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 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.

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 Pigi Athinas Tumuli Cemetery of Macedonian Olympus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paraskevi Tritsaroli
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The People ◽  
Gender And Health ◽  
Funerary Treatment ◽  
Over Time

The Middle-Late Bronze Age (1620–1500 B.C.) was a period of emerging and intensifying social complexity involving small-scale settlement hierarchies, but the archaeological understanding of social organization at this time has remained limited. In a comparative case study of funerary treatment and skeletal biology, the authors consider the distribution of multiple skeletal pathological conditions between distinct tumuli-style burials at Pigi Athinas. Though social rank may have started to displace the centrality of kinship, subtle variations in both funerary and bioarchaeological data indicated the most important structuring factors were sex and age distinctions. Over time, the influence of differential diets, divisions of gender, and ritual feasting appear as the people participated in a widespread Mycenaean system that shaped both gender and health in ancient Greece.

STOPPERS, TRANSPORT STIRRUP JARS AND WINE TRANSPORT, 1450–1150 bc

2019 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 93-117
Author(s):  
Trevor Van Damme
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Maximum Diameter ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Meaningful Relationship ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Ceramic Vessels

This paper examines Late Bronze Age chipped ceramic and stone discs known most commonly as stoppers. Stoppers are distinguished from other classes of archaeological finds, including pierced discs and lids. Although it has long been known that stoppers could play a role in sealing ceramic vessels, recent scholarship has preferred to see them as multifunctional. For this article, 158 stoppers and 100 spout apertures from transport stirrup jar spouts found in secure Late Bronze Age III contexts have been studied. The results demonstrate a strong correlation in the apertures of transport stirrup jar spouts and the maximum diameter of stoppers that points to a meaningful relationship between the two. As the primary transport container of the Late Bronze Age, transport stirrup jars required careful sealing in order to allow their contents to transit without spilling or spoiling. There were many possible sealing configurations, however, and indeed this paper demonstrates some support for independent Mycenaean and Minoan traditions. A comparison with sealing traditions throughout the eastern Mediterranean reveals that the stopper method of sealing endured or reoccurred for thousands of years for the storage and transport of a specific commodity – wine. I conclude with the case study of stopper distributions at ancient Eleon, Boeotia, in order to show that a contextualised study of stoppers and stoppering activities in domestic structures has much to contribute to the study of social processes and domestic consumption practices.

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 Striking Cobra Spitting Fire

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Kasia Szpakowska
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Working Definition ◽  
Ancient Egyptian

Abstract In this paper, a working definition and examples of “demonic paraphernalia” are provided, as well as methods of recognition. Besides being of interest in and of themselves, these types of objects provide clues as to the nature of the demons, thus helping us in our quest for a taxonomy and “demonology” of Ancient Egypt. More specifically, this paper focuses on the use of Late Bronze Age clay cobra figurines as a case-study for the broader exploration of Ancient Egyptian “demonic paraphernalia”.

Understanding the role of metal within the Late Bronze Age community at Mycenae: challenges and potential approaches

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-270
Author(s):  
Stephanie Jane Aulsebrook
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Metal Artifacts ◽  
The Relationship

Metal has been widely argued as playing a decisive role in the development of Mycenae, which became one of the foremost centers on the Late Bronze Age Greek mainland. Yet, little is understood as to how metals were integrated into the lives of the inhabitants. Most scholarship has concentrated on the relationship between the ruling class and metal artifacts, drawing much of the evidence from the Linear B archives and top-down models of trade, society and internal redistribution that are increasingly considered untenable within the study of other aspects of Mycenaean life. This paper presents a new project, which uses a practice-orientated approach based around object biographies to study the use of metal across the entire social spectrum of the Late Bronze Age community at Mycenae (approximately 1700–1050 BC). The benefits of such an approach are discussed through a case study that examines the unexpected absence of gold vessels from the Palatial period archaeological record from the perspective of social practice and demonstrates how the holistic use of evidence from multiple sources can help overcome the difficulties inherent in the study of the use of metal in past societies.

REPRESENTING, OBJECTIFYING, AND FRAMING THE BODY AT LATE BRONZE AGE KNOSSOS

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLEN ADAMS
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Human Form ◽  
The World

Abstract This paper explores how the human form is depicted, objectified and contextualized, in order to clarify the complex relationship between ‘representation’ and ‘reality’, and to investigate the various ways the body is bounded. Part one argues that objectification is not always a passive process, but that the body is deliberately presented to the world to be observed and evaluated. Part two focuses on the configuration of bodily boundaries, and how the body is framed, for example, by clothing, architecture and the mortuary context. The wealth and range of evidence (wall paintings, seals and sealings, figurines, stone vases and burials) render Knossos an excellent case study for this approach. This paper asks not who the Knossians were, in terms of identity and ethnicity, but rather how they wanted to be presented to the world and each other.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document