Middle Bronze Age Long Distance Exchange through Europe and Beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-274
Author(s):  
Flemming Kaul
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Composition ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Glass Beads ◽  
The South ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Blue Glass ◽  
The North ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Mediterranean

Abstract The introduction of the folding stool and the single-edged razor into Southern Scandinavia, as well as the testimony of chariot use during the Nordic Bronze Age Period II (1500-1300 BC), give evidence of the transfer of ideas from the Mediterranean to the North. Recent analyses of the chemical composition of blue glass beads from well-dated Danish Bronze Age burials have revealed evidence for the opening of long distance exchange routes around 1400 BC between Egypt, Mesopotamia and South Scandinavia. When including comparative material from glass workshops in Egypt and finds of glass from Mesopotamia, it becomes clear that glass from those distant lands reached Scandinavia. The routes of exchange can be traced through Europe based on finds of amber from the North and glass from the South.

Moving across the North Sea

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Van de Noort
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
The North ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
The Social ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
The Bronze Age

Movements between different lands around the North Sea have always been taking place. While the North Sea was evolving gradually, over the millennia, following the melting of the Devensian ice sheet, close contacts across what remained of the North Sea Plain never ceased, as evidenced by near-parallel developments of the Maglemosian-type tools in southern Scandinavia and Britain (Clark 1936), and by particular practices such as the deliberate deposition of barbed points (see chapter 3). Connections across the North Sea throughout the Mesolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic would have been made easier because of the number of islands surviving within the rising sea. The polished axes from Dogger Bank and Brown Bank either represent human presence on these islands in the early Neolithic or else indicate that the existence of these islands sometime in the pre-Neolithic past was embedded in the social memory of later periods. Both possibilities emphasize the fact that the North Sea was a knowable and visited place. Movements across the North Sea took various forms: as exchange between elites from different regions of exotic or ‘prestige’ goods, and possibly of marriage partners; as trade in both luxury and bulk commodities; and in the transfer of people, in some cases as individuals such as pilgrims and missionaries, and in other cases as groups of pirates or as part of larger-scale migrations. Over time, connectedness across the North Sea changed both in nature and in intensity; this was due in no small part to changes in the nature of the craft available. An outline of the movement of goods from the Neolithic through to the end of the Middle Ages illustrates this. Contacts across the North Sea for the Neolithic and the Bronze Age are demonstrated in the long-distance exchange of exotic objects and artefacts, including Beaker pottery, jewellery, or other adornments of gold, amber, faience, jet, and tin; also copper and bronze weapons and tools, and flint daggers, arrowheads, and wrist guards (e.g. Butler, 1963; O’Connor, 1980; Bradley 1984; Clarke, Cowie, and Foxon 1985).

Ino-Leukothea between East and West

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margalit Finkelberg
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Complex Network ◽  
Near East ◽  
Mediterranean Coast ◽  
Native Population ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Of Greece

AbstractUntil recently it has generally been taken for granted that cultural contacts between the Aegean and the Near East invariably proceeded in one direction, from East to West. It seems, however, that recent archaeological discoveries are about to change this picture. As these discoveries demonstrate, with the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization some Bronze Age populations of Greece migrated to the Levant and settled along the Mediterranean coast from Tarsos in the north to Ashkelon in the south, eventually to be assimilated into the native population. This fact suggests a much more complex network of relations between the Aegean and the Near East than the simple one-sided cultural dependence which has usually been postulated.

Excavation of Four Barrows, and a Middle Bronze Age Cremation Cemetery, at Heatherstone Grange, Bransgore, Hampshire

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-89
Author(s):  
Richard Massey ◽  
Elaine L. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

Excavation at Heatherstone Grange, Bransgore, Hampshire, investigated features identified in a previous evaluation. Area A included ring ditches representing two barrows. Barrow 1.1 held 40 secondary pits, including 34 cremation-related deposits of Middle Bronze Age date, and Barrow 1.2 had five inserted pits, including three cremation graves, one of which dated to the earlier Bronze Age, and was found with an accessory cup. A number of pits, not all associated with cremation burials, contained well-preserved urns of the regional Deverel-Rimbury tradition and occasional sherds from similar vessels, which produced a closely-clustered range of eight radiocarbon dates centred around 1300 BC. Of ten pits in Area C, three were cremation graves, of which one was radiocarbon-dated to the Early Bronze Age and associated with a collared urn, while four contained only pyre debris. Barrow 1.3, in Area E, to the south, enclosed five pits, including one associated with a beaker vessel, and was surrounded by a timber circle. Area F, further to the south-west, included two pits of domestic character with charcoal-rich fills and the remains of pottery vessels, together with the probable remains of a ditched enclosure and two sets of paired postholes. Area H, located to the north-west of Area E, partly revealed a ring ditch (Barrow 1.4), which enclosed two pits with charcoal-rich fills, one with a single Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age potsherd, and the other burnt and worked flint. A further undated pit was situated to the east of Barrow 1.4. The cremation cemetery inserted into Barrow 1.1 represents a substantial addition to the regional record of Middle Bronze Age cremation burials, and demonstrates important affinities with the contemporary cemeteries of the Stour Valley to the west, and sites on Cranborne Chase, to the north-west.

scholarly journals The neolithic settlements in the Timok region and Djerdap gorge hinterland

Starinar ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Kapuran ◽  
Aleksandar Bulatovic ◽  
Igor Jovanovic
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
The South ◽  
Cultural Complex ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Economic Worth ◽  
Livestock Husbandry

For many years, the territory along the course of the Crni Timok river in northeast Serbia was not presented as an interesting area for early Neolithic excavation. However, recent inspection of older unpublished data, with newer reconnaissance, has shed new light on this period of prehistory. A larger number of sites have been discovered with similar topographical positions on the edges/rims of large areas or on ridges above river courses. Thanks to cooperation between the geographical project TOPOI from Berlin and the Archaeological Institute in Belgrade, work has begun on the production of a digital ?archaeological model of probability? (ARM), which will improve reconnaissance of this region. Alongside the only systematic excavation/investigation of settlements in Kucajna, 16 more localities have been confirmed, situated in the area between the Roman imperial palace of Felix Romuiana in the south and Bor in the north. They are located at the following sites: Cerova Faca and Dubrava in Brestovac; Kot 1 and 2, Pundjilov potok (Pundjil?s stream) in Metovnica; La Bunar in Sarbanovac; Smolnica, Abri above Lazareve pecine (Lazarus? cave), Donja Stopanja (Lower Stopanja) Kobila in Zlot. In the area around Felix Romuliana several settlements have been discovered: in sectors Intra and Extra muros, Kravarnik, Varzari, Petronj 2, sites between Magura and Rimski majdan (Roman mine) and Visicina Basta. From the examination of finds discovered at these sites it can be concluded that on the territory along the course of the River Timok the population of the Starcevo-Keres-Kris cultural complex was relatively well established during the early Neolithic period. The Neolithic occupation of the region had proceeded from the Djerdap gorge in the north and Sicevacka, Svrljiska and Trgoviska gorges in the south, towards the course of the River Timok i.e. the central part of north-east Serbia. The Mesolithic populations had gradually accepted the production of food. Utilizing the optimal climate and fertile soil, they improved their husbandry through new agricultural methods and the better domestication of animals. This experimental process demanded successive migrations, which impoverished the quality of soil and the seasonal movements of animals that needed to be tamed. By analysis of the topographical and geomorphologic character of this terrain, early Neolithic settlements can be described as being agricultural-livestock husbandry and livestock husbandry-hunting based. The first settlements were located on gently inclined terrains relatively close to water sources, at altitudes of 180 to 300 m. The second category of settlements were formed on uplands, offering a better view of the terrain, 230 to over 450 metres above sea level. These were probably short-term or seasonal settlements since such territories were usually unsuitable for habitation during the winter months. The poor geomorphology of the land, the magma-rock substratum and ill-drained soil, in combination with primitive agriculture, guaranteed greater soil erosion, which would destroy the economic worth of the soil. With the disappearance of the early- Neolithic population from this region, human habitation did not reoccur until several millennia later, during the middle Bronze age.

Questions of Context: A Greek Cup from the River Thames

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Amy. C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The North ◽  
Bronze Vessels ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
The Alps ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Area North

The anthropologist Mary Helms has argued that in traditional societies access to exotic items is often a source of prestige (1988: chs. 3 and 4). So is knowledge of the appropriate ways in which to use them. This idea plays a central role in a new study of the European Bronze Age which postulates long-distance links between Scandinavia and the East Mediterranean and suggests that they were a source of political power (Kristiansen and Larsson 2005: ch. 5). Similar attitudes can also be found in studies of the Iron Age. In the graves and hillforts of Hallstatt C and D there are Mediterranean amphorae, Greek and Etruscan bronze vessels and Attic (Athenian) pottery, some of which were most probably acquired through the port of Massalia. Their distribution extends over a large area north of the Alps and has been discussed by Barry Cunliffe on several occasions. As he says ‘It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the presence of the Greek trading port created a demand for commodities from the north and that this led to the emergence of powerful chiefdoms in the core of the barbarian area, able to command the flow of luxury objects from the south’ (1988: 24–5). Such interpretations emphasize the significance for Iron Age people of access to imported goods. Individual artefacts travelled even greater distances, with a major concentration of Etruscan beaked flagons in the Middle Rhine (Kimmig 1982: Abb. 32), but much further to the north and west the distribution of imports virtually runs out. That raises a serious problem. What are archaeologists to make of the few examples which have been found beyond the areas that were in regular contact with the Mediterranean? Here it is important to consider questions of context. There have been a number of reviews of the evidence for Mediterranean imports in Iron Age Britain, but they have all had one feature in common. They have catalogued a series of artefacts which were made in the Mediterranean.

A gold diadem from Aegina

1987 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 182-182
Author(s):  
Reynold Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The South ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Middle Helladic ◽  
Dead Man ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Grave Goods

A recent discovery on the island of Aegina by Professor H. Walter (University of Salzburg) throws a new light on the origins of the so-called Aegina Treasure in the British Museum.In 1982 the Austrians were excavating the Bronze Age settlement on Cape Kolonna, to the north-west of Aegina town. Immediately to the east of the ruined Temple of Apollo, and close to the South Gate of the prehistoric Lower Town, they found an unrobbed shaft grave containing the burial of a warrior. The gravegoods (now exhibited in the splendid new Museum on the Kolonna site) included a bronze sword with a gold and ivory hilt, three bronze daggers, one with gold fittings, a bronze spear-head, arrowheads of obsidian, boar's tusks from a helmet, and fragments of a gold diadem (plate Va). The grave also contained Middle Minoan, Middle Cycladic, and Middle Helladic (Mattpainted) pottery. The pottery and the location of the grave in association with the ‘Ninth City’ combine to give a date for the burial of about 1700 BC; and the richness of the grave-goods would suggest that the dead man was a king.

scholarly journals Late antique necropolis in Davidovac-Crkviste

Starinar ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 269-286
Author(s):  
Perica Spehar ◽  
Natasa Miladinovic-Radmilovic ◽  
Sonja Stamenkovic
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Constantius Ii ◽  
Small Finds ◽  
Roman Province

In 2012, in the village Davidovac situated in south Serbia, 9.5 km south-west from Vranje, archaeological investigations were conducted on the site Crkviste. The remains of the smaller bronze-age settlement were discovered, above which a late antique horizon was later formed. Apart from modest remains of a bronze-age house and pits, a late antique necropolis was also excavated, of which two vaulted tombs and nine graves were inspected during this campaign. During the excavation of the northern sector of the site Davidovac-Crkviste the north-eastern periphery of the necropolis is detected. Graves 1-3, 5 and 6 are situated on the north?eastern borderline of necropolis, while the position of the tombs and the remaining four graves (4, 7-9) in their vicinity point that the necropolis was further spreading to the west and to the south?west, occupying the mount on which the church of St. George and modern graveyard are situated nowadays. All graves are oriented in the direction SW-NE, with the deviance between 3? and 17?, in four cases toward the south and in seven cases toward the north, while the largest part of those deviations is between 3? and 8?. Few small finds from the layer above the graves can in some way enable the determination of their dating. Those are two roman coins, one from the reign of emperor Valens (364-378), as well as the fibula of the type Viminacium-Novae which is chronologically tied to a longer period from the middle of the 5th to the middle of the 6th century, although there are some geographically close analogies dated to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century. Analogies for the tombs from Davidovac can be found on numerous sites, like in Sirmium as well as in Macvanska Mitrovica, where they are dated to the 4th-5th century. Similar situation was detected in Viminacium, former capital of the roman province of Upper Moesia. In ancient Naissus, on the site of Jagodin Mala, simple rectangular tombs were distributed in rows, while the complex painted tombs with Christian motifs were also found and dated by the coins to the period from the 4th to the 6th century. Also, in Kolovrat near Prijepolje simple vaulted tombs with walled dromos were excavated. During the excavations on the nearby site Davidovac-Gradiste, 39 graves of type Mala Kopasnica-Sase dated to the 2nd-3rd century were found, as well as 67 cist graves, which were dated by the coins of Constantius II, jewellery and buckles to the second half of the 4th or the first half of the 5th century. Based on all above mentioned it can be concluded that during the period from the 2nd to the 6th century in this area existed a roman and late antique settlement and several necropolises, formed along an important ancient road Via militaris, traced at the length of over 130 m in the direction NE-SW. Data gained with the anthropological analyses of 10 skeletons from the site Davidovac-Crkviste don't give enough information for a conclusion about the paleo-demographical structure of the population that lived here during late antiquity. Important results about the paleo-pathological changes, which do not occur often on archaeological sites, as well as the clearer picture about this population in total, will be acquired after the osteological material from the site Davidovac-Gradiste is statistically analysed.

scholarly journals Large tare vessels of the bronze age Turganic settlement in Orenburg Region

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 91-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalya Petrovna Salugina ◽  
Nina Leonidovna Morgunova ◽  
Mihail Aleksandrovich Turetskii
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Orenburg Region ◽  
The North ◽  
Type Selection ◽  
Large Size ◽  
Culture Formation ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

In the ceramic collection of Turganic settlement in the Orenburg region there is a group of bronze age pottery, which by its morphological and technological indicators stands out sharply from the main group of dishes. They are large size vessels with massive aureoles and distended body. The authors called these vessels hums. The aim of this study is to identify cultural-chronological position of the specified group of dishes in the system of the antiquities of the early - middle bronze age. Within this group the authors distinguish two types. The basis for type selection was the particular design of the upper part of the vessel. The first type is ceramics from Turganic settlement and the vessel from the burial mound Perevolotsky I. Morphological and technological features, and a series of radiocarbon dates has allowed to date these vessels to the time of the yamnaya culture formation in the Volga-Ural region (Repinsky stage). The authors suggest that the appearance of such vessels should be an imitation of the Maikop pottery. It could be penetration of small groups of craftsmen or the intensification of contacts with the population of the North Caucasus. The second type of pottery from Turganic settlement is similar to the burial mound Kardailovsky I (mound 1, burial 3) in Orenburg region, in the Northern pre-Caspian, region of the Samara river, Kuban and the Dnieper. Researchers have noted the scarcity and originality of this dish. The chronological and cultural position of such vessels is determined within the III Millennium BC (calibrated values).

Bronze Age Barrows on Charmy Down and Lansdown, Somerset

1950 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 34-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Williams
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The South ◽  
Stream Flows ◽  
North East ◽  
The North

Charmy Down is a plateau three miles north-east of Bath (fig. 1, 1), east of the Bath-Tetbury road. About a square mile in extent it has a general height of well over 600 ft. To the north the scarp falls swiftly, on the east more gently, to the wooded valley of St. Catherine's Brook, a tributary of the Bristol Avon and the modern Somerset–Gloucester boundary. At the foot of the steep western scarp a second stream flows south to the Avon. On the south Chilcombe Bottom separates Charmy Down from Solsbury Hill, distinguished by its Iron Age earthwork. The underlying rock is oolite, a southward continuation of the Cotswold formation.

Archaeological Operations

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-193
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kaplan ◽  
Federico Paredes Umaña
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Field Data ◽  
The South ◽  
Water Control ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The North ◽  
Ancient Society ◽  
Preclassic Period

Chapter 4 abstracts and summarizes the very copious field data from the three lengthy field seasons at Chocolá, including the specific evidence obtained about the very extensive water control system that was discovered. Intensive grid excavations were undertaken in five operations: Mound 15, the northernmost part of the elite north sector, Mounds 6 and 7, in the southern part of the north sector, Mound 2, in the central administrative sector, and Mound 5, in the south sector. Accordingly, our three field seasons provide the specific evidence and artifacts we have been able to use to understand the clearly hierarchical structure of the ancient society and city. Of particular importance for a better understanding of the material underpinnings of Chocolá is our research at Mound 5, in the south, where we believe cacao arboriculture was developed for long-distance trade in the Preclassic period.

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