European origin. We report the archeotanatological and osteoarcheological study of 10 subadults found in the Iron Age site of Monte Bernorio oppidum, the first archeological site in the western and central Cantabrian region with this funerary rite documented. It is the confirmation of both, the survival of an ancient funerary ritual, widely extended in all Europe, and its presence in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. We also review all the archeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula with similar archeological contexts and analyse the rite from the bioarcheology of the care.

Centers of Power, Weapons of Iron

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Douglas Price
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Alps ◽  
Iron Artifacts ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
City States

The introduction of iron after 1000 BC brought new tools and weapons to Europe. Smelting technology and higher furnace temperatures were likely the key to iron production, which is generally thought to have originated in Anatolia around 1400 BC among the Hittites, but there are a few earlier examples of iron artifacts as old as 2300 BC in Turkey. Iron produced sharper, more readily available implements and was in great demand. In contrast to copper and tin, whose sources were limited, iron was found in a variety of forms in many places across the continent. Veins of iron ore were exploited in Iberia, Britain, the Alps, the Carpathian Mountains, and elsewhere. Bog iron was exploited in northern Europe. Carbonate sources of iron in other areas enabled local groups to obtain the raw materials necessary for producing this important material. At the same time, the collapse of the dominant Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean changed the flow of raw materials and finished products across Europe. Greece fell into a Dark Age following the demise of the Mycenaean city-states. The Etruscans were on the rise in Italy. Rome was a small town at the border of the Etruscan region. Soon, however, new centers of power in classic Greece and Rome emerged, bringing writing and, with it, history to Europe. Again, we can observe important and dramatic differences between the “classic” areas of the Mediterranean and the northern parts of “barbarian” Europe. The chronology for the Iron Age in much of Europe is portrayed in Figure 6.2. The Iron Age begins earlier in the Mediterranean area, ca. 900 BC, where the Classical civilizations of Greece, the Etruscans, and eventually Rome emerge in the first millennium BC. Rome and its empire expanded rapidly, conquering much of western Europe in a few decades before the beginning of the Common Era and Britain around ad 43, effectively ending the prehistoric Iron Age in these parts of the continent. The Iron Age begins somewhat later in Scandinavia, around 500 BC.

Prehistoric Ceramics of Northern Afghanistan: Neolithic through the Iron Age

2007 ◽  
Vol 1047 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles C. Kolb
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Silk Route ◽  
Thin Section Analysis ◽  
Prehistoric Ceramics

AbstractFor nearly four millennia, Afghanistan has been at the crossroads of Eurasian commerce and remains ethnically and linguistically diverse, a mosaic of cultures and languages, especially in the north, where the Turkestan Plain is a conduit for the so-called Silk Route, a series of “roads” that connected far-flung towns and urban centers and facilitated the transfer of goods and services. The research reported herein involves the comparative analysis of archaeological ceramics from a series of archaeological sites excavated in northern Afghanistan in the mid-1960s by the late Louis Dupree and me. I served as the field director (1965-1966) and analyzed the ceramics excavated from all six archaeological sites. These were Aq Kupruk I, II, III, and IV located in Balkh Province (north-central Afghanistan) and Darra-i-Kur and Hazar Gusfand situated on the border between Badakshan and Tarkar Provinces (extreme northeastern Afghanistan). Ten of the 72 ceramic types from the Aq Kupruk area have been published [1, 2, 3] but none of the 53 wares from northeastern Afghanistan have been described. The majority of the Aq Kupruk materials are undecorated (plain ware) ceramics but there is a unique series of red-painted decorated ceramics (Red/Buff, numbered types 45 through 52) with early first millennium BCE designs but the pottery dates to the BCE-CE period. The results of ceramic typological, macroscopic, binocular and petrographic microscopy (thin-section analysis and point counting) are reported.

scholarly journals A Later prehistoric house and Early Medieval buildings in Northern Scotland: excavations at Loch Shurrery and Lambsdale Leans, Caithness, 1955, with a note on Lower Dounreay

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair MacLaren ◽  
Ewan Campbell ◽  
Gordon Cook ◽  
Janet Hooper ◽  
L Wells ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Northern Edge

Two rescue excavations at the northern edge of a rather sparsely occupied part of the interior of Caithness are reported here, lying near to one of the largest clusters of archaeological sites in the modern county. In the event, the monuments were not threatened, and survive.Because of the limited nature of the excavation at Loch Shurrery (NGR ND 043568),the main value of the evidence about the hut circle relates to its structure and dating. The excavated remains represented a medium-sized oval house with a west-facing entrance. It had an off-centre hearth of rectangular construction. It was rather different in structure to the majority of the small group of such sites which have been excavated in the northern part of the Scottish mainland, as it did not appear to have an internal ring of post holes. In addition, its western entrance is not matched at the other sites, where entrance orientations are to the south, east or south-east. The wall of the Loch Shurrery house was fairly thick and the excavation suggested that it was complex, while the entrance passageway was quite long. The existence of door checks is also an unusual feature and may relate to the entrance structures of brochs and other substantial roundhouses. Two samples of charcoal from the hearth inside the hut circle were submitted for radiocarbon dating: the determinations produce calibrated ranges (at 2-sigma) of 346-4 cal BC and 341 cal BC-1 cal AD. It is likely that most of the excavated, undecorated pottery is also Iron Age, part of a broad tradition of very coarsely tempered pottery. Not-withstanding evidence of extended occupation, the whole period of construction and occupation may have occurred within the Iron Age.The mound of Lambsdale Leans (NGR ND 051548)lies in Reay parish, situated on low-lying ground at the head of Loch Shurrery and close to where its main tributary (the Torran Water) enters the loch from the south. The main characteristics of the this partially-excavated site are the presence of what appeared to be two extended inhumations and the remnants of possible structures associated with several layers of burnt material. Lambsdale Leans itself was a natural mound, of elongated shape and composed largely of sand, into which were set the burials and structural remains. The burials (one certainly female, the other probably so) were not in cists. The structural remains, while not fully excavated, accord well with the general tenor of the available evidence of later first millennium AD buildings in the north of Scotland. Both structures at Lambsdale Leans had floors comprising roughly laid paving, edged with upright slabs, and with an outer kerb of stones. The earliest-dated pottery sherds, unstratified, are from a single grass- tempered handmade vessel whose form cannot be determined. Overall,on one interpretation the Lambsdale Leans evidence favours a context within the Early Medieval period in Caithness. The pottery however, being mostly C12-C13 oxidised wheel-thrown vessels, can be seen to support the suggestion that occupation on the site may have begun in the Medieval period.

Politics and power

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Collis ◽  
Raimund Karl
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Major Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Written Sources

Reconstruction of Iron Age social and political structures relies initially on written sources, but classical texts are both biased in how they describe institutions, especially among other peoples, and patchy in time and space. From the mid-first millennium BC, we get details on how polities such as Athens, Sparta, and Rome functioned, but these are not representative of other Greek and Italian peoples, let alone non-Mediterranean societies. The second source of information is archaeology, especially burials, but also settlements. The chapter discusses social and political development using both a core–periphery (Mediterranean societies were more complex than those in the north) and an evolutionary model, though not one which necessarily assumes increasing complexity. The varying nature of individual power bases is also considered. A major area of contention (including between the authors) is the extent to which we can back-project documented societies into the past or into other contexts.

scholarly journals Excavation of a Neolithic enclosure and an Iron Age settlement at Douglasmuir, Angus

1996 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 29-67
Author(s):  
Jill Kendrick ◽  
Gordon J Barclay ◽  
Trevor G Cowie ◽  
A Saville ◽  
Jill Kendrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Aerial Photographs ◽  
Internal Ring ◽  
Compressor Station ◽  
Broad Ring ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
First Millennium Bc

The complete excavation of a post-defined Neolithic enclosure took place in 1979 and 1980 in advance of the construction of a gas compressor station for the British Gas Corporation. The enclosure appeared to have been constructed in two parts. There was little evidence for any associated activity except for a pit in the north half. Three charcoal samples from the post-holes produced radiocarbon dates in the range 3930-3390 cal BC. A small sample of a scatter of pits visible on aerial photographs was also excavated. Six penannular ring-ditch houses dating to the mid first millennium BC were also investigated. The houses were of the broad ring-ditch type with internal ring beam support. Other features included six-post structures and crescent-shaped hollows which might be the truncated remains of further house sites. There was little horizontal stratigraphy. The project was arranged and funded by Historic Scotland and its predecessor departments, with a contribution by British Gas.

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