THE OLDEST ROCK ART SITES OF THE KARATAU RANGE: PETROGLYPHS OF KARASUYIR

Статья посвящена новому памятнику наскального искусства хребта Каратау, открытому в урочище Карасуйир. Приводится краткое описание памятника, публикуются наиболее важные изображения. Сюжеты и стилистические особенности основной чaсти петроглифов памятника Карасуйир связаны с эпохой бронзы, остaльные рисунки отнесены к эпохе рaннего железа и, возможно, к эпохе камня. Для некоторых из них предложена предварительная интерпретация. The article is devoted to a new rock art site of the Karatau Range, discovered in the Karasuyir Area. A brief description of the site is provided, and the most important images are published. Subjects and stylistic features of the main part of Karasuyir petroglyphs are associated with the Bronze Age, and other engravings are related to the early Iron Age and, perhaps, to the Stone Age. A preliminary interpretation is proposed for some of them.

Complex Pathways Towards Emergent Pastoral Settlements: New Research on the Bronze Age Xindian Culture of Northwest China

The Xindian culture of northwest China has been seen as a prototypical example of a transition toward pastoralism, resulting in part from environmental changes that started around 4000 years ago. To date, there has been little available residential data to document how and whether subsistence strategies and community organization in northwest China changed following or in association with documented environmental changes. The Tao River Archaeology Project is a collaborative effort aimed at gathering robust archaeological information to solidify our baseline understanding of economic, technological, and social practices in the third through early first millennia BC. Here we present data from two Xindian culture residential sites, and propose that rather than a total transition to nomadic pastoralism—as it is often reconstructed—the Xindian culture reflects a prolonged period of complex transition in cultural traditions and subsistence practices. In fact, communities maintained elements of earlier cultivation and animal-foddering systems, selectively incorporating new plants and animals into their repertoire. These locally-specific strategies were employed to negotiate ever-changing environmental and social conditions in the region of developing ‘proto-Silk Road’ interregional interactions.

The Tracing the Potter’s Wheel Project (TPW): An Integrated Archaeological Investigation of the Potter’s Wheel in the Bronze Age Aegean

This backstory article discusses the work of the Tracing the Potter’s Wheel Project (TPW), an integrated archaeological research project using the potter’s wheel as a prism through which to investigate the transmission of craft knowledge in the Bronze Age Aegean. The TPW methodology integrates theoretical perspectives on social interactions, technological processes and innovation, with experimental, 3D digital and analytical methods for visualising and interpreting ceramics. Two central goals have emerged: to provide high-quality resources and standardised guidelines for researchers to learn how to technologically assess assemblages in their own research, and to broadly define the nature of the uptake and use of the pottery wheel in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age.

Cultural Metallurgy—A Key Factor in the Transition from the Chalcolithic to Bronze Age in the Southern Levant

The causes of the disappearance of Late Chalcolithic society (Ghassulian) in the early fourth millennium bc remain obscure. This study identifies the collapse as the consequence of a change in the approach to metallurgy from cosmological fundament (Late Chalcolithic) to a practical craft (EB1). This endogenous transition accounts for the cultural recession characterizing the transitional period (EB1A) and the discontinuity in ritual practices. The new practical approach in metallurgy is firstly observed in the southern margin of the Ghassulian culture, which produced copper for distribution in the Nile valley rather than the southern Levant. Nevertheless, the Ghassulian cultural markers visible in the newly emerging areas of copper working (southern coastal plain, Nile valley) denote the survival of the old cosmological traditions among metalworkers of the EB1 culture. Their religious expression unveils the extension of the Ghassulian beliefs attached to metallurgy and their metamorphosis into the esoteric fundaments of the Bronze Age religions.