scholarly journals A Return to the Wheel: Rethinking Experimental Methodologies for the Study of the Potter’s Wheel

2021 ◽  
Vol XII (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
Chase A. M. Minos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Experimental Archaeology ◽  
Chaîne Opératoire ◽  
Chaine Operatoire ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

Research into the study of wheel-making techniques has grown, but studies of the tool or the wheel and its properties have remained understudied or considered insignificant until recently. In order to develop this research, the wheel and its practicalities, such as the physics, should be incorporated more into research of making techniques. Through the application of chaîne opératoire and experimental archaeology, this research questioned whether different wheel types produce different macroscopic traces on pots produced by the same technique. There are several results presented here that can shed light on the way archaeologists should investigate and understand early wheel potting, in particular the physics of rotation, which has received minimal attention as a result of a predominance for researching techniques over the tool (the wheel). The application of this research is used to better understand pottery and potter’s wheels from their adoption and development during the Middle Bronze Age on Crete, c. 2000 to 1500 BCE. A revision of experimental work and methodologies is combined with archaeological experimentation in order to help clarify not only how tools such as the wheel were used but subsequently what roles these craftworkers played in past societies.

scholarly journals Identifying Wheel-Thrown Vases in Middle Minoan Crete? Preliminary Analysis of Experimental Replicas of Plain Handleless Conical Cups from Protopalatial Phaistos

2021 ◽  
Vol XII (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216
Author(s):  
Ilaria Caloi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Ceramic Material ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Preliminary Analysis ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Minoan Crete ◽  
Technological Study ◽  
Wheel Throwing

Recent work in Middle Bronze Age Crete has revealed that most Protopalatial or First Palace period pottery is produced through the use of a combination of coil-building and the wheel, i.e., wheelcoiling. Experimental work conducted on pottery from Minoan sites of Northern and Eastern Crete (e.g., Knossos, Myrtos Pyrgos, Palaikastro) has indeed determined that Minoan potters did not develop the skills required to adopt the wheel-throwing technique. However, my recent technological study of Protopalatial ceramic material from Middle Minoan IIA (19th century BC) deposits from the First Palace at Phaistos, in Southern Crete, has revealed that though pottery was produced by the wheelcoiling techniques, yet other forming techniques were practised too. In this paper I present a preliminary analysis of experimental replicas of MM IIA Phaistian plain handleless conical cups, manufactured on the potter’s wheel using three different forming techniques: wheel-pinching, wheel-coiling, and throwing-off-the-hump. This analysis will proffer answers to several questions on the use of the potter’s wheel in Middle Bronze Age Crete and opens the possibility that at MM IIA Phaistos there co-existed potters who had developed skills to employ different forming techniques on the wheel, including possibly that of throwing-off-the-hump.

scholarly journals Identifying the chaîne opératoire of prehistoric clay figurines using experimental archeology and imaging methods

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1860107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodor Ignat ◽  
Roxana Bugoi ◽  
Florin Constantin ◽  
Valentin Parnic ◽  
Cătălin Lazăr
Keyword(s):  
Imaging Techniques ◽  
Experimental Archaeology ◽  
Imaging Methods ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Chaîne Opératoire ◽  
Chaine Operatoire ◽  
X Ray Imaging ◽  
Subsequent Step ◽  
Manufacturing Techniques ◽  
Experimental Archeology

This paper reports the use of experimental archaeology and imaging methods—X-ray computed tomography (CT) and radiography—that were employed to decipher the manufacturing techniques of Eneolithic clay artefacts. This study was triggered by the archaeological research conducted in some tell settlements in Southeastern Romania that belong to the Kodjadermen-Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI culture (c. 4500–3900 BC). The findings reported here represent the first accounts of a recently started research project, which has as its main goal the re-creation of Eneolithic clay artefacts and the identification of the chaîne opératoire used for manufacturing these objects. In particular, X-ray imaging techniques were used as complementary methods to help understand the structure of intact Eneolithic artefacts. In a subsequent step of this research, these techniques will be employed to check for similarities between the archaeological items and modern pottery replicas created in experimental archaeology workshops.

scholarly journals Reconstructing genetic histories and social organisation in Neolithic and Bronze Age Croatia

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Freilich ◽  
Harald Ringbauer ◽  
Dženi Los ◽  
Mario Novak ◽  
Dinko Tresić Pavičić ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Migration Routes ◽  
Genome Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Genetic Continuity ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractAncient DNA studies have revealed how human migrations from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age transformed the social and genetic structure of European societies. Present-day Croatia lies at the heart of ancient migration routes through Europe, yet our knowledge about social and genetic processes here remains sparse. To shed light on these questions, we report new whole-genome data for 28 individuals dated to between ~ 4700 BCE–400 CE from two sites in present-day eastern Croatia. In the Middle Neolithic we evidence first cousin mating practices and strong genetic continuity from the Early Neolithic. In the Middle Bronze Age community that we studied, we find multiple closely related males suggesting a patrilocal social organisation. We also find in that community an unexpected genetic ancestry profile distinct from individuals found at contemporaneous sites in the region, due to the addition of hunter-gatherer-related ancestry. These findings support archaeological evidence for contacts with communities further north in the Carpathian Basin. Finally, an individual dated to Roman times exhibits an ancestry profile that is broadly present in the region today, adding an important data point to the substantial shift in ancestry that occurred in the region between the Bronze Age and today.

Towards Familiar Landscapes? On the Nature and Origin of Middle Bronze Age Landscapes in the Netherlands

2006 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 289-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Arnoldussen ◽  
David Fontijn
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
North West ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Architectural Change ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Way

In many regions in north-west Europe, the Middle Bronze Age is seen as the first period in which a ‘humanly-ordered’ agrarian landscape took shape that has resonance with rural landscapes of historical periods. But what did this ‘ordering’ actually involve? Basing ourselves on a survey of the rich evidence from the Netherlands – including the evidence on everyday settlement sites as well as the use of the non-everyday ‘ritual’ zones in the land – we argue that from c. 1500 cal BC onwards the landscape was organised and structured by specific, ideological concepts of regularity and categorisation that are distinct from those of the preceding Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. We will show that elaborate three-aisled farmhouses of very regular layout emerged here around c. 1500 cal BC and argue that this profound architectural change cannot simply be explained by assuming agricultural intensification combined with indoor stalling of cattle, as conventional theories would have it. Also, we will argue that the way in which the settled land was used from this period onwards was also different than before. Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlements, far from being ‘ephemeral’, seem to have been organised along different lines than those of the Middle Bronze Age-B (MBA-B: 1500–1050 cal BC). The same holds true for the way in which barrows structured the land. Although they were significant elements in the organisation of the landscape from the Late Neolithic onwards and do hardly change in outer form, we will show that MBA barrows played a different role in the structuring of landscape, adhering to long-term categorisation and zoning therein. A similar attitude can also be discerned in patterns of object deposition in ‘natural’ places. Practices of selective deposition existed long before the MBA-B but, because of different subsistence bases of the pre-MBA-B communities, their interpretations of unaltered ‘natural’ places will have differed significantly. The presence of multiple deposition zones in the MBA-B also must have relied on a unprecedented way of persistent categorisation of the ‘natural’ environment. Finally, the evidence from ‘domestic, funerary and ritual’ sites is recombined in order to typify what the Dutch Middle Bronze Age landscape was about.

Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age Europe

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 366 (6466) ◽  
pp. 731-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alissa Mittnik ◽  
Ken Massy ◽  
Corina Knipper ◽  
Fabian Wittenborn ◽  
Ronny Friedrich ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
High Status ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Shed Light

Revealing and understanding the mechanisms behind social inequality in prehistoric societies is a major challenge. By combining genome-wide data, isotopic evidence, and anthropological and archaeological data, we have gone beyond the dominating supraregional approaches in archaeogenetics to shed light on the complexity of social status, inheritance rules, and mobility during the Bronze Age. We applied a deep microregional approach and analyzed genome-wide data of 104 human individuals deriving from farmstead-related cemeteries from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age in southern Germany. Our results reveal individual households, lasting several generations, that consisted of a high-status core family and unrelated low-status individuals; a social organization accompanied by patrilocality and female exogamy; and the stability of this system over 700 years.

The chaîne opératoire of 6th millennium BC pottery making in the Maritsa Valley, Bulgaria: ceramics from Nova Nadezhda

2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Michela Spataro ◽  
Georgi Katsarov ◽  
Nadezhda Todorova ◽  
Atanas Tsurev ◽  
Nikolina Nikolova ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Optical Microscopy ◽  
Thin Section ◽  
Surface Coatings ◽  
Pottery Production ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Thin Sections ◽  
Chaîne Opératoire ◽  
Chaine Operatoire ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract 40 potsherds and five other fired clay fragments from the prehistoric site of Nova Nadezhda in Bulgarian Thrace were analysed by archaeometric techniques. Twenty sherds and a daub fragment were analysed in thin section by optical microscopy; these thin sections, and thick sections of a further 24 sherds were also analysed by SEM-EDX. Results were used to describe the Early Neolithic chaîne opératoire at Nova Nadezhda, which was then compared to pottery production in roughly contemporaneous Starčevo-Criş communities in the central Balkans, to shed light on the Neolithisation process that took place in the 6th millennium BC. A variety of ceramic recipes was used to make different vessel shapes. Analyses of surface coatings were particularly enlightening in terms of provenance and the organisation of pottery production.

The Hoard from West Buckland, Somerset

1982 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin J. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Plaster Casts ◽  
The Way

SummaryThe small Middle Bronze Age hoard from West Buckland, Somerset has been assumed to be lost since its publication in 1880. Plaster casts still exist of the objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Parallels are given for these objects and their chronology discussed. The way in which the casts may have reached the collection is considered. The circumstances of the find are also discussed, with the possibility that these objects may be from a burial, thus raising the question of our definition of hoards.

Géographie et cartographie fictionnelles dans l’Utopie (1516) de Thomas More

Moreana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (Number 181- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 9-68
Author(s):  
Jean Du Verger
Keyword(s):  
Complex Network ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Third ◽  
Editio Princeps ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

The philosophical and political aspects of Utopia have often shadowed the geographical and cartographical dimension of More’s work. Thus, I will try to shed light on this aspect of the book in order to lay emphasis on the links fostered between knowledge and space during the Renaissance. I shall try to show how More’s opusculum aureum, which is fraught with cartographical references, reifies what Germain Marc’hadour terms a “fictional archipelago” (“The Catalan World Atlas” (c. 1375) by Abraham Cresques ; Zuane Pizzigano’s portolano chart (1423); Martin Benhaim’s globe (1492); Martin Waldseemüller’s Cosmographiae Introductio (1507); Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia (1513) ; Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario (1528) ; Diogo Ribeiro’s world map (1529) ; the Grand Insulaire et Pilotage (c.1586) by André Thevet). I will, therefore, uncover the narrative strategies used by Thomas More in a text which lies on a complex network of geographical and cartographical references. Finally, I will examine the way in which the frontispiece of the editio princeps of 1516, as well as the frontispiece of the third edition published by Froben at Basle in 1518, clearly highlight the geographical and cartographical aspect of More’s narrative.

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