CHAPTER 6. The Early Iron Age of Greece

1987 ◽  
pp. 170-210
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Of Greece

scholarly journals Homer's Entangled Objects: Narrative, Agency and Personhood In and Out of Iron Age Texts

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitley
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Classical Archaeology ◽  
Narrative Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Of Greece

In recent years, material culture studies have come to embrace contemporary Melanesia and European prehistory, but not classical archaeology and art. Prehistory is still thought, in many quarters, to be intrinsically more ‘ethnographic’ than historical periods; in this discourse, the Greeks (by default) become proto-modern individuals, necessarily opposed to Melanesian ‘dividuals’. Developments in the study of the Iron Age Mediterranean and the world of Homer should undermine such stark polarities. Historic and proto-historic archaeologies have rich potential for refining our notions both of agency and of personhood. This article argues that the forms of material entanglements we find in the Homeric poems, and the forms of agency (sensu Gell 1998) that we can observe in the archaeological record for the Early Iron Age of Greece (broadly 1000–500 bc) are of the same kind. The agency of objects structures Homeric narrative, and Homeric descriptions allow us precisely to define Homeric ‘human–thing entanglement’. This form of ‘material entanglement’ does not appear in the Aegean world before 1100 BC.

The archaeology of the Greek uplands: the early iron age site of Tsouka in the Rhodope Mountains

1993 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 135-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Efstratiou
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Special Functions ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Recovery Techniques ◽  
First Time ◽  
Pastoral Economy ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Mountain Population

The upland areas of Greece have long been outside the main focus of archaeological interest. With regard to prehistoric research, mountains were never seen as potential habitation areas, and recovery techniques had to address unusual environmental and geomorphological situations. Research in the Rhodopi mountains initiated by Komotini Museum attempts to illustrate some aspects of this upland archaeology. This article presents the results of excavation at an early iron age site which appears to give an insight into the habitation behaviour of the Thracian mountain population at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. It is proposed for the first time that a number of the so-called Thracian places found scattered all over the Rhodopi mountains are not, as at first thought, fortified acropoleis but sites with special functions, serving an agricultural and pastoral economy. It is further suggested that ethnoarchaeological observations can serve as valuable explanatory hypotheses which can be tested against the available excavation data.

Archaeological Investigations at Mavis Grind, Shetland

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cracknell ◽  
Beverley Smith
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Field System ◽  
M 10 ◽  
Settlement Site

Summary The excavations revealed a stone house and showed that it was oval, 13 m × 10 m, with an interior about 7 m in diameter. In the first occupation phase the entrance was on the SE side. During the second phase this entrance was replaced with one to the NE and the interior was partitioned. The roof was supported on wooden posts. After the building was abandoned it was covered with peat-ash which was subsequently ploughed. There were numerous finds of steatite-tempered pottery and stone implements, which dated the site to late Bronze/early Iron Age. The second settlement, Site B, lay by the shore of the voe and consisted of two possible stone-built houses and a field system. Two trenches were dug across the structures and the results are reported in Appendix I. Although damaged in recent years it was in no further danger.

Trees and shrubs in the sanctuary. Wood charcoal analysis at the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia, Poros

2019 ◽  
pp. 255-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Ntinou
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Wood Charcoal ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Charcoal Analysis ◽  
Additional Source ◽  
Olive Cultivation ◽  
Trees And Shrubs ◽  
By Products

Wood charcoal analysis at the Sanctuary of Poseidon at Kalaureia, Poros aims to provide information on the vegetation of the area and its management and on the range of plants used in the activities taking place at the sanctuary. During the excavations of 2003–2005 in Areas D and C, systematic samples from fills and features from all the excavated strata were recovered and water flotation was used for the separation of wood charcoal from the sediment. Wood charcoal was found in two pits dated to the Early Iron Age, near the supposed altar of the Archaic period (Feature 05), in a deposit of the Hellenistic period (the “dining deposit”), in floor deposits (Early Iron Age and Late Classical/Early Hellenistic periods), and fills of different chrono-cultural periods (Archaic–Early Roman). All the taxa identified in the wood charcoal assemblages are thermophilous Mediterranean elements, most of them evergreen broad-leaved. The assemblages show that the most frequent taxon is the olive, followed by the prickly oak, the Fabaceae, and the heather. In most assemblages mock privet/buckthorn, strawberry tree, the pear and Prunus family species are present, while Aleppo pine, lentisc, the fig, and the carob trees are less frequent. Olive cultivation was an important economic activity during the whole life of the sanctuary and probably olive pruning constantly provided the sanctuary with fuel. The woodland would be the additional source of firewood for the sanctuary’s needs for fuel for mundane activities such as heating and cooking, for more formal ones, such as sacrifice, but also for industrial activities such as tile firing. Activities related to the reorganization of space and the expansion of the sanctuary may be reflected in charcoal of carpentry by-products as the fir, cypress, and maybe pine remains.

The bronze headbands of Prehistoric Lofkënd and their Aegean and Balkan connections

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 33-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Papadopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Young Females ◽  
The Many ◽  
Votive Offerings

This paper begins with an overview of the bronze headbands from the prehistoric (Late Bronze to Early Iron Age) burial tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania, which were found among the richest tombs of the cemetery, all of them of young females or children. It is argued that these individuals represent a class of the special dead, those who have not attained a critical rite de passage: marriage. In their funerary attire these individuals go to the grave as brides, married to death. The significance of the Lofkënd headbands is reviewed, as is their shape and decoration, but it is their context that contributes to a better understanding of Aegean examples, including the many bronze, gold, and silver headbands found in tombs from the Early Bronze Age through the Early Iron Age, as well as those dedicated as votive offerings in sanctuaries. In addition to discussing the evidence for headbands in the Aegean and much of southeast Europe, this paper also attempts to uncover the word used in this early period in Greece for these distinctive items of personal ornament. In memory of Berit Wells.

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