Ritual and Identity in Rural Mesopotamia: Hirbemerdon Tepe and the Upper Tigris River Valley in the Middle Bronze Age

The materialization of religious beliefs is a complex process involving an active dialectic between ideas and practices that are physically engraved in the artefactual remains of ritual activities. However, this process is relevant only if it is based on a contextual association of elements (e.g. the performance of ceremonial activities, the creation of symbolic objects, the construction of ceremonial spaces) that validates the meaning of each component as part of a whole. Thus, archaeologists should try to connect these elements to form a network of meanings that stimulated the senses of ancient individuals in framing their cognitive perception of the divine. The study here presented will thus tackle such general theoretical tenets focusing particularly on the importance of the materialization of religious beliefs in constructing the ideological and economic domain of small-scale societies in rural contexts. In so doing, these topics will be confronted and developed through the analysis and interpretation of the archaeological data obtained from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000-1600 BC) architectural complex at the northern Mesopotamian site of Hirbemerdon Tepe, located along the upper Tigris river valley region in modern southeastern Turkey.

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Descoperiri funerare din epoca mijlocie a bronzului în valea Râului Negru (jud. Covasna) / Middle Bronze Age funerary discoveries in the Black River Valley (Covasna County)

Materiale şi cercetãri arheologice (Serie nouã) ◽

10.3406/mcarh.2016.1018 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 89-103

Author(s):

József Puskás

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

River Valley ◽

Middle Bronze Age

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Gateway to the Yayla: The Varneti Archaeological Complex in the Southern Caucasus Highlands

European Journal of Archaeology ◽

10.1017/eaa.2018.26 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 22-43

Author(s):

William Anderson ◽

Michelle Negus Cleary ◽

Jessie Birkett-Rees ◽

Damjan Krsmanovic ◽

Nikoloz Tskvitinidze

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

Iron Age ◽

Social Dynamics ◽

Regional Scale ◽

River Valley ◽

Pastoral Communities ◽

Middle Bronze Age ◽

Southern Caucasus ◽

Upland Pasture ◽

Southern Georgia

Recent ground surveys in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of southern Georgia have investigated a previously undocumented group of sites along a ridge overlooking the upper Kura river valley. Features and artefacts recorded at Varneti suggest long but episodic occupation from the Chalcolithic to the later medieval periods, with prominent phases in the Early to Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. Varneti has the potential to contribute to understanding economic and strategic aspects of the long-term settlement pattern in the southern Caucasus, especially the interplay between lowland and highland zones. Its position in the landscape, at a transitional point between the river valley and the upland pasture (yayla), may explain its persistent use by agro-pastoral communities that operated in varied cultural situations. The survey results help us frame a series of questions regarding economic and social dynamics at a local and regional scale and the continuity and discontinuity of practice in highland environments through long timespans.

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Evidence for Holocene Aeolian Activity at the Close of the Middle Bronze Age in the Eastern Carpathian Basin: Geoarchaeological Results from the Mureş River Valley, Romania

Geoarchaeology ◽

10.1002/gea.21434 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 131-146 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Sarah C. Sherwood ◽

Jason D. Windingstad ◽

Alex W. Barker ◽

John M. O'Shea ◽

W. Cullen Sherwood

Keyword(s):

Bronze Age ◽

River Valley ◽

Carpathian Basin ◽

Aeolian Activity ◽

Middle Bronze Age

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The early second millennium ceramic assemblage from Kenan Tepe, southeastern Turkey. A preliminary assessment

Anatolian Studies ◽

10.2307/3643086 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 53 ◽

pp. 33-69 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Bradley J. Parker ◽

Lynn Swartz Dodd

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Bronze Age ◽

Initial Assessment ◽

Carbon 14 ◽

Tigris River ◽

Survey Report ◽

River Region ◽

Interaction Spheres ◽

Middle Bronze Age ◽

Initial Survey

AbstractIn the initial survey of the upper Tigris river valley the authors of the survey report concluded that ‘either this portion of the Tigris basin was bypassed entirely by Middle Bronze Age development attested to elsewhere or, more likely, it is characterised by a thus far unreported and unrecognised assemblage’ (Algaze et al. 1991: 183). Recent research by members of the Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP) at the site of Kenan Tepe confirms the latter hypothesis, that the early second millennium in this area is marked by a regionally distinct material culture assemblage that is influenced by ceramic traditions in upper Mesopotamia and other material culture traditions in Anatolia. This article outlines our initial assessment of these data including an analysis of the ceramic corpus, architecture, archaeobotany, small finds and carbon-14, and places these data in a regional context. We conclude by speculating that the inhabitants of Kenan Tepe may have participated in interaction spheres that linked the upper Tigris river region to greater Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

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