Cultural Continuity and Social Resistance: The Chronology of Megalithic Funerary Practices in Southern Iberia

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Aranda Jiménez ◽  
Águeda Lozano Medina ◽  
Marta Díaz-Zorita Bonilla ◽  
Margarita Sánchez Romero ◽  
Javier Escudero Carrillo
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Social Resistance ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
Southern Iberia ◽  
The Bronze Age

Inspired by the biographical approach to the study of material culture, a radiocarbon dating programme was undertaken to explore the chronology and temporality of the megalithic monuments in south-eastern Iberia. Instead of one or two dates per tomb, the normal way of approaching this complex issue, we carried out a complete radiocarbon dating series of single tombs based on human remains. We focused our attention on four tholos-type tombs in the cemetery of El Barranquete (Almería, Spain). According to the new radiocarbon series modelled in a Bayesian framework, four main conclusions can be drawn: that the cemetery shows a very long period of funerary activity, which began in the late fourth millennium and ended in the last centuries of the second millennium calbc; that continuity of ritual practices attained an unexpected importance during the Bronze Age; that interments, which fall into cultural periods that would be unthinkable if only the typological properties of the grave goods were considered, occurred; and that each tomb had a complex and very different biography.

Bogs, Bodies and Burnt Mounds: Visits to the Soar Wetlands in the Neolithic and Bronze Age

2012 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 173-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Ripper ◽  
Matthew Beamish ◽  
A. Bayliss ◽  
C. Bronk Ramsey ◽  
A. Brown ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Animal Bones ◽  
The Bronze Age

The recording and analysis of a burnt mound and adjacent palaeochannel deposits on the floodplain of the River Soar in Leicestershire revealed that the burnt mound was in use, possibly for a number of different purposes, at the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. An extensive radiocarbon dating programme indicated that the site was revisited. Human remains from the palaeochannel comprised the remains of three individuals, two of whom pre-dated the burnt mound by several centuries while the partial remains of a third, dating from the Late Bronze Age, provided evidence that this individual had met a violent death. These finds, along with animal bones dating to the Iron Age, and the remains of a bridge from the early medieval period, suggest that people were drawn to this location over a long period of time.

The Political Machine

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Bronze Age

This book investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, the book demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. The book looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and it considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. The book shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or “machines” sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortifies political power even in the contemporary world. The book provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, this book sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Cultural change and population dynamics during the Bronze Age: Integrating archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence for Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany

The Holocene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (10) ◽  
pp. 1607-1621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Kneisel ◽  
Walter Dörfler ◽  
Stefan Dreibrodt ◽  
Stefanie Schaefer-Di Maida ◽  
Ingo Feeser
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Quantitative Information ◽  
Northern Germany ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
The Bronze Age

In archaeology, change in material culture is viewed as indicating social or cultural transformation and is the basis of our typo-chronological classification of phases and periods. The material culture from northern Germany reveals both quantitative and qualitative changes during the Bronze Age. At the same time, there is also evidence for ‘boom and bust’ cycles in population density/size, as indicated by changing human impact on the environment in several Bronze Age palaeoenvironmental records. These demographic fluctuations may relate to the observed changes in social phenomena in aspects of ideology, technology, food production and habitation. For example, innovations in food production, such as the adoption of new crops and agricultural techniques, could have led to population growth. While usually viewed by archaeologists as a ‘negative’ development, population stress or collapse may have favoured the emergence of new cultural phenomena. In order to test the cause-and-effect relationship between population dynamics and sociocultural change, we synthesise the archaeological evidence – qualitative and quantitative information from settlements, deposition finds (hoards), burials, material culture and architectural remains – for the Bronze Age in northern Germany, mainly Schleswig-Holstein, and compare it with the boom and bust pattern seen in the palaeoenvironmental record. The synchronicity of changes at ca. 1500 BC and ca. 1100 BC reflects the relationship between phases of major sociocultural transformation in the archaeological datasets and booms and busts in the palaeoenvironmental record of the region seen as a proxies for palaeo-demography. This sets the stage for a better understanding of the transformation of practices and relationships in the Bronze Age communities of the region.

scholarly journals Non-discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Budden ◽  
Joanna Sofaer
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Differential Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article explores the relationship between the making of things and the making of people at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary. Focusing on potters and potting, we explore how the performance of non-discursive knowledge was critical to the construction of social categories. Potters literally came into being as potters through repeated bodily enactment of potting skills. Potters also gained their identity in the social sphere through the connection between their potting performance and their audience. We trace degrees of skill in the ceramic record to reveal the material articulation of non-discursive knowledge and consider the ramifications of the differential acquisition of non-discursive knowledge for the expression of different kinds of potter's identities. The creation of potters as a social category was essential to the ongoing creation of specific forms of material culture. We examine the implications of altered potters' performances and the role of non-discursive knowledge in the construction of social models of the Bronze Age.

scholarly journals New evidence for prehistoric copper metallurgy in the vicinity of Bor

Starinar ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 173-191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Kapuran ◽  
Dragana Zivkovic ◽  
Nada Strbac
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Ore ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Metallurgical Furnaces ◽  
Copper Metallurgy ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Bronze Age

The last three years of archaeological investigations at the site Ru`ana in Banjsko Polje, in the immediate vicinity of Bor, have provided new evidence regarding the role of non-ferrous metallurgy in the economy of the prehistoric communities of north-eastern Serbia. The remains of metallurgical furnaces and a large amount of metallic slags at two neighbouring sites in the mentioned settlement reveal that locations with many installations for the thermal processing of copper ore existed in the Bronze Age. We believe, judging by the finds of material culture, that metallurgical activities in this area also continued into the Iron Age and, possibly, into the 4th century AD.

scholarly journals Aegean diffusions - Diffusions of power: Cultural connections between Minoan Crete and Pharaonic Egypt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Vinko Kerr-Harris
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The People ◽  
Minoan Crete ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
The Bronze Age

<p>The development of Minoan society has traditionally been considered by scholars to have been an insular phenomenon unique to the southern Aegean. Such assumptions, however, fail to acknowledge the wider context of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. Contact between the people of Crete and their contemporaries in Egypt and the Levant is well attested in the archaeological record, with a plethora of artefacts – imported and imitation – appearing on both sides of the Libyan Sea. Whilst investigations into the economic nature of these exchanges have been undertaken, little thought has been given to the cultural consequences of inter-regional contacts. This thesis examines the evolution of palatial society upon Crete and considers the extent to which interactions with comparatively more mature civilisations may have influenced the increasingly hierarchal trajectory of Minoan society, by re-evaluating the corpus of material culture and interconnectivity.</p>

SOME COMMENTS ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OXUS CIVILIZATION IN THEARABIAN GULF

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 97-103
Author(s):  
Khayitmurod Khurramov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Arabian Gulf ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Unique Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Bronze Age ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
Marine Shell

It is known that the Oxus civilization in the Bronze Age, with its unique material culture, interacted with a number of cultural countries: the Indian Valley, Iran, Mesopotamia, Elam and other regions. As a result of these relationships, interactions and interactions are formed. Archaeologists turn to archaeological and written sources to shed light on the historiography of this period. This research is devoted to the history of cultural relations between the Oxus civilization and the countries of the Arabian Gulf in the Bronze Age. The article highlights cultural ties based on an analysis of stamp seals and unique artifacts.Key words: Dilmun, Magan, marine shell, Arabian Gulf, Bahrain, Mesopotamia, Harappa, Gonur, Afghanistan

scholarly journals Radiocarbon dating of the bronze age bone pins from Eurasian steppe

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Shishlina ◽  
Johan Plicht ◽  
Elya Zazovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
14C Dating ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The North ◽  
Eurasian Steppe ◽  
Culture Formation ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Bronze Age

AbstractBone catapult and hammer-headed pins played one of very specific roles in funerary offerings in the Bronze Age graves uncovered in the Eurasian Steppes and the North Caucasus. Scholars used different types of pins as key grave offerings for numerous chronological models. For the first time eight pins have been radiocarbon dated. 14C dating of bone pins identified the catapult type pin as the earliest one. They marked the period of the Yamnaya culture formation. Then Yamnaya population produced hammer-headed pins which became very popular in other cultural environments and spread very quickly across the Steppe and the Caucasus during 2900–2650 cal BC. But according to radiocarbon dating bone pins almost disappeared after 2600 cal BC.

scholarly journals The Interaction of Climate Change and Agency in the Collapse of Civilizations ca. 2300–2000 BC

Radiocarbon ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (04) ◽  
pp. S1-S16
Author(s):  
Malcolm H. Wiener
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Human History ◽  
Human Response ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Trading Networks ◽  
The Bronze Age

Human history has been marked by major episodes of climate change and human response, sometimes accompanied by independent innovations. In the Bronze Age, the sequencing of causes and reactions is dependent in part on dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating. This paper explores the interaction of a major, prolonged desiccation event between c. 2300 and 2000 BC and human agency including migrations, the displacement of trading networks, warfare, the appearance of weapons made of bronze, and the first appearance of sailing vessels in the Mediterranean.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document