The social context of ritual practice in Late Bronze Age Ireland

2015 ◽  
pp. 168-199
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals The Social Role of Non-metal ‘Valuables’ in Late Bronze Age Britain

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 665-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück ◽  
Alex Davies
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
The Social

Bronze Age metal objects are widely viewed as markers of wealth and status. Items of other materials, such as jet, amber and glass, tend either to be framed in similar terms as ‘prestige goods’, or to be viewed as decorative trifles of limited research value. In this paper, we argue that such simplistic models dramatically underplay the social role and ‘agentive’ capacities of objects. The occurrence of non-metal ‘valuables’ in British Early Bronze Age graves is well-documented, but their use during the later part of the period remains poorly understood. We will examine the deposition of objects of amber, jet and jet-like materials in Late Bronze Age Britain, addressing in particular their contexts and associations as well as patterns of breakage to consider the cultural meanings and values ascribed to such items and to explore how human and object biographies were intertwined. These materials are rarely found in burials during this period but occur instead on settlements, in hoards and caves. In many cases, these finds appear to have been deliberately deposited in the context of ritual acts relating to rites of passage. In this way, the role of such objects as social agents will be explored, illuminating their changing significance in the creation of social identities and systems of value.

THE KING'S MEN IN UGARIT AND SOCIETY IN LATE BRONZE AGE SYRIA

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Márquez Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Debt Service ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
King's Men ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Cette Notion

AbstractThis paper examines the sector of society generally known as the "palace dependents" in Late Bronze Age Syria. The discussion, however, is not centred on the notion itself (and the whole model of two economically divided sectors of society), but rather on the empirical evidence found in the cuneiform archives of Ugarit, Alalakh and Emar. Therefore, the social designations "king's man" in Ugarit (Ugaritic bunušu malki), and (Hurrian) eǵelli in Alalakh are revaluated, with the result of a new interpretation which seems to find confirmation in the terminology used in Emar. Rather than a designation based on modern economic notions, the dependent nature of these social categories seems to reveal a juridical ground, namely antichretic debt service. Cet article examine le secteur de la société connu généralement comme les "dépendants du palais" en Syrie à l'âge du Bronze récent. L'étude, cependant, n'est pas centrée autour de cette notion-ci (ou de l'idée plus générale qui met en cause une division bipartite de la société selon des critères d'ordre économique), mais vise plutôt à analyser l'évidence empirique des textes cunéiformes d'Ougarit, Alalakh et Emar. Il s'agit, donc, d'un réexamen de la terminologie sociale: d'une part les "hommes du roi" à Ougarit (en Ougaritique, bunušu malki), et, d'autre part, la désignation hourrite eǵelli à Alalakh. Le résultat c'est une nouvelle interprétation qui semble trouver une certaine confirmation dans la propre terminologie attestée à Emar. Plutôt qu'une terminologie basée sur des notions économiques modernes, la nature dépendante de ces catégories sociales semblent révéler une base d'ordre juridique, notamment le service antichrétique pour dettes.

scholarly journals The deposition of bronzes at Swiss lakeshore settlements: new investigations

Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (330) ◽  
pp. 1298-1311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktoria Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Shallow Water ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Special Places

The famous lakeside sites of Switzerland have long been known for their pile dwellings and their massive quantities of Late Bronze Age metalwork. On the most recent excavations, the bronzes have been mapped in situ, allowing comparison with assemblages from dryland sites and rivers, as well as providing a context for the nineteenth-century collections. The pile dwellings emerge as special places where depositions of selected bronze objects in groups or as single discards, comparable to those usually found in dryland deposits or in rivers, accumulated in the shallow water during a unique 250-year spell of ritual practice.

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.

Claiming Social Identities in the Mortuary Landscape of the Late Bronze Age Communities of Macedonia

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-197
Author(s):  
Sevi Triantaphyllou ◽  
Stelios Andreou
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Dead

Burial practices in Late Bronze Age Macedonia do not manifest particularly elaborate traits in terms of grave architecture and prestigious items accompanying the dead. In contrast to practices in the southern mainland, local communities adopted subtler and less homogeneous forms of treating the deceased in an attempt to signify their particular identities in the cultural, political, and symbolic landscape. Recent research has established a special focus on descent in extramural cemeteries, such as the cist grave cemetery with multiple burials at Spathes on Mount Olympus, the tumuli of Western Macedonia and Southern Pieria, the burial enclosures of Faia Petra, and the tumuli at Exochi and Potamoi in Eastern Macedonia. In Central Macedonia, on the other hand, where tell settlements dominate the natural and symbolic landscape, burial practices possess a less prominent place in the social space. The dominant trait here seems to be the absence of formal mortuary practices. Burials may occur within the settlement without special care regarding the treatment of the dead, but with a desire to mark out the links of the deceased with particular residential groups. The handling of death in Late Bronze Age Macedonia emerges therefore as a powerful practice, which was manipulated in different modes by the living communities in order to claim a diverse set of social identities and significant properties in the diverse cultural landscape and the varied political scenery of the area.

scholarly journals Understanding settlement-landscape interaction with literary records and geoinformatics: The case of Homer’s Late Bronze Age Southeast Aegean

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanasios Votsis ◽  
Dina Babushkina
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Landscape Evolution ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Regional Structure ◽  
Research Material ◽  
The Social ◽  
Settlement Landscape ◽  
Human Landscape

<p>Advances in Digital Humanities are providing increasingly rich research material for understanding (1) the environmental and locational attributes of ancient settlements and (2) the regional structure of systems of settlements. Non-material records, in particular, provide information about the social and cultural drivers of human-landscape interaction in settlements that, when combined with material records, aid in refining existing models of settlement-landscape evolution and sustainability. We present a case study from Late Bronze Age Southeast Aegean that utilizes literary records, biogeophysical data and geoinformatics methods to offer insights into the abovementioned topics in that region. Specifically, we utilize a georeferenced version of the record of cities and their sociocultural and environmental descriptions, provided in the Catalog of Ships in Homer’s Iliad. We combine this information with datasets from the spatial (physiography, climatology) and temporal (continuities/discontinuities, population) context of those settlements. Ultimately, we are interested in deriving identifiable patterns in our dataset – more specifically, whether there exist patterns of settlement-environment interaction that are inherently more sustainable than others, as well as getting a glimpse into the hierarchy of values underlying this interaction.</p>

scholarly journals The Vedic Agni and Scandinavian Fire Rituals: A Possible Connection

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Anders Kaliff
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Archaeological Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

To use ethnographic analogies is not the same as picking up ready-made interpretations from one cultural context and importing them into another. On the contrary, analogies are a powerful and necessary tool for any archaeological interpretation. If we as scientists are not aware of this we will most certainly use our own time and culture as an unconscious analogy: it is not possible to make interpretations, or even to think, without references outside oneself, and such references are nothing but analogies. l will put forward the hypothesis that the Late Bronze Age society of Scandinavia had rituals resembling, and probably related to, the Vedic tradition. As in Vedic tradition, fire sacrifice seems to have been an important ritual practice in Scandinavia. The Vedic fire altars are built as a symbolic microcosmos, repeating the creation of the world, and the fire (Agni) is seen as a link between earth and the heavenly fire —the sun.

Early Israel’s Origins, Settlement, and Ethnogenesis

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-93
Author(s):  
Ann E. Killebrew
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Infiltration Models

The search for biblical Israel in the textual and archaeological record has been a focus of scholarly research for over a century. Using as their starting point the books of Exodus, Joshua, and Judges, Albright’s unified conquest and Alt’s peaceful infiltration models emphasize the external, or foreign, origin of Israel as presented in the biblical narrative. More recent suggestions highlight the indigenous nature and role of Late Bronze Age Canaan in Israel’s emergence. These approaches, including the social revolution, pastoral Canaanite, and mixed multitude models, enlist, to varying degrees, biblical and Egyptian sources (principally the Merneptah Stela), archaeological evidence, and a variety of sociological, anthropological, environmental, and other approaches to reconstruct the complex process of early Israel’s ethnogenesis.

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