Regional and Local Schools of Metalwork in Early Bronze Age Anatolia Part I

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 59-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jak Yakar
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Geological Surveys ◽  
Ancient Metallurgy ◽  
Work Done

The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the development of ancient metallurgy in the Near East, and in particular, in Anatolia. Most of the work done in this field however, with the exception of analytical studies conducted in laboratories and geological surveys, hardly goes beyond the re-examination of known historical, archaeological and geological data. The results, as can be expected, are derived mainly from the re-evaluation of previous conclusions on the development of early technologies and the emergence of major production centres in the Aegean, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean.Until a few years ago the origins of southeast European metallurgy were thought to be in northwest Anatolia. This traditional thesis of diffusion from the Troad to the Aegean and into the Balkans had rested on the chronological argument that the Chalcolithic cultures of Old Europe were contemporary with the EB I in Anatolia and the Aegean. The “diffusionists” lost substantial support for their theory when the chronological priority of Old European cultures based on tree-ring calibrated C-14 dates over the more traditional Near Eastern chronology was generally accepted.

Dairy Queen. Churns and milk products in the Aegean Bronze Age

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 205-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah P. Morris
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Specific Function ◽  
Milk Products ◽  
The Third ◽  
Household Processing

This article assembles examples of an unusual vessel found in domestic contexts of the Early Bronze Age around the Aegean and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Identified as a “barrel vessel” by the excavators of Troy, Lesbos (Thermi), Lemnos (Poliochni), and various sites in the Chalkidike, the shape finds its best parallels in containers identified as churns in the Chalcolithic Levant, and related vessels from the Eneolithic Balkans. Levantine parallels also exist in miniature form, as in the Aegean at Troy, Thermi, and Poliochni, and appear as part of votive figures in the Near East. My interpretation of their use and development will consider how they compare to similar shapes in the archaeological record, especially in Aegean prehistory, and what possible transregional relationships they may express along with their specific function as household processing vessels for dairy products during the third millennium BC.

Memory and its Demolition: Ancestors, Animals and Sacrifice at Umm el-Marra, Syria

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn M. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Ancestor Veneration ◽  
The Past ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

At Umm el-Marra in western Syria, a sequence of Bronze Age ritual installations facilitates the investigation of how Syrian elites employed memory, ancestor veneration, and animal (and perhaps human) sacrifice to reinforce their position, and how others used countermemory to contest it. Relevant data derive from an Early Bronze Age complex of elite tombs and animal interments and a Middle Bronze Age monumental platform and shaft containing animal and human bodies deposited ritually. Analysis of the spatial landscape, with patterns of access or inaccessibility, facilitates additional insights, as does the consideration of the intentionality or lack of it in ancient references to the past.

scholarly journals Tell Es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon Results of Short-Lived Cereal and Multiyear Charcoal Samples from the End of the Middle Bronze Age

Radiocarbon ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik J. Bruins ◽  
Johannes Van Der Plight
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean Region ◽  
Weighted Average ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Calibration Curves ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Chronology ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

Samples from Tell es-Sultan, Jericho, were selected for high-precision 14C dating as a contribution toward the establishment of an independent radiocarbon chronology of Near Eastern archaeology. The material derives from archaeological excavations conducted by K. M. Kenyon in the 1950s. We present here the results of 18 samples, associated stratigraphically with the end of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) at Tell es-Sultan. Six short-lived samples consist of charred cereal grains and 12 multiyear samples are composed of charcoal. The weighted average 14C date of the short-lived grains is 3306 ± 7 bp. The multiyear charcoal yielded, as expected, a somewhat older average: 3370 ± 6 bp. Both dates are more precise than the standard deviation (a) of the calibration curves and the absolute standard of oxalic acid. Calibration of the above Jericho dates is a bit premature, because several groups are currently testing the accuracy of both the 1986 and 1993 calibration curves. Nevertheless, preliminary calibration results are presented for comparison, based on 4 different calibration curves and 3 different computer programs. Wiggles in the calibration curves translate the precise bp dates into rather wide ranges in historical years. The final destruction of MBA Jericho occurred during the late 17th or the 16th century bc. More definite statements about the calibrated ages cannot be made until the accuracy of available calibration curves has been tested. Development of calibration curves for the Eastern Mediterranean region would be important.

scholarly journals RADIOCARBON DATING THE 3RD MILLENNIUM BC IN THE CENTRAL BALKANS: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE EARLY BRONZE AGE SEQUENCE

Radiocarbon ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1163-1191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulatović ◽  
Maja Gori ◽  
Marc Vander Linden
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Pannonian Basin ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
Age Sequence ◽  
Funerary Treatment

ABSTRACTLong-standing archaeological narratives suggest that the 3rd millennium cal BC is a key period in Mediterranean and European prehistory, characterized by the development of extensive interaction networks. In the Balkans for instance, the identification of such interactions relies solely upon typological arguments associated with conflicting local terminologies. Through a combination of 25 new radiocarbon (14C) dates and re-examination of the existing documentation, this paper defines the absolute chronology for groups which were previously only broadly framed into the 3rd millennium BC central Balkans (modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia). These absolute dates allow us to establish with greater clarity the chronological relations between different cultural groups that represent the main cultural units of the central Balkans sequence for the 3rd millennium cal BC: Coţofeni-Kostolac, Bubanj-Hum II, Belotić-Bela Crkva, Armenochori, and Bubanj Hum III. When comparing together the chronologies for material culture, funerary treatment of the body, and funerary architecture, there are no easily discernible patterns. We observe instead a complex mix of traits criss-crossing over a wide area encompassing the Pannonian basin, the central Balkans and the Greek peninsula.

scholarly journals Relational Typologies, Assemblage Theory and Early Bronze Age Burials

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Making Sense

This article argues that artefact types and typologies are kinds of assemblages, presenting an explicitly relational interpretation of typology grounded in a more-than-representational assemblage theory. In the process it evaluates recent approaches to typology, and the interpretations these typologies have supported, and compares these with approaches which emphasize materiality and experience. It then illustrates the benefit of drawing these two angles of analysis closer together within an approach grounded in a more-than-representational assemblage theory. Throughout, the discussion revolves around British Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age burials and types of artefacts commonly found within them. The core argument is that, if used appropriately, typologies are not constraints to the appreciation of distinctiveness, difference and relationality in the past, but can rather form an important tool in detecting those relations and making sense of different past ways of becoming.

Remembering, forgetting and the invention of tradition: burial and natural places in the English Early Bronze Age

Antiquity ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (289) ◽  
pp. 533-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mullin
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Mistaken Identity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Use Pattern

The author looks at construction and subsequent use-pattern of round barrows in the Cheshire Basin. He argues that the use of natural mounds for burial during the Early Bronze Age may be the result of mistaken identity, indicating a forgetting of the past.

A Henge Too Far? Reinterpreting the Neolithic Monument Complex at Milfield, Northumberland

2007 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 59-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Basis ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
New Framework

This paper reinterprets the archaeological evidence from the Neolithic monument complex in the Milfield Basin, Northumberland; a palimpsest landscape of earlier Neolithic enclosures, later Neolithic henges and Early Bronze Age burial monuments. Recent interpretative accounts of the Early Neolithic use of this complex have stressed economic factors as the driving-forces behind enclosure construction, whilst the six major later Neolithic henges have been integrated into a scheme of ritual processions. These interpretations are critically evaluated and the sites are placed in their regional and national context in an attempt to provide a new framework for the use and development of the complex. It is concluded that, far from having simplistic economic functions, the earlier Neolithic enclosures could be unique to the area. Representing the formalisation of a community's attempts to ensure social reproduction in times of change, through the articulation of the difference between circular and linear monumental forms. The re-examination of the later Neolithic evidence raises interesting questions as to how far we can ‘read’ monument complexes, and critically evaluates the extent to which we can argue a unity of purpose for these enigmatic accumulations of the past. Importantly, the reinterpretation of the Neolithic activity in this area exposes how readily archaeologists export social models from other regions, such as Wessex, and attempt to fit very diverse evidence into their framework. This paper concludes that we must continue the definition of the British Neolithic on a more regional basis and accept that core-periphery models, even if not explicitly articulated, have no place in archaeological explanation.

Early Bronze Age Colonists in Iberia

Antiquity ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 35 (139) ◽  
pp. 192-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Blance
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Mediterranean Area ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
East Mediterranean ◽  
City States

The object of this paper is to show that certain Early Bronze Age sites in the Iberian Peninsula are actually colonies established by people coming from the Eastern Mediterranean.The term ‘colony’ is used here in contrast to the term ‘culture’. It is selected because, besides being the term used by Siret, who believed that Los Millares was a Phoenician colony, and the Leisners (Factorei), it is the term which best describes these sites. The following account will demonstrate that they were solitary, heavily-defended settlements situated in a culturally foreign environment. Their best parallels are to be found in the East Mediterranean area, where, from very early times politically independent city states which owed their existence to either a rich hinterland or to trade and commerce, are known. These sites in the Peninsula may, in fact, be regarded as primitive examples of the types of colonies established later by the Phoenicians and the Greeks.

The Ezero Mound in South-East Bulgaria

Antiquity ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 40 (157) ◽  
pp. 33-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. I. Georgiev ◽  
N. J. Merpert
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Open Water ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Important Data ◽  
Settlement Site ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Bronze Age

Very little work has so far been done on the Bronze Age in South-East Bulgaria. This is an area which is of the greatest importance in the prehistory of South-Eastern Europe, a fact which has been often stressed by archaeologists working in the Eastern Mediterranean [I]. Geographically linked closely to Asia Minor and the Mediterranean lands, and especially to the Troad, South-East Bulgaria should provide important data for the establishment of relations between these lands in the Bronze Age. With these aims in mind the village settlement of Ezero, a site which even before excavation was obviously one of many periods, presented itself clearly as a place for excavation. Ezero, also known as Dipsis, is 3 km. south-east of Nova Zagora: it is not far from the well-known settlement site of Karanovo and 24 km. from the Azmak mound described in a recent number of this journal [2]. Preliminary excavations carried out from 1952-8 at Ezero showed that the settlement had a great thickness of occupation levels dating from the Early Bronze Age. Systematic excavation was restarted in 1961 and continued in 1963 and 1964.The site is bordered by swampy ground and large open water-meadows. The damp, easily worked soil was well suited to primitive agriculture, and the meadows to stock-rearing.

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