Matsamor (Armenia) after five seasons of excavations

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 429-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Jakubiak ◽  
Ashot Piliposyan ◽  
Mateusz Iskra ◽  
Artavazd Zakyan
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Main Area ◽  
The Town ◽  
Town Area

The Metsamor site in the 2017 season was excavated in two areas. The main area was the so-called town area where several dwellings from the Early Iron Age were cleared. Evidence of violent site destruction included two human skeletons belonging most probably to victims of a sudden attack, left unburied after the town had been destroyed. The cemetery was the second investigated area. Exploration of kurgan XIX demonstrated that it had been looted. Nevertheless, some human remains and several artifacts in the form of bronze snake head bracelets were recorded inside the burial chamber.

Land of the Cremated Dead: On Cremation Practices in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Scandinavia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise Harvig
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
The Dead

As contract archaeology has emerged and larger connected areas have been excavated since the 1990s, focus has naturally changed from single finds of graves right below plough soil or in connection to mounds, towards the study of the surrounding cultural landscapes. In the Late Bronze Age and the Pre- Roman Iron Age settlements seldom overlap grave sites. This implies that the ‘land of the dead’ was considered separate from the ‘land of the living’. Although regionally differentiated, we further gain a better understanding of many of these accumulated grave sites and their gradual change during the transition period. In many cases we see a change from a personalized commemoration of the cremated dead in the Late Bronze Age, towards a focus on the act of cremation (rather than the post-cremation human body) around the beginning of the Iron Age. The increasing commemoration of pyre remains instead of human remains and deliberate ‘cremation’ of personal belongings in the Early Iron Age indicates a shift in funeral tempi from the post-cremation deliberate burial in the Bronze Age towards the actual cremation process as the primary locus of transformation in the earliest Iron Age. Throughout time, societies have grasped death, the dead, and the duration of death in very different manners. The process of death and relating to different stages of death may be more or less ritualized, that is, subject to specific repeated rules or laws within a society. Whether used to speed up or slow down the process of transformation—for example, keeping, embalming, dismembering, or exhuming the body in various stages—these rituals help the living create death through their acts. In interpretive archaeology we analyse these meaningful acts in the past and their continuation or discontinuation. Decoding single sequences within these acts therefore helps us designate non-negotiable repetitive actions in the archaeological record, as the material evidence of shared ‘embodied knowledge’ in a given prehistoric society (Nilsson Stutz 2003, 2010). Decoding and separating past actions and post depositional disturbances—the degree of intentionality—are crucial for plausible reconstructions of post-cremation treatment of cremated human remains.

scholarly journals Mesolithic Sites in the Upper Tobol

2022 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 897-910
Author(s):  
E. V. Podzuban
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Forest Steppe ◽  
Arrow Head ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
The Town

The article introduces prehistoric artifacts from the sites of Karasor-5, Karasor-6, and Karasor-7 obtained in 1998. The archaeological site of Karasor is located in the Upper Tobol region, near the town of Lisakovsk. Stone tools, pottery fragments, a ceramic item, and a bronze arrow head were collected from a sand blowout, which had destroyed the cultural layer. The paper gives a detailed description of the pottery. The stone tools were examined using the technical and typological analysis, which featured the primary splitting, the morphological parameters and size of plates, the ratio of blanks, plates, flakes, and finished tools, the secondary processing methods, and the typological composition of the tools. The nature of the raw materials was counted as an independent indicator. The pottery fragments, the bronze arrow head, and the ceramic item belonged to the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The stone industry of the Karasor archeological cluster proved to be a Mesolithic monument of the Turgai Trough. The technical and typological analysis revealed a close similarity with the Mesolithic sites of the Southern and Middle Trans-Urals, as well as the forest-steppe part of the Tobol-Irtysh interfluve. The stone artifacts were dated from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age.

Death in Flames: Human Remains from a Domestic House Fire from Early Iron Age, Denmark

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 701-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Harvig ◽  
J. Kveiborg ◽  
N. Lynnerup
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Early Iron Age

Urban Sprawl: What is Urbanization and Why does it Matter?

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Osborne
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Way

This chapter explains the importance of studying urbanization in the Mediterranean region. Urbanization has become a somewhat unfashionable topic among archaeologists and this may be because it has become bound up with questions of state formation. This chapter highlights the need to analyse urban settlements in the way that sanctuaries and cemeteries have come to be analysed, and argues that attempts to understand what is going on in the Mediterranean in the early Iron Age are doomed unless the importance of the town as a unit of analysis is reinserted and the variable forms of town as a unit are examined.

scholarly journals Karasor-3 Site in the Upper Tobol

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-61
Author(s):  
E. V. Podzuban
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Layer ◽  
The West ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
The Town ◽  
Archeological Site ◽  
Independent Indicator

The paper introduces a collection of prehistoric artifacts from Karasor-3 archeological site (1999). The Karasor cluster is located in the Upper Tobol region near the town of Lisakovsk, in the northern part of the Turgai depression, which connects the West Siberian and Turan plains. The Turgai depression borders on the Trans-Ural Plateau on the west and on the Kazakh hummocks and the Ulutau Mountains on the east. This environment does not contribute to the preservation of the cultural layer. As a result, the pottery and stone fragments found at the Karasor 3 site were collected from the surface. The article contains a detailed description of the pottery. The stone tools underwent a technical and typological analysis based on the products of primary splitting, morphological parameters and size of plates, the ratio of blanks and tools made of plates and flakes, methods of secondary processing, and typological composition of the tool kit. The nature of the raw materials was considered as an independent indicator. The stone industry of the Late Eneolithic era proved similar to the Tersek culture. The pottery ranged from the Late Eneolithic to the Early Iron Age.

Archaeological Investigations at Mavis Grind, Shetland

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cracknell ◽  
Beverley Smith
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Field System ◽  
M 10 ◽  
Settlement Site

Summary The excavations revealed a stone house and showed that it was oval, 13 m × 10 m, with an interior about 7 m in diameter. In the first occupation phase the entrance was on the SE side. During the second phase this entrance was replaced with one to the NE and the interior was partitioned. The roof was supported on wooden posts. After the building was abandoned it was covered with peat-ash which was subsequently ploughed. There were numerous finds of steatite-tempered pottery and stone implements, which dated the site to late Bronze/early Iron Age. The second settlement, Site B, lay by the shore of the voe and consisted of two possible stone-built houses and a field system. Two trenches were dug across the structures and the results are reported in Appendix I. Although damaged in recent years it was in no further danger.

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