Select Archaeological Discoveries from Transjordan with Significance for Biblical Studies

2009 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-444
Author(s):  
Gerald L. Mattingly
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
The South ◽  
Jordan River ◽  
The North

When one thinks of archaeological sites related to biblical studies, one usually thinks immediately of sites in the modern nation of Israel, sites west of the Jordan River. Yet there are also many significant sites related to biblical studies east of the Jordan. This article focuses on ten such sites in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The sites range chronologically from the Early Bronze site of Bab edh-Dhra‘ to the modern capital of Amman which also has Iron Age and Hellenistic-Roman-Byzantine and later Islamic remains. The sites cross Jordan from the Nabatean Petra in the south to the Cities of the Decapolis near the Syrian border in the north. They include the well-known and famous, Petra, “half as old as time itself,” and the unfamiliar and relatively unknown Umm ar-Resas, Khirbat an-Nahas, and Khirbat as-Sil. Also included are the ancient Moabite capital of Dibon/Dhiban, Madaba, and Tell Deir”Alla.

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.

Evans's Greek finds: the early Greek town of Knossos, and its encroachment on the borders of the Minoan palace

2000 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 259-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Coldstream
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
Greek Pottery

Among over 1800 boxes of Sir Arthur Evans's finds now stored in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos, at least 150 contain Greek pottery from Subminoan to Classical. A systematic study of this material, in relation to its recorded find spots, throws new light on the eastern part of the early Greek town, bordering the site of the Minoan Palace. Above the Palace itself, fresh evidence is produced, and fresh interpretation offered, for the Greek sanctuary described by Evans. In its immediate surroundings, there are signs of busy domestic and industrial life in the early Greek town above the South-West Houses, the West Court, the Theatral Area, and the Pillared Hall outside the North Entrance to the Palace. Greek occupation is also noted above the House of Frescoes, the Little Palace and the Royal Villa. A wider aim of this article is to trace the limits of the early Greek town of Knossos, both of its original Early Iron Age nucleus surviving from Late Minoan times, and of its spacious extension towards the north in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC.

scholarly journals The South Lilly #4 Site (41UR279), Upshur County, Texas

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timohty K. Perttula ◽  
Bo Nelson ◽  
Mark Walters ◽  
LeeAnna Schniebs
Keyword(s):  
High Density ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
The South ◽  
Seasonal Flooding ◽  
The North ◽  
North Side

The South Lilly #4 site was discovered in early 2003 by Bo Nelson during a survey of portions of the South Lilly Creek valley in Upshur County, Texas. During the course of his survey he recorded 13 prehistoric archeological sites on the north side of the valley,just upstream from the FM 556 crossing of South Lilly Creek. No archaeological sites had been previously known or recorded along this stretch of the valley, but his survey made it apparent that there was a high density of prehistoric sites along this creek, a tributary to Big Cypress Creek. Nelson noted that several of these prehistoric sites had Caddo ceramic sherds, and/or were in locations where prehistoric Caddo habitation sites are often found in the northeastern Texas region. The South Lilly #4 site is in one such setting, namely a prominent upland ridge and knoll (360 feet amsl) that projects southward into the South Lilly Creek valley, but is elevated well above any seasonal flooding along the creek and its broad floodplain. The landform was in pasture at the time, and surface exposure was virtually nil.

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.

The Eastern Baltic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valter Lang
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Entire Region ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The South ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
South West ◽  
The Baltic

This chapter examines Iron Age funerary and domestic archaeological sites, and economic and cultural developments from c.500 BC–AD 550/600, in the east Baltic region (present day Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). While the early pre-Roman Iron Age was to some extent a continuation of the late Bronze Age in material culture terms, many changes took place in the late pre-Roman Iron Age. At the change of era, new cultural trends spread over the east Baltic region, from the south-eastern shore of the Baltic to south-west Finland, which produced a remarkable unification of material culture over this entire region up to the Migration period. Differences in burial practices and ceramics, however, indicate the existence of two distinct ethnic groups, Proto-Finnic in the northern part of the region and Proto-Baltic to the south. Subsistence was based principally on agriculture and stock rearing, with minor variations in the economic orientation of different areas.

Winchester

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Roffey
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Place ◽  
British History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The South ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
The North ◽  
South Central ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Power Center

Winchester lays claim to being one of the most important cities in British history. The city has a central place in British myth and legend and was once ancient capital and residence of the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman kings. Winchester is also one of the most extensively excavated medieval towns in England and was the training ground for modern British archeology. Situated in south-central England, Winchester was close to key communication routes via the south coast and the important medieval port at Southampton. Founded in the Roman period as Venta Belgarum, close to the site of the Iron Age market settlement, Winchester quickly grew into a prosperous Roman civitas. After the decline of Roman power in Britain, Winchester remained as an important power center in the south and by the mid-7th century was the pre-eminent town in the newly established Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. With the consolidation of Wessex’s power in the 9th and 10th centuries and the eventual re-establishment of control over the former Viking-influenced areas of the midlands and the north, Winchester became the seat of English royal power. With the Norman Conquest in 1066, the early Norman kings sought to keep Winchester as the royal seat. However, with the rising pre-eminence of London in the mid-12th century, Winchester’s power declined as royal and secular power shifted to London. Nevertheless, Winchester was still to remain of some importance throughout the medieval period and its bishop one of the most powerful, influential, and richest lords in medieval England; a status still attested to by the city’s medieval cathedral. As a city of many religious foundations, Winchester’s fortunes waned after the Reformation to be briefly reborn in the later 17th century with the planned construction of Charles II palace on the site of the former medieval castle. Charles’ plans to reinvent Winchester as a revitalized English royal city were aborted with his untimely death in 1688, with the palace, designed by Christopher Wren, barely finished.

An Iron Age Hill-Fort at Grimthorpe, Yorkshire, England

1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 148-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. Stead ◽  
M. Jarman ◽  
Angela Fagg ◽  
E. S. Higgs ◽  
C. B. Denston
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Circular Area ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
White Horse ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Grave Goods

The Iron Age hill-fort at Grimthorpe (Grid reference SE.816535) in the parish of Millington, East Riding of Yorkshire, is on the western edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, with a commanding position over the Vale of York. There is an uninterrupted view to the White Horse on the Hambleton Hills, 25 miles to the north-west; beyond York, 13 miles to the west, to the Pennines; and to the south 25 miles to the chimneys of Keadby and Scunthorpe. To the west and south the land slopes away to the Vale of York, and to the north and east there is a sharper fall to Given Dale and Whitekeld Dale. The hill-fort defences follow the 520 feet contour, and enclose an approximately circular area of eight acres (fig. 1).A traditional reference may be preserved in the field-name—Bruffs—perhaps a variation of ‘Brough’, which ‘refers in all cases to ancient camps, usually Roman ones’. But all surface indications have now been obliterated by ploughing, and even a century ago there was little more to be seen. John Phillips in 1853 noticed ‘unmistakable traces of ancient but unascertainable occupation’, and in 1871 an excavation by J. R. Mortimer located ‘the filled up inner ditch of a supposed camp’. But Mortimer was not concerned with the settlement; his interest had been aroused by the discovery, in 1868, of a burial with rich grave-goods, including metalwork with La Tène ornament, in a chalk-pit within the south-west sector of the hill-fort.

The Great Depression (1873-1896) and the Rise of Syrian Arab Nationalism

1991 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 167-189
Author(s):  
L. Schatkowski Schilcher
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
The South ◽  
Jordan River ◽  
The West ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The North ◽  
Provincial Capital

Can we see any evidence that the so-called “Great Depression” (c. 1873-1896) had an impact on Syria? This paper investigates the problem by focusing on the Hawran, an important grain-producing area south of the Ottoman provincial capital, Damascus. The Hawran is an open plain, sloping upwards towards the east and nearly enclosed by protecting ravines, valleys and highlands. To the north lies the valley of Wadi ‘Ajam and the well-settled and ostensibly well-controlled Damascene oasis (al-Ghuta). To the west stands Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Shaikh), while the slopes and valleys of the Anti-Lebanese mountains (Jawlan, ‘Ajlun), the Lake of Tiberias (Bahr al-Tabariyya) and the tributaries of the Jordan River and its gorge (Baisan, al-Ghur) present further barriers. To the northeast and east lies a volcanic badlands region of heavily eroded gullies and redoubts (al-Safa, al-Laja') and the hills, known then as Jabal Hawran, now as Jabal al-Druz or Jabal al-'Arab, together with a lava rock field to their east (al-Harra) form a buffer between the plain and the Syrian steppe. To the south the Hawran opens out into the Trans-Jordanian plateau and the Syrian steppe, though gullies and ravines also provide some protection here.

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.

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