scholarly journals Recently excavated Iron Age burials from the Western Isles

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Cook
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Coastal Erosion ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
Burial Practice ◽  
The Common ◽  
New Evidence

Between 2004 and 2008, AOC Archaeology Group undertook the excavation of four separate Iron Age burials. These remains had been exposed by coastal erosion, and were excavated under the terms of the Historic Scotland Call-Off Contract for Human Remains; the four inhumations were fully excavated and radiocarbon dated. The excavations provide new evidence for Iron Age burial practice in the Western Isles and, more generally, Scotland. The examples discussed here from Scarista, Vallay, Griminish and Drimsdale were all unaccompanied burials, which by the position of the body in the grave and/or the grave setting, may have, in the past, been interpreted as possible Bronze Age or Early Historic graves in the absence of direct dates obtained from the human skeletal remains. These recent discoveries emphasise the necessity for the application of radiocarbon techniques (in the common absence of grave goods) to classify burials chronologically.

scholarly journals Grindstone: Grinding... and Human Sacrifice? Why?

2020 ◽  
pp. 241-258
Author(s):  
Gábor Ilon
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Classification System ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Food Preparation ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
Action Sequence ◽  
Unchanged Form

Three features, dated to diverse periods of prehistory (Neolithic: Transdanubian Linear Pottery Culture; Bronze Age: Tumulus culture; Iron Age: Celtic Period) are presented in the current study. One of our main goals is to encourage the introduction of an otherwise generally accepted protocol for the investigation and sampling of similar phenomena to Hungarian archaeological research. The method focuses on the examination of 1, complete or partial human skeletal remains; 2, complete or partial animal skeletal remains;3, offerings according to social position; 4, tools for food preparation and equipment of the ritual feast; 5, traces of burning or fire; 6, patterns of the action sequence burning–fragmenting–scattering, together with material analyses for all samples. This way a categorization of the results might open a possibility for a more adequate interpretation. The features under study fall into category A in Joanna Brück’s classification system of human skeletal remains,1 but I regard the phenomena also containing grindstones a subcategory. The ritual in the course of which these were created might have been practiced for millenia in an unchanged form; its possible interpretation was described by István Tóth. According to our view such actions represent the liminal zone between the worlds of the living and the dead.

scholarly journals The elusive parasite: comparing macroscopic, immunological, and genomic approaches to identifying malaria in human skeletal remains from Sayala, Egypt (third to sixth centuries AD)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvie Loufouma Mbouaka ◽  
Michelle Gamble ◽  
Christina Wurst ◽  
Heidi Yoko Jäger ◽  
Frank Maixner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Rapid Diagnostic Tests ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Pathological Changes ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
The Past ◽  
A Site ◽  
Capture Sequencing

AbstractAlthough malaria is one of the oldest and most widely distributed diseases affecting humans, identifying and characterizing its presence in ancient human remains continue to challenge researchers. We attempted to establish a reliable approach to detecting malaria in human skeletons using multiple avenues of analysis: macroscopic observations, rapid diagnostic tests, and shotgun-capture sequencing techniques, to identify pathological changes, Plasmodium antigens, and Plasmodium DNA, respectively. Bone and tooth samples from ten individuals who displayed skeletal lesions associated with anaemia, from a site in southern Egypt (third to sixth centuries AD), were selected. Plasmodium antigens were detected in five of the ten bone samples, and traces of Plasmodium aDNA were detected in six of the twenty bone and tooth samples. There was relatively good synchronicity between the biomolecular findings, despite not being able to authenticate the results. This study highlights the complexity and limitations in the conclusive identification of the Plasmodium parasite in ancient human skeletons. Limitations regarding antigen and aDNA preservation and the importance of sample selection are at the forefront of the search for malaria in the past. We confirm that, currently, palaeopathological changes such as cribra orbitalia are not enough to be certain of the presence of malaria. While biomolecular methods are likely the best chance for conclusive identification, we were unable to obtain results which correspond to the current authentication criteria of biomolecules. This study represents an important contribution in the refinement of biomolecular techniques used; also, it raises new insight regarding the consistency of combining several approaches in the identification of malaria in past populations.

scholarly journals New evidence for prehistoric copper metallurgy in the vicinity of Bor

Starinar ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 173-191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Kapuran ◽  
Dragana Zivkovic ◽  
Nada Strbac
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Ore ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Metallurgical Furnaces ◽  
Copper Metallurgy ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age

The last three years of archaeological investigations at the site Ru`ana in Banjsko Polje, in the immediate vicinity of Bor, have provided new evidence regarding the role of non-ferrous metallurgy in the economy of the prehistoric communities of north-eastern Serbia. The remains of metallurgical furnaces and a large amount of metallic slags at two neighbouring sites in the mentioned settlement reveal that locations with many installations for the thermal processing of copper ore existed in the Bronze Age. We believe, judging by the finds of material culture, that metallurgical activities in this area also continued into the Iron Age and, possibly, into the 4th century AD.

A Life Less Ordinary: the Ritualization of the Domestic Sphere in Later Prehistoric Europe

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Social Archaeology ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
The Past

This article, which is based on the fourteenth McDonald Lecture, considers two tensions in contemporary archaeology. One is between interpretations of specific structures, monuments and deposits as the result of either ‘ritual’ or ‘practical’ activities in the past, and the other is between an archaeology that focuses on subsistence and adaptation and one that emphasizes cognition, meaning, and agency. It suggests that these tensions arise from an inadequate conception of ritual itself. Drawing on recent studies of ritualization, it suggests that it might be more helpful to consider how aspects of domestic life took on special qualities in later prehistoric Europe. The discussion is based mainly on Neolithic enclosures and other monuments, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites and the Viereckschanzen of central Europe. It may have implications for field archaeology as well as social archaeology, and also for those who study the formation of the archaeological record.

A Bronze Age battlefield? Weapons and trauma in the Tollense Valley, north-eastern Germany

Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (328) ◽  
pp. 417-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Jantzen ◽  
Ute Brinker ◽  
Jörg Orschiedt ◽  
Jan Heinemeier ◽  
Jürgen Piek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Eastern Germany ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Braided Streams ◽  
The Dead

Chance discoveries of weapons, horse bones and human skeletal remains along the banks of the River Tollense led to a campaign of research which has identified them as the debris from a Bronze Age battle. The resources of war included horses, arrowheads and wooden clubs, and the dead had suffered blows indicating face-to-face combat. This surprisingly modern and decidedly vicious struggle took place over the swampy braided streams of the river in an area of settled, possibly coveted, territory. Washed along by the current, the bodies and weapons came to rest on a single alluvial surface.

Dead Sea Levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Joy Kagan ◽  
Dafna Langgut ◽  
Elisabetta Boaretto ◽  
Frank Herald Neumann ◽  
Mordechai Stein
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Organic Debris ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead

The history of lake-level changes at the Dead Sea during the Holocene was determined mainly by radiocarbon dating of terrestrial organic debris. This article reviews the various studies that have been devoted over the past 2 decades to defining the Dead Sea levels during the Bronze and Iron Ages (≃5.5 to 2.5 ka cal BP) and adds new data and interpretation. In particular, we focus on research efforts devoted to refining the chronology of the sedimentary sequence in the Ze'elim Gully, a key site of paleoclimate investigation in the European Research Council project titled Reconstructing Ancient Israel. The Bronze and Iron Ages are characterized by significant changes in human culture, reflected in archaeological records in which sharp settlement oscillations over relatively short periods of time are evident. During the Early Bronze, Intermediate Bronze, Middle Bronze, and Late Bronze Ages, the Dead Sea saw significant level fluctuations, reaching in the Middle Bronze an elevation of ≃370 m below mean sea level (bmsl), and declining in the Late Bronze to below 414 m bmsl. At the end of the Late Bronze Age and upon the transition to the Iron Age, the lake recovered slightly and rose to ≃408 m bmsl. This recovery reflected the resumption of freshwater activity in the Judean Hills, which was likely accompanied by more favorable hydrological-environmental conditions that seem to have facilitated the wave of Iron Age settlement in the region.

scholarly journals Hillforts, rocks and warriors

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 154-165
Author(s):  
Javier Rodriguez-Corral
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
The Bronze Age

During the Late Iron Age, monumental stone statues of warriors were established in the northwest of Iberia, ‘arming’ landscapes that ultimately encouraged specific types of semiotic ideologies in the region. This paper deals with how these statues on rocks not only worked in the production of liminality in the landscape – creating transitional zones on it –, but also how they functioned as liminal gateways to the past, absorbing ideas from the Bronze Age visual culture up to the Late Iron Age one, in order to create emotional responses to a new socio-political context.

Barbarian Europe and Early Iron Age Greece

1965 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Snodgrass
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Aegean Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Relationship

This paper is concerned with the nature of the relationship that existed between Central Europe and the Aegean area in the early 1st millennium B.C. Interest in Aegean-continental connections has been strong for a considerable time, but has been intensified, particularly from the continental standpoint, in the past fifteen years. Although some of these studies have been concerned with the contacts between 2nd millennium (Late Bronze Age) Greece and the north, others have examined in detail the evidence for the links between the Urnfield culture and Greece during the 10th, 9th and 8th centuries. For Greece, this is an utterly different period from the preceding one; the evidence for foreign contacts suddenly becomes scarce and that for military disasters is virtually non-existent. Yet some scholars have reached very similar conclusions, involving the transmission of objects and of the people who carried them from Central Europe into Greece, for this period as for the preceding Late Bronze Age. Such arguments have a recent exponent in Professor W. Kimmig, whose paper Seevölkerbewegung und Urnenfelderkultur ranges over the whole period from about 1200 to 700. His list of objects and practices in this period, which he considers to have been donated by the Danube-Balkan peoples to the Mediterranean world, is comprehensive indeed: it would include bronze shields and body armour, the equipment of Goliath, the knobbed ware of Troy VII B, the practice of cremation in the Iron Age, the ritual spoliation of weapons in graves, iron swords, spears, knives, bits, lugged axes, spits, fire-dogs, bronze personal objects generally, clay idols, the maeander pattern and the swans of Apollo.

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