scholarly journals Walking your Way to Death. Exploring the Relation Between the Location of Mycenaean Chamber Tombs and Roads in the Argolid

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 484-504
Author(s):  
Kalliopi Efkleidou
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Mobility Analysis ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Historical Cartography ◽  
The Dead

AbstractA persistent issue with the study of Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600–1100 BCE) chamber tombs in Mainland Greece remains our limited understanding of the factors that governed the choice of location for their construction. Mee and Cavanagh (1990) examined various parameters, such as religious beliefs, distance from settlement, the tombs’ use as territorial markers or relation to roads. They remained, however, inconclusive. The present study revisits this theme, but focuses on one of the factors formerly discussed, that is the relation of the tombs’ locations to roads. As the most extensive record of Mycenaean roads is preserved at the settlement of Mycenae in the Argolid and its hinterland, this site is considered to be the best case-study for analysis. In order to ascertain the significance of roads on the locations chosen for the chamber tombs, this paper builds a methodological approach that makes use of GIS-based mobility analysis and historical cartography. The analysis has shown that, at least at Mycenae, issues of accessibility to the tombs did not play as crucial role as the actual performance of rituals such as the funerary procession. It also sheds light on the form funerary processions probably took at Mycenae and on common notions of wheeled traffic use for the transfer of the dead to their tomb.

scholarly journals Through the Gloomy Vale: Underworld Alignments at Stonehenge

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1 and 2) ◽  
pp. 11-30
Author(s):  
Lionel Sims ◽  
David Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Landscape Model ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead

Three recent independently developed models suggest that some Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments exhibit dual design properties in monument complexes by pairing obverse structures. Parker Pearson’s1 materiality model proposes that monuments of wood are paired with monuments of stone, these material metaphors respectively signifying places of rituals for the living with rituals for the dead. Higginbottom’s2 landscape model suggests that many western Scottish megalithic structures are paired in mirror-image landscape locations in which the horizon distance, direction and height of one site is the topographical reverse of the paired site – all in the service of ritually experiencing the liminal boundaries to the world. Sims’3 diacritical model suggests that materials, landscapes and lunar-solar alignments are diacritically combined to facilitate cyclical ritual processions between paired monuments through a simulated underworld. All three models combine in varying degrees archaeology and archaeoastronomy and our paper tests them through the case study of the late Neolithic/EBA Stonehenge Palisade in the Stonehenge monument complex.

The Pigi Athinas Tumuli Cemetery of Macedonian Olympus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paraskevi Tritsaroli
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The People ◽  
Gender And Health ◽  
Funerary Treatment ◽  
Over Time

The Middle-Late Bronze Age (1620–1500 B.C.) was a period of emerging and intensifying social complexity involving small-scale settlement hierarchies, but the archaeological understanding of social organization at this time has remained limited. In a comparative case study of funerary treatment and skeletal biology, the authors consider the distribution of multiple skeletal pathological conditions between distinct tumuli-style burials at Pigi Athinas. Though social rank may have started to displace the centrality of kinship, subtle variations in both funerary and bioarchaeological data indicated the most important structuring factors were sex and age distinctions. Over time, the influence of differential diets, divisions of gender, and ritual feasting appear as the people participated in a widespread Mycenaean system that shaped both gender and health in ancient Greece.

Land of the Cremated Dead: On Cremation Practices in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Scandinavia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Harvig
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
The Dead

As contract archaeology has emerged and larger connected areas have been excavated since the 1990s, focus has naturally changed from single finds of graves right below plough soil or in connection to mounds, towards the study of the surrounding cultural landscapes. In the Late Bronze Age and the Pre- Roman Iron Age settlements seldom overlap grave sites. This implies that the ‘land of the dead’ was considered separate from the ‘land of the living’. Although regionally differentiated, we further gain a better understanding of many of these accumulated grave sites and their gradual change during the transition period. In many cases we see a change from a personalized commemoration of the cremated dead in the Late Bronze Age, towards a focus on the act of cremation (rather than the post-cremation human body) around the beginning of the Iron Age. The increasing commemoration of pyre remains instead of human remains and deliberate ‘cremation’ of personal belongings in the Early Iron Age indicates a shift in funeral tempi from the post-cremation deliberate burial in the Bronze Age towards the actual cremation process as the primary locus of transformation in the earliest Iron Age. Throughout time, societies have grasped death, the dead, and the duration of death in very different manners. The process of death and relating to different stages of death may be more or less ritualized, that is, subject to specific repeated rules or laws within a society. Whether used to speed up or slow down the process of transformation—for example, keeping, embalming, dismembering, or exhuming the body in various stages—these rituals help the living create death through their acts. In interpretive archaeology we analyse these meaningful acts in the past and their continuation or discontinuation. Decoding single sequences within these acts therefore helps us designate non-negotiable repetitive actions in the archaeological record, as the material evidence of shared ‘embodied knowledge’ in a given prehistoric society (Nilsson Stutz 2003, 2010). Decoding and separating past actions and post depositional disturbances—the degree of intentionality—are crucial for plausible reconstructions of post-cremation treatment of cremated human remains.

STOPPERS, TRANSPORT STIRRUP JARS AND WINE TRANSPORT, 1450–1150 bc

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 93-117
Author(s):  
Trevor Van Damme
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Maximum Diameter ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Meaningful Relationship ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Ceramic Vessels

This paper examines Late Bronze Age chipped ceramic and stone discs known most commonly as stoppers. Stoppers are distinguished from other classes of archaeological finds, including pierced discs and lids. Although it has long been known that stoppers could play a role in sealing ceramic vessels, recent scholarship has preferred to see them as multifunctional. For this article, 158 stoppers and 100 spout apertures from transport stirrup jar spouts found in secure Late Bronze Age III contexts have been studied. The results demonstrate a strong correlation in the apertures of transport stirrup jar spouts and the maximum diameter of stoppers that points to a meaningful relationship between the two. As the primary transport container of the Late Bronze Age, transport stirrup jars required careful sealing in order to allow their contents to transit without spilling or spoiling. There were many possible sealing configurations, however, and indeed this paper demonstrates some support for independent Mycenaean and Minoan traditions. A comparison with sealing traditions throughout the eastern Mediterranean reveals that the stopper method of sealing endured or reoccurred for thousands of years for the storage and transport of a specific commodity – wine. I conclude with the case study of stopper distributions at ancient Eleon, Boeotia, in order to show that a contextualised study of stoppers and stoppering activities in domestic structures has much to contribute to the study of social processes and domestic consumption practices.

scholarly journals Striking Cobra Spitting Fire

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Kasia Szpakowska
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Ancient Egyptian

Abstract In this paper, a working definition and examples of “demonic paraphernalia” are provided, as well as methods of recognition. Besides being of interest in and of themselves, these types of objects provide clues as to the nature of the demons, thus helping us in our quest for a taxonomy and “demonology” of Ancient Egypt. More specifically, this paper focuses on the use of Late Bronze Age clay cobra figurines as a case-study for the broader exploration of Ancient Egyptian “demonic paraphernalia”.

scholarly journals Hunting Warriors: The Transformation of Weapons, Combat Practices and Society during the Bronze Age in Ireland

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry P.C. Molloy
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Peer Relations ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Martial Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Training Resources ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Bronze Age

Warfare is increasingly considered to have been a major field of social activity in prehistoric societies, in terms of the infrastructures supporting its conduct, the effects of its occurrence, and its role in symbolic systems. In the Bronze Age many of the weapon forms that were to dominate battlefields for millennia to come were first invented—shields and swords in particular. Using the case study of Ireland, developments in Bronze Age warfare are traced from the Early to the Late Bronze Age. It is argued that during this period there was a move from warfare that made use of projectiles and impact weapons to warfare that used both defensive and cutting weapons. This formed the basis for a fundamental reorganization in combat systems. This in turn stimulated change in the social organization of warfare, including investment in material and training resources for warriors and the development of new bodily techniques reflecting fundamental changes in martial art traditions. Metalwork analysis of bronze weapons and experimental archaeology using replicas of these are used to support this position. The article explores how developments in fighting techniques transformed the sociality of violence and peer-relations among warriors and proposes that these warriors be regarded as a category of craft specialist exerting significant social influence by the Late Bronze Age.

scholarly journals Imaginary Vessels in the Late Bronze Age of Gotland and South Scandinavia: Ship Settings, Rock Carvings and Decorated Metalwork

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Peter Skoglund ◽  
Joakim Wehlin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Bronze Age

The paper compares the Bronze Age ship settings of Gotland with the vessels portrayed in rock carvings on the Scandinavian mainland. It also makes comparisons with the drawings of vessels on decorated metalwork of the same period. It considers their interpretation in relation to two approaches taken to the depictions of ships in other media. One concerns the use of boats to transport the sun, while the other emphasises the close relationship between seagoing vessels and the dead. A third possibility concerns the distinctive organisation of prehistoric communities on Gotland. It seems possible that the largest of the ship settings were equivalent to the Bronze Age cult houses found on the mainland and that they may even have represented the island itself.

Understanding the role of metal within the Late Bronze Age community at Mycenae: challenges and potential approaches

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-270
Author(s):  
Stephanie Jane Aulsebrook
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Metal Artifacts ◽  
The Relationship

Metal has been widely argued as playing a decisive role in the development of Mycenae, which became one of the foremost centers on the Late Bronze Age Greek mainland. Yet, little is understood as to how metals were integrated into the lives of the inhabitants. Most scholarship has concentrated on the relationship between the ruling class and metal artifacts, drawing much of the evidence from the Linear B archives and top-down models of trade, society and internal redistribution that are increasingly considered untenable within the study of other aspects of Mycenaean life. This paper presents a new project, which uses a practice-orientated approach based around object biographies to study the use of metal across the entire social spectrum of the Late Bronze Age community at Mycenae (approximately 1700–1050 BC). The benefits of such an approach are discussed through a case study that examines the unexpected absence of gold vessels from the Palatial period archaeological record from the perspective of social practice and demonstrates how the holistic use of evidence from multiple sources can help overcome the difficulties inherent in the study of the use of metal in past societies.

Pathways for the Dead in the Middle and Late Bronze Age in Ireland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Cooney
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Physical Treatment ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Population Treatment ◽  
Over Time

Because of its diversity and visibility the mortuary record of the Early Bronze Age (2400–1500 cal. BC) has long dominated interpretation of that period in Ireland (e.g. Cooney and Grogan 1994; Waddell 1998; Brindley 2007) and burials from Bronze Age cemeteries represent over 70 per cent of the burial record from Irish prehistory (Murphy et al. 2010). The explosion of development-funded excavation in the period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s provided a settlement balance to that picture and also evidence for additional cemeteries (e.g. Grogan et al. 2007; McQuade et al. 2009). This suggests that Early Bronze Age cemeteries served as local foci for communities. From the evidence of the numbers interred over a number of generations the dead buried in the cemeteries represent what Mary Helms (1998) has usefully called the ‘distinguished dead’ from communities, not the entire population. Treatment of the dead within the cemeteries is complex and there are clear indications of change over time. Interpretative models had associated inhumation with males and a broader shift over time from inhumation to cremation relying on a view of cremation and inhumation as opposed, separate mortuary rites (e.g. Mount 1997). However, the evidence indicates a much more complex set of pathways in the postmortem treatment of the dead in which cremation and inhumation were employed as complementary mortuary rites with an increasing focus on cremation over time (e.g. Cahill and Sikora 2011). This new picture has important implications for the increasing significance of the the pyre and the transformation of the dead (Mizoguchi 1993: 232). In looking at the period after 1500 cal. BC we see continuity in aspects of mortuary practice and use of sites, but in other ways mortuary practice changed dramatically. Cremation is now the dominant mortuary rite. Burial in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (down to 600 cal. BC) has been widely discussed as less visible, and hence much less important as an aspect of social behaviour (e.g. Cooney and Grogan 1994: 144). But it is more useful to think in terms of shifting emphases in mortuary practice. In a recent discussion Lynch and O’Donnell (2007: 107) have described this period as being characterized by ‘an incredibly intricate and variable physical treatment of the dead’.

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