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.

Edges and interactions beyond Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells ◽  
Naoise Mac Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The North Atlantic

Iron Age Europe, once studied as a relatively closed, coherent continent, is being seen increasingly as a dynamic part of the much larger, interconnected world. Interactions, direct and indirect, with communities in Asia, Africa, and, by the end of the first millennium AD, North America, had significant effects on the peoples of Iron Age Europe. In the Near East and Egypt, and much later in the North Atlantic, the interactions can be linked directly to historically documented peoples and their rulers, while in temperate Europe the evidence is exclusively archaeological until the very end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The evidence attests to often long-distance interactions and their effects in regard to the movement of peoples, and the introduction into Europe of raw materials, crafted objects, styles, motifs, and cultural practices, as well as the ideas that accompanied them.

Diaspora and the Origins of the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex

2020 ◽  
pp. 30-68
Author(s):  
James F. Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Central Anatolia ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Paul Gilroy ◽  
Cultural Origins

This chapter proposes a model for how the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC) arose during the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition at the end of the second millennium and start of the first millennium BCE. It presents SACC as a case study for diaspora studies in the tradition of Paul Gilroy and James Clifford. A series of demographic transformations took place at this time, including small-scale migrations from central Anatolia and the Aegean into southeastern Anatolia, as well as a ruralization of the local settlement patterns from previous major urban centers. Together, these transformations brought several different populations into close contact with one another, resulting in a diverse ethnolinguistic landscape reminiscent of certain contemporary situations of diaspora. It is precisely these mixed cultural origins that have led SACC to be so difficult for scholars to characterize, leading as it did to multiple affiliation groups sharing cultural and political traditions.

The Archaeology of Nunge Site: An Ancient Salt Making Settlement and Trading Centre in Bagamoyo, Tanzania

Utafiti ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-52
Author(s):  
Emanuel T. Kessy
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Single Type ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Swahili Coast ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium

Abstract The Bagamoyo area is among the Tanzanian coastal locations where evidence of intercontinental trade dates back to the last few centuries of the first millennium AD. Previous investigations have indicated that the region’s earliest settlement is represented by Early Triangular Incised Ware [TIW] around 600 to 700 AD, at Bwembweni site located two kilometres south of Kaole. During the Later TIW, the population shifted to Kaole Hill during the period noted by the use of Plain Ware, and later moved to the adjacent Kaole Ruins by the thirteenth century. Traditionally, the majority of earlier investigations for such conclusions have been restricted to Bwembweni and Kaole sites, and to a limited extent to Bagamoyo Town itself and its vicinity. However, recent reconnaissance and excavation of Nunge, a single type pottery tradition site located to the north, suggests that although Bagamoyo’s involvement in intercontinental exchange dates back to the seventh century AD, the narrative is more complicated than previously assumed. It appears that between the subsequent ninth to eleventh centuries, the area lost such links, before resurfacing again in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Within that time frame, Nunge developed into an extensive urban centre whose prosperity was based on salt production for exchange. This discovery suggests that the development to urbanism at (Later Iron Age phase) Nunge-Bagamoyo predates that of the Kaole town, when the area is known to have had a few links with the outside world. These findings contribute crucially to the debate regarding early urbanisation along the Swahili coast, by challenging the conventional view that Arab or Asian settlements were the earliest urban centres along the coast of East Africa.

scholarly journals All the Roads to Patavium: Morphology, Genesis and Development of the Roman Road Network Around Padua

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Matteazzi
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Road Network ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
The City

Abstract This paper deals with the analysis of the ancient road network around the city of Padua, attempts to reconstruct its morphology and to define its genesis and development between the second Iron Age and Late Antiquity (6th/5th cent. BC to 6th cent. AD). The study follows a methodological approach that today we define as „archaeomorphological“, first proposed by E. Vion in the late 1980s. By applying this methodology to the Paduan territory, it was possible to identify a series of routes of probable ancient origin radially converging toward the center of Roman Patavium, and linking it to other urban centers in the region and to the minor centers located within its ager. The presence of Iron Age settlements along the path of many of these routes suggests that the development of such a road network likely begins in pre-Roman times, which also highlights the ancient strategic importance of Padua and its territory as a fundamental junction between the center and the North-East of the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, the Roman road network somehow survived into the Late Antiqueand Early Medieval times, always influencing the distribution of settlements and the orientation of churches, until it was for the greater part restored by the Commune of Padua over the 13th century.

scholarly journals Archaeological Sites of the Mekong Delta and the Oc Eo Culture: a review

2020 ◽  
pp. 209-230
Author(s):  
A.O. Zakharov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Mekong Delta ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Mekong River ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Mekong River Delta ◽  
First Millennium

The Mekong River Delta has many archaeological sites dated from the first to seventh centuries CE. They include the Oc Eo site and more than ninety sites in the territory of Vietnam. Another site of the Oc Eo archaeological culture is Angkor Borei in Cambodia. The early first millennium remains also include ancient canals which connected Angkor Borei and Oc Eo as well as few other sites. The early Iron Age predates the beginning of the Oc Eo culture in the first centuries CE. The Iron Age witnessed the growing social complexity and settlement hierarchy. The paper is an overview of archaeological investigations in the Mekong River Delta. The paper shows the deep Indian or Indic influences on the material and religious life of the ancient populations of the Mekong Delta.

scholarly journals Pottery of Early Iron Age from the Glinjeni II-La Șanț (North-Western Pontic Sea Region): Composition, Technology and Raw Material Sources

Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 2853-2875
Author(s):  
Marianna A. Kulkova ◽  
Maya T. Kashuba ◽  
Aleksandr M. Kulkov ◽  
Maria N. Vetrova
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Ceramic Technology ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
The North ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Cultural Layers ◽  
Thin Section Analysis ◽  
North Western

Transition to the Early Iron Age was marked by the appearance of innovations such as iron technology and changes in the lifestyle of local societies on the territory of the North-Western Pontic Sea region. One of the most interesting sites of this period is the Glinjeni II-La Șanț fortified settlement, located in the Middle Dniester basin (Republic of Moldova). Materials of different cultural traditions belonged to the Cozia-Saharna culture (10th–9th cc. BC) and the Basarabi-Șoldănești culture (8th–beginning of 7th cc. BC) were found on this site. The article presents the results of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of ceramic sherds from these archaeological complexes and cultural layers as well as raw clay sources from this area. The archaeometry analysis, such as the XRF-WD, the thin section analysis, SEM-EDX of ceramics, m-CT of pottery were carried out. The study of ancient pottery through a set of mineralogical and geochemical analytic methods allowed us to obtain new results about ceramic technology in different chronological periods, ceramic paste recipes and firing conditions. Correlation of archaeological and archaeometry data of ceramics from the Glinjeni II-La Șanț site gives us the possibility to differ earlier and later chronological markers in the paste recipes of pottery of 10th–beginning of 7th cc. BC in the region of the Middle Dniester basin.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Bronze Age farms and Iron Age farm mounds of the Outer Hebrides

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barber ◽  
Geoffrey Collins ◽  
Lisbeth Crone ◽  
Alan Duffy ◽  
Andrew Dugmore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Suitable Material ◽  
Outer Hebrides ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Structured Approach

Hebridean sites of the coastal sand cliffs and associated machair, or sandy plain have been known for many years. Artefacts and ecofacts of various types have long been collected from archaeological sites in the eroding sand-cliffs of the machairs of the Outer Hebrides. Early in 1983, personnel of the then Central Excavation Unit of Historic Scotland's predecessor revisited very nearly all of the coastal archaeological sites then known in the Long Isle, with the specific task of identifying those at immediate threat from coastal erosion and of assessing the feasibility of their excavation or preservation. Some 32 sites were seen to be undergoing active erosion; at nine of them preservation was not being pursued and excavation was feasible. These sites were of two morphotypes: sites exposed in roughly vertical sand-cliffs and sites exposed over relatively large horzontal areas of sand deflation. It was decided to examine one sand-cliff site along its exposed face. The site selected was Balelone in North Uist, its excavation designed to explore both the problems associated with the excavation of deep midden sites with complex stratigraphy and the not-inconsiderable problems of excavation in sand. In the light of the Balelone trial excavation, a new approach was called for. A structured approach aimed firstly at establishing the three-dimensional extent of the sites to be examined. Four sites were then sampled (the sand-cliff sites of Baleshare, on the island of the same name off the west coast of North Uist and Hornish Point, South Uist and the deflation sites of South Glendale, South Uist and Newtonferry, North Uist) within a rigorously-defined research framework.The machair sites were formed by sand accretion, facilitated by human activities ranging from construction to refuse disposal and cultivation. Their formation was intermittent and they underwent episodes of major erosion, isolating the sites from the landscape mass of the machair sands. Despite their apparent wealth of suitable material, the dating of Hebridean coastal sites presents special problems. The strategy here was to provide a dating framework for the sequences on each site, from which the dates of archaeological significant structures and events could then be arrived at by extrapolation. Preliminary dates from the earliest and latest strata at Balelone spanned such a small period that a First Millennium BC date-range could be assigned. At Baleshare, the deposits investigated were chiefly later Bronze Age; following abandonment (roughly 200 radiocarbon years) of the Period I cultivated soil Period II represented extensive, manured, cultivated fields in the vicinity of a settlement now lost to the sea. As Period II went on. the settlement seems to have moved closer to the excavated area. After another hiatus of a minimum of 350 radiocarbon years, there were further cultivated plots and associated settlement of Iron Age date (Period III). By contrast, the site at Hornish Point (including successive wheelhouses and associated cultivation areas) is considered to be all of one - dynamic, Iron Age - period, lasting some 300 radiocarbon years (with potentially earlier structures unexcavated). A post-medieval blackhouse of characteristic Lewisian form had been cut into the settlement mound. The three dates from Newtonferry suggest that some Early Medieval activity took place at the site, while the bulk of the deposits date from the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries AD. At South Glendale, the radiocarbon dates indicate occupation sometime between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries AD; stratigraphically lower, fragmented and truncated remains were prehistoric, probably early Bronze Age.

Politics and power

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Collis ◽  
Raimund Karl
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
Power Bases ◽  
Major Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Written Sources

Reconstruction of Iron Age social and political structures relies initially on written sources, but classical texts are both biased in how they describe institutions, especially among other peoples, and patchy in time and space. From the mid-first millennium BC, we get details on how polities such as Athens, Sparta, and Rome functioned, but these are not representative of other Greek and Italian peoples, let alone non-Mediterranean societies. The second source of information is archaeology, especially burials, but also settlements. The chapter discusses social and political development using both a core–periphery (Mediterranean societies were more complex than those in the north) and an evolutionary model, though not one which necessarily assumes increasing complexity. The varying nature of individual power bases is also considered. A major area of contention (including between the authors) is the extent to which we can back-project documented societies into the past or into other contexts.

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