Exploring Continuity and Discontinuity from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age in Central Oman

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Guillaume Gernez ◽  
Jessica Giraud
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Longue Durée ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This chapter presents new results of the excavations and surveys at Adam, Central Oman. The funerary landscape of the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC) is characterized by collective burials in tower-tombs located on the crests and then large collective multi-compartment graves. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC), a complete change is observed: the Wadi Suq graveyards show an important concentration of single burials in new forms of tombs (cists and cairns), all of which are located on the plain. Using the graveyards of Adam as an example, these two practices are compared in order to understand the evolution, continuity, and change of settlement patterns, material culture and society in the "longue durée."

Traditions of Metal-Working in the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Britain: Part I

1963 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 258-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Britton
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Metal Working ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The One

This paper is concerned with the earliest use in Britain of copper and bronze, from the first artifacts of copper in the later Neolithic until the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age, as marked by palstaves and haft-flanged axes. It does not attempt to deal with all the material, but instead certain classes of evidence have been chosen to illustrate some of the main styles of workmanship. These groups have been considered both from the point of view of their archaeology, and of the technology they imply.Such an approach requires on the one hand that the artifacts are sorted into types, their associations in graves and hoards studied, their distributions plotted, and finally a consideration of the evidence for their affinities and chronology. On the other hand there are questions also of interest that need a different standpoint. Of what metals or alloys are the objects made? Can their sources be located? How did the smiths set about their work? Over what regions was production carried out? If we are to understand as much as we might of the life of prehistoric times, then surely we should look at material culture from as many view-points as possible—in this case, the manner and setting of its production as well as its classification.

Tradition and change

1994 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Lohof
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The North ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Relationship

This article is based on the results of a project on social change in the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the north-eastern Netherlands, which ended in 1991. Although the project originally focused on the possible development of social stratification, here, the emphasis will be on the relationship between burial ritual and social change in general. Before embarking on the main argument, it should be understood that the link between burial ritual and social change by no means implies the view that burial ritual reflects all social changes which take place within a society, nor that the changes observed in the burial ritual are essential to an understanding of the society concerned. The burial ritual offers us no more than an opportunity to study past social changes. The resulting interpretations should be supported and tested by other expressions of material culture, such as those concerning economy and settlement patterns.

From tools to production: recent research on textile economies in Greece

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Bela Dimova ◽  
Margarita Gleba
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Wool Fibre ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Textile Production ◽  
Spindle Whorls ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Of Greece

The aim of this report is to provide a summary of the latest developments in the textile archaeology of Greece and the broader Aegean from the Neolithic through to the Roman period, focusing in particular on recent research on textile tools. Spindle-whorls and loomweights appeared in the Aegean during the Neolithic and by the Early Bronze Age weaving on the warp-weighted loom was well established across the region. Recent methodological advances allow the use of the physical characteristics of tools to estimate the quality of the yarns and textiles produced, even in the absence of extant fabrics. The shapes of spindle-whorls evolved with the introduction of wool fibre, which by the Middle Bronze Age had become the dominant textile raw material in the region. The spread of discoid loomweights from Crete to the wider Aegean has been linked to the wider Minoanization of the area during the Middle Bronze Age, as well as the mobility of weavers. Broader issues discussed in connection with textile production include urbanization, the spread of different textile cultures and the identification of specific practices (sealing) and previously unrecognized technologies (splicing), as well as the value of textiles enhanced by a variety of decorative techniques and purple dyeing.

scholarly journals Emberi ábrázolás a Változások korában, 4000 és 2000 BC között

2014 ◽  
pp. 113-144
Author(s):  
Tünde Horváth
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Late Phase ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Copper Age ◽  
Cultural Impacts ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Cultures ◽  
The Bronze Age

Our survey should by necessity begin earlier, from the close of the Middle Age Copper Age, and should extend to much later, at least until the onset of the Middle Bronze Age, in order to identify and analyse the appearance and spread of the cultural impacts affecting the Baden complex, their in-teraction with neighbouring cultures and, finally, their decline or transformation. Discussed here will be the archaeological cultures flourishing between 4200/4000 and 2200/2000 BC, from the late phase of the Middle Copper Age to its end (3600 BC), the Late Copper Age (ending in 2800 BC), the transi-tion between the Copper Age and the Bronze Age (ending in 2600 BC), and the Early Bronze Age 1–3 (ending in 2000 BC), which I have termed the Age of Transformation.

scholarly journals Exchange networks from close-up: The case of Lipari obsidian

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Vianello ◽  
Robert Howard Tykot
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Explanatory Model ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Exchange Networks ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

A systematic study on obsidian tools in Calabria and Sicily carried out by the authors have revealed the uniqueness in the patterns of production, exchange and consumption of Lipari obsidian. The study has concentrated on the Middle Neolithic primarily, with other Neolithic and Bronze Age contexts recognised at a later stage in the research since many contexts, especially in Sicily, have been excavated by pioneering archaeologists, some over a century ago, or were mislabelled. The chronology is Early Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, with very few materials dating Middle Bronze Age. A review of chronological contexts is in progress, which spans from the 6th millennium BC to the end of the 2nd millennium BC. The typology of obsidian tools is very homogenous, the vast majority of used tools are small blades, bladelets and sharp flakes; there is negligible variance across time; and Lipari obsidian is preferred over other sources. The patterns of the exchanges are also unique, revealing two major types of redistribution of obsidian, one particularly intriguing because it is quite organized with a single source in Lipari, prominent and reminiscent for its stability and reach of Bronze Age redistribution dynamics associated with hierarchical societies. We present here some observations on patterns substantiated by the archaeological record, and consider possible scenarios that can explain them. This work provides an update on progressing research and reveals aspects that will need further investigation, focusing on the patterns identified so far and possible explanations. More work is certainly needed to produce a working model, but the unusual patterns deserve some attention on their own, unencumbered by an overarching explanatory model. In particular, we want to assess the Neolithic redistribution pattern suggestive as typical of hierarchical polities, and contextualize it to the specific situation of Neolithic Lipari.

Pottery

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Roughened Surface ◽  
Middle Bronze Age

This chapter analyzes the pottery of late prehistoric Europe. Jars, bowls, and cups were the three main categories of pottery vessels that were in use in the Early Bronze Age. Bowls and cups were decorated differently from jars, and their surfaces were finished differently. Jars are the only category that had a purposely roughened surface. Bowls and cups were polished smooth. And jars are the only category within which each individual vessel was distinguished from every other by the pattern of its ornament. From the latter fact, it is argued that jars in the Early and Middle Bronze Age were individualized in a way that bowls and cups were not; each was deliberately made different from all others in order that the household that owned it could mark it as its own, and perhaps even use it to display to others in the community that it had abundant stores of grain.

Social landscapes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Brück
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Natural Rock ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Field Systems

In 1960 a rock climber found a small Middle Bronze Age pot wedged in a cleft in the rock halfway down the eastern face of Crow’s Buttress, a granite outcrop on the southern edge of Dartmoor in Devon (Pettit 1974, 92). The Middle Bronze Age was a period during which extensive field systems were constructed on Dartmoor (Fleming 1988). As we shall see later in this chapter, these have often been thought to indicate the intensification of agriculture and an increasing concern to define land ownership in response to population pressure (e.g. Barrett 1980a; 1994, 148–9; Bradley 1984, 9; Yates 2007, 120–1; English 2013, 139–40). Such models imply the commodification of the natural world: the landscape is viewed primarily as a resource for economic exploitation. Yet this small pot calls such assumptions into question, for it can surely be best interpreted as an offering to spirit guardians or ancestors associated with a striking natural rock formation. This hints at a quite different way of engaging with and understanding the landscape. In this chapter we will explore the links between people and landscape, beginning with the monumental landscapes of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, moving then to consider what the appearance of field systems during the Middle and Late Bronze Age tells us about human–environment relationships during the later part of the period, and finally considering some of the ways in which animals were incorporated into the social worlds of Bronze Age communities. Funerary and ceremonial monuments of various sorts are the most eye-catching feature of the Early Bronze Age landscape and have dominated our interpretations of the period. By contrast, as we have seen in Chapter 4, settlement evidence of this date is relatively sparse. This, and recent isotope analyses of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age inhumation burials (Jay et al. 2012; Parker Pearson et al. 2016), suggest a significant degree of residential mobility.

TRAVELLING WITH THE POTTER'S WHEEL IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE AEGEAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 59-104
Author(s):  
Maria Choleva
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Linear Diffusion ◽  
Craft Knowledge ◽  
Technological Tradition ◽  
Technological Study ◽  
Comparative Examination ◽  
Shed Light

By adopting the chaîne opératoire approach as a dynamic theoretical and methodological framework for studying ancient technologies, this paper investigates the modalities behind the appearance of the potter's wheel in the Aegean during the Early Bronze Age II (c. 2550–2200 bc). Based on the comparative examination of ceramic assemblages from different Aegean sites, an extended technological study has been carried out in order to track the earliest wheel-made pottery and reconstruct the craft behaviours perpetrated by the use of the potter's wheel across the Aegean. The paper presents the results of this multi-site study and aims to (a) trace out the wheel-based technological traditions, (b) explore the contexts of the learning and transmission of the new tool, (c) shed light on the connectivity among Aegean and western Anatolian communities that enabled the transfer of the new craft knowledge, and, finally, (d) bring into view the mechanisms behind its emergence and appropriation. By considering technologies as representing an entire social system of knowing, perceiving and acting on the material world, it will be argued that the spread of the potter's wheel in the Aegean does not reflect a moment of linear diffusion of a technological innovation, adopted thanks to certain techno-functional advantages. Instead, it discloses the resilience of social identities and values embedded through the practical engagement of individuals in the production of their material culture. The potter's wheel, in fact, emerges as a socially and culturally mediated practice, specific to small groups of potters trained within a technological tradition of Anatolian origin, performing their craft in the Aegean socio-cultural milieus. Furthermore, its transfer reveals a multidirectional and dynamic crossing of material cultures that designated a navigable world where traditions, objects and people travelled, mixed and merged in unpredictable ways.

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