Shaping Social Identities in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Western Iberia: The Role of Funerary Practices, Stelae, and Statue-Menhirs

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Díaz-Guardamino

This paper assesses the applicability of modern notions of gender identity and individuality, and examines ‘relationality’ as a key dimension structuring social identity during the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age in western Iberia through a focus on funerary practices and stelae- and statue-menhir-making. It is argued that these practices were involved in the recollection of genealogical and mythical pasts. They entailed the creation of the dead and the ancestors as relational entities through the explicit inscription of graphic and spatial relations. Ultimately, these practices were structured by, and structured, shared understandings of the self and the roles of the deceased and the ancestors in social life—understandings in which ‘relationality’ played a seminal role.

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue You ◽  
Peng Lü ◽  
Jianxin Wang ◽  
Jian Ma ◽  
Meng Ren

Abstract This paper summarizes current zooarchaeological research on the origin of domestic sheep and early sheep exploitation strategies in Xinjiang. The researchers analyze sheep bones excavated from the Shirenzigou ( 石人子沟, lit. Stone Human Statue Gully) Site using zooarchaeological methods, including using pelvises to identify sex, and confirm that the sheep at Shirenzigou were domesticated sheep. Previous discoveries and archaeological research in Xinjiang provide background for the researchers’ arguments that the main ways ancient people exploited domestic sheep during the Bronze Age to early Iron Age included: consuming and producing meat, wool, hide and milk; using sheep in rituals such as funerary practices; and making bone artifacts out of sheep bones.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cezary Namirski

The book is a study of the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Nuragic settlement dynamics in two selected areas of the east coast Sardinia, placing them in a wider context of Central Mediterranean prehistory. Among the main issues addressed are the relationship between settlement and ritual sites, the use of coastline, and a chronology of settlement.


Starinar ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 173-191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Kapuran ◽  
Dragana Zivkovic ◽  
Nada Strbac

The last three years of archaeological investigations at the site Ru`ana in Banjsko Polje, in the immediate vicinity of Bor, have provided new evidence regarding the role of non-ferrous metallurgy in the economy of the prehistoric communities of north-eastern Serbia. The remains of metallurgical furnaces and a large amount of metallic slags at two neighbouring sites in the mentioned settlement reveal that locations with many installations for the thermal processing of copper ore existed in the Bronze Age. We believe, judging by the finds of material culture, that metallurgical activities in this area also continued into the Iron Age and, possibly, into the 4th century AD.


Author(s):  
С. С. Мургабаев ◽  
Л. Д. Малдыбекова

Статья посвящена новому памятнику наскального искусства хребта Каратау, открытому в урочище Карасуйир. Приводится краткое описание памятника, публикуются наиболее важные изображения. Сюжеты и стилистические особенности основной чaсти петроглифов памятника Карасуйир связаны с эпохой бронзы, остaльные рисунки отнесены к эпохе рaннего железа и, возможно, к эпохе камня. Для некоторых из них предложена предварительная интерпретация. The article is devoted to a new rock art site of the Karatau Range, discovered in the Karasuyir Area. A brief description of the site is provided, and the most important images are published. Subjects and stylistic features of the main part of Karasuyir petroglyphs are associated with the Bronze Age, and other engravings are related to the early Iron Age and, perhaps, to the Stone Age. A preliminary interpretation is proposed for some of them.


2017 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Boroń

Zusammenfassung:Die Fundstelle Nieborowa – im zentral-östlichen Polen an der Grenze zu der Łęczyńsko-Włodawskie Seenplatte und den Chełm Hügeln gelegen – wurde von Halina Mackiewicz (Institut für die Geschichte der Materiellen Kultur [seit 1992 Institut für Archäologie und Ethnologie der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften]) in den Jahren 1964–1977 untersucht. Auf einem Gebiet von über 3500 mDer Lagerplatz bestand aus vier Werkstätten – zwei planigraphisch abgegrenzte (A, B) und zwei auf Basis der zusammengefügten Elemente rekonstruierte Werkstätten (C, D). Alle Werkstätten wiesen einen Durchmesser von etwa 1 m auf, die Entfernung zwischen ihnen betrug zwischen 1 und 3 m. Übereinstimmende Beobachtungen wie die Verwendung gleicher Feuersteinmaterialien und die Anwendung identischer Techniken zur Kernbearbeitung erlauben die Annahme gleichzeitig arbeitender Werkstätten. Die Distribution der Artefakte, die Struktur der Zusammenlegungen, die Homogenität des Feuersteininventars und die Separierung der Werkplätze zur Kernbearbeitung innerhalb jeder Werkstatt sprechen für eine singulär erfolgte Ansiedlung.Im Fall der besprochenen Werkstätten konnte erkannt werden, dass die Organisation der Bearbeitung des lokalen Feuersteinrohstoffes nach einem wiederkehrenden Schema erfolgte.


2002 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitley

Aegean prehistory still has to deal with the legacy of ‘Homeric archaeology’. One of these legacies is the ‘warrior grave’, or practice of burying individuals (men?) with weapons which we find both in the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age in the Aegean. This article suggests that the differences between the ‘weapon burial rituals’ in these two periods can tell us much about the kind of social and cultural changes that took place across the Bronze Age/Iron Age ‘divide’ of c. 1100 BC. In neither period, however, can items deposited in ‘warrior graves’ be seen as straightforward biographical facts that tell us what the individual did and suffered in life. Rather, the pattern of grave goods should be seen as a metaphor for a particular kind of identity and ideal. It is only in the Early Iron Age that this identity begins to correspond to the concept of the ‘hero’ as described in the Iliad. One means towards our better understanding of this new identity is to follow up work in anthropology on the biography of objects. It is argued that the ‘life cycle’ of ‘entangled objects’, a cycle which ends in deposition in a grave, provides us with indispensable clues about the nature of new social identities in Early Iron Age Greece.


1932 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 365-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Apling

In 1922 Miss N. F. Layard gave as her presidential address an account of some prehistoric cooking-places, which she had discovered near a stream at Buckenham Tofts, Norfolk (Proc., P.S.E.A., Vol. III., Part IV.). One of the hearths excavated consisted of a triangular mass of calcined flints, up to two feet in depth, and covering an area of over 100 square yards. This was on one end of a mound rising about ten feet above the general level of the swamp bordering the stream. Amongst this material were found several flint implements, including knives typical of the Bronze Age. There were also found two sherds of pottery corresponding closely to a known Bronze Age type, though this also continued into the Early Iron Age.Knowing nothing of Miss Layard's discoveries, in 1927 I came across similar deposits of pot-boilers, etc., at Hoe, near East Dereham. These are on either side of a small stream, which eventually runs into the River Wensum. Mr. Sainty and Mr. Newnham were good enough to come over and examine them, and Mr. Newnham subsequently gave a short account of them at the December meeting that year (Proc., P.S.E.A., Vol. V., Part III. page 311).I was able to revisit the site in June this year (1931), and at one place where, however, there was hardly a mound at all, a layer of pot-boilers, 6 ins. deep, was found under about 6 ins. of turf and soil. Excavation of an area 12 feet by 8 feet produced nearly a pailful of pottery fragments, three dozen scrapers, and an implement of the bone-breaker type, besides numbers of flakes and cores.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document