Some Choreographic Notes on the Dance of Theory with Data

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Marvin L. Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Southwest Asia ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Probing Questions

This volume is a tour de force that exceeds any predecessor in its theoretical scope. Even more important than its intriguing syntheses are its probing questions, its analytical categories and tools, and its challenges to easy assumptions. Boer’s pursuit of theoretical integration, however, sometimes leads him to overgeneralize. He staunchly maintains, for example, that arable land was plentiful in all times and places in ancient Southwest Asia. Comprehensive archaeological surveys of the southern Levant tell a different story. The Iron ii population was more than double that of the Bronze Age or of Iron i. The highlands particularly witnessed the occupation of marginal niches. Population pressure on arable land was a reality in Iron ii Palestine. Similarly, the many standardized wine amphorae recovered from two eighth-century bce. Phoenician ships sunk off the Philistine coast contradict Boer’s repeated insistence that there is no evidence for long-distance trade in bulk goods.

North European Rock Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Goldhahn
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Migration Period ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Bronze Age

This chapter offers a long-term perspective on rock art in northern Europe. It first provides an overview of research on the rock art traditions of northern Europe before discussing the societies and cultures that created such traditions. It then considers examples of rock art made by hunter-gatherer societies in northern Europe, focusing on the first rock art boom related to Neolithization. It also examines the second rock art boom, which was associated with social and religious changes within farming communities that took place around 1600–1400 bc. The chapter concludes by analysing the breakdown of long-distance networks in the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and its consequences for the making of rock art within the southern traditions, as well as the use of rock art sites during the Pre-Roman Iron Age, Roman Iron Age, and Migration Period.

Cultural Metallurgy—A Key Factor in the Transition from the Chalcolithic to Bronze Age in the Southern Levant

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Nissim Amzallag
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Coastal Plain ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Practical Approach ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Late Chalcolithic ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
The Bronze Age

The causes of the disappearance of Late Chalcolithic society (Ghassulian) in the early fourth millennium bc remain obscure. This study identifies the collapse as the consequence of a change in the approach to metallurgy from cosmological fundament (Late Chalcolithic) to a practical craft (EB1). This endogenous transition accounts for the cultural recession characterizing the transitional period (EB1A) and the discontinuity in ritual practices. The new practical approach in metallurgy is firstly observed in the southern margin of the Ghassulian culture, which produced copper for distribution in the Nile valley rather than the southern Levant. Nevertheless, the Ghassulian cultural markers visible in the newly emerging areas of copper working (southern coastal plain, Nile valley) denote the survival of the old cosmological traditions among metalworkers of the EB1 culture. Their religious expression unveils the extension of the Ghassulian beliefs attached to metallurgy and their metamorphosis into the esoteric fundaments of the Bronze Age religions.

Migration in West Africa: a savanna village prespective

Africa ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Cleveland
Keyword(s):  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Good News ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
Land Productivity ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Southern Ghana

AbstractLocal migration in response to population pressure is part of the history of northeast Ghana. First by physical coercion, then by economic coercion, colonialism drastically changed the pattern of migration to one of long-distance movement from north-east Ghana and the northern savannas in general to southern Ghana. Migration in turn affected social organisation, agriculture and population dynamics n i savanna communities. While colonial policy was not always consistent, one dominant and ultimately effective strategy seems evident: to break up locally self-sufficient economies and societies in order to stimulate the temporary migration of labour from largely subsistence agriculture to work in commercial agriculture, mining and public works in the south. These sectors were directly tied to the European economy for the benefit of Britain. Low wages and poor working conditions encouraged most migrants to return to their savanna villages when they were sick, injured or too old to work.When Ghana gained its political independence from Britain this new pattern of migration had become firmly established and was maintained by changes in the social, economic and transport systems. Data from Zorse and the Upper Region show that migration at any one time takes about 50 per cent of working-age males and 15 per cent of working-age females to southern Ghana for periods of a year or more. Significantly increased dependency ratios mean that as a result of this migration each four remaining working-age adults must support themselves plus four dependants, instead of supporting only three dependants, as would be the case without migration. Since remittances by Zorse migrants are equal to only a small fraction of the value of their lost productive labour, the net effect of migration on the food consumption level of those remaining in the village will be determined by the balance between the increased output required of each remaining working-age adult and the decreased yield required of the total area of arable land. While I do not have all the quantitative data needed to resolve this question, statements by Zorse residents, evidence of chronic undernutrition, a long-term decrease in land productivity due to erosion and lack of organic matter, and serious labour shortages during periods of critical farm activity, suggest that the net effect of migration on Zorse is negative. That is, neither labour productivity nor land productivity is likely to compensate for the higher dependency ratio.While it may be true that migrants vote with their feet, the choice of paths is often determined by forces in the larger system beyond their control. The good news is that indigenous agricultural and demographic knowledge and practices in Africa may provide the starting point for a sustainable future if the patterns established by colonialism and reinforced by ‘modern’ economic development can be changed.

Copper Mining at Mount Gabriel, Co. Cork: Bronze Age Bonanza or Post-Famine Fiasco?

1983 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Stephen Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Copper Mining ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Mining Sites ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Bronze Age

The background to discoveries of early mining sites in southwest Ireland is examined. Particular attention is devoted to the workings at Mount Gabriel, currently believed to date from the Bronze Age. Working principally from historical sources it is concluded that the site was exploited in shallow workings and trial pits between c. 1852 and 1862. Theories concerning the output of these and other Irish mines are discussed. Palaeoenvironmental and archaeological survey as well as documentary research are recommended to help solve the many outstanding problems.

Personifying Prehistory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is frequently framed in social evolutionary terms. Viewed as the period which saw the emergence of social differentiation, the development of long-distance trade, and the intensification of agricultural production, it is seen as the precursor and origin-point for significant aspects of the modern world. This book presents a very different image of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Drawing on the wealth of material from recent excavations, as well as a long history of research, it explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment 'othering' of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. There is much to suggest that the conceptual boundary between the active human subject and the passive world of objects, so familiar from our own cultural context, was not drawn in this categorical way in the Bronze Age; the self was constructed in relational rather than individualistic terms, and aspects of the non-human world such as pots, houses, and mountains were considered animate entities with their own spirit or soul. In a series of thematic chapters on the human body, artefacts, settlements, and landscapes, this book considers the character of Bronze Age personhood, the relationship between individual and society, and ideas around agency and social power. The treatment and deposition of things such as querns, axes, and human remains provides insights into the meanings and values ascribed to objects and places, and the ways in which such items acted as social agents in the Bronze Age world.

The Treasury of Atreus

Antiquity ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Wace
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
The Third ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Bronze Age

The Treasury of Atreus is one of the most important monuments of the Bronze Age in Greece and is universally recognized as the supreme example of Mycenaean architecture. It is also the finest of all the many beehive or tholos tombs which are such a striking feature of Mycenaean culture. The beehive-tomb is essentially a creation of the architecture of the Greek mainland and of Mycenaean as opposed to Minoan building. In Crete so far three beehive-tombs of Bronze Age date are known, two of which—one at Hagios Theodoros and another just found at Knossos—date from late L.M. III, the very end of the Bronze Age. The third, found at Knossos in 1938, is not to be dated earlier than 1500 B.C. All three are small and poorly constructed. The Early Bronze Age circular ossuaries of Mesarà in Crete, often erroneously described as beehive-tombs, are, as Professor Marinatos has provel nothing of the kind. On the other hand, on the Greek Mainland and in the islands immediately adjacent to it, at least forty beehive-tombs are so far known. These figures are enough to indicate that the beehivetomb is a product of Mainland or Mycenaean rather than of Cretan or Minoan architecture. More accurate information about the date and construction of the Treasury of Atreus, the finest of all the beehivetombs, cannot fail to enlarge our knowledge of the history and art of the Mycenaean civilization.

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).

scholarly journals Trade, Merchants, and the Lost Cities of the Bronze Age*

2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 1455-1503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gojko Barjamovic ◽  
Thomas Chaney ◽  
Kerem Coşar ◽  
Ali Hortaçsu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Gravity Model ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Trade Data ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
Ancient City ◽  
The Bronze Age

AbstractWe analyze a large data set of commercial records produced by Assyrian merchants in the nineteenth century BCE. Using the information from these records, we estimate a structural gravity model of long-distance trade in the Bronze Age. We use our structural gravity model to locate lost ancient cities. In many cases, our estimates confirm the conjectures of historians who follow different methodologies. In some instances, our estimates confirm one conjecture against others. We also structurally estimate ancient city sizes and offer evidence in support of the hypothesis that large cities tend to emerge at the intersections of natural transport routes, as dictated by topography. Finally, we document persistent patterns in the distribution of city sizes across four millennia, find a distance elasticity of trade in the Bronze Age close to modern estimates, and show suggestive evidence that the distribution of ancient city sizes, inferred from trade data, is well approximated by Zipf’s law.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document