scholarly journals RADIOCARBON DATING THE 3RD MILLENNIUM BC IN THE CENTRAL BALKANS: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE EARLY BRONZE AGE SEQUENCE

Radiocarbon ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 1163-1191
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulatović ◽  
Maja Gori ◽  
Marc Vander Linden
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Pannonian Basin ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
Age Sequence ◽  
Funerary Treatment

ABSTRACTLong-standing archaeological narratives suggest that the 3rd millennium cal BC is a key period in Mediterranean and European prehistory, characterized by the development of extensive interaction networks. In the Balkans for instance, the identification of such interactions relies solely upon typological arguments associated with conflicting local terminologies. Through a combination of 25 new radiocarbon (14C) dates and re-examination of the existing documentation, this paper defines the absolute chronology for groups which were previously only broadly framed into the 3rd millennium BC central Balkans (modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia). These absolute dates allow us to establish with greater clarity the chronological relations between different cultural groups that represent the main cultural units of the central Balkans sequence for the 3rd millennium cal BC: Coţofeni-Kostolac, Bubanj-Hum II, Belotić-Bela Crkva, Armenochori, and Bubanj Hum III. When comparing together the chronologies for material culture, funerary treatment of the body, and funerary architecture, there are no easily discernible patterns. We observe instead a complex mix of traits criss-crossing over a wide area encompassing the Pannonian basin, the central Balkans and the Greek peninsula.

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.

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.

Landscapes of the body: Burials of the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Louise Stig Sørensen ◽  
Katharina Rebay-Salisbury
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Perceptions And Attitudes ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Prehistoric Landscapes ◽  
Body Practices

Middle Bronze Age Hungary provides an opportunity to investigate prehistoric ‘landscapes of the body’, as perceptions and attitudes to the body affect burial practices and other body practices, including the wearing of dress and the use of pottery. This article explores the cultural diversity expressed by the roughly contemporary and neighbouring groups of the Encrusted Ware, Vatya, and Füzesabony Cultures. Amongst others, differences between the three groups are articulated through their burials (scattered cremations, urn burials as well as crouched inhumations) and the diverse use of material culture. At the same time, despite formal differences in the burials, the analysis shows that cremations and inhumations in this area share a number of characteristics, and it is the other practices through which the dead body is manipulated that are the primary means of expressing regional differences. Simultaneously, whilst being a means of formulating understandings of the deceased body, burial practices are also tied into subtle differences in lifestyles, daily routines and regional subsistence strategies, as the landscapes of the living provide metaphors, know-how and practical understanding.

Revision of the Age of Construction Phases of a Mound Dated to the Late Copper–Early Bronze Age in Eastern Hungary Relying on14C-Based Chronologies

Radiocarbon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1403-1412
Author(s):  
Gábor Szilágyi ◽  
Pál Sümegi ◽  
Sándor Gulyás ◽  
Dávid Molnár
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Susceptibility ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Burial Mound ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Geochemical Analyses

ABSTRACTEcse Mound is a burial mound in the Hortobágy region of eastern Hungary. Built by prehistoric nomadic peoples from the east, it now stands on the border between two modern settlements. The construction of the mound was assumed to be related to representatives of the Pit Grave Culture populating the area between the Late Copper and Bronze Ages. This theory considered similarities in shape, orientation, and stratigraphy of this mound with other absolute-dated ones in the Hortobágy region alone. The mound comprises two construction layers as indicated by magnetic susceptibility and on-site stratigraphic observations. According to detailed sedimentological, geochemical analyses of samples taken from the bedrock, artificial stratigraphic horizons, and the overlying topsoil, there is a marked similarity between the soil forming the body of the mound in both artificial horizons and the underlying bedrock soil. In contrast the pedological, geological character of the modern topsoil is utterly different. According to our dating results, the uppermost stratigraphic horizon is coeval with the absolute-dated mounds in the region, assigning it to the period of the Pit Grave Culture. However, the lower anthropological horizon is older and dates to between the Early and Late Copper Ages.

Changing Patterns in Objects and in Perception

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter S. Wells
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Over Time

The preceding chapters examined three categories of objects—pottery, fibulae, and swords with their scabbards—and two ways of manipulating objects—arrangements in graves and performances involving human bodily action with objects—over the two-thousand-year period from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the prehistoric Iron Age. The focus has been on visual aspects of objects and the changes in their visual character over time. This chapter synthesizes the material laid out in chapters 5 through 10. It draws attention to the consistency of the patterns in the visual character of material culture in each of the three main periods of time considered in this book, and to the character of the changes that took place in the fifth century BC and in the second century BC.

Migration and ethnicity in prehistoric Cyprus: Technology ashabitus

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Frankel
Keyword(s):  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Technology And Economy ◽  
Culture Technology

During the third millennium cal BC, there were major changes in many aspects of Cypriot material culture, technology and economy which characterize the division between the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age on the island. Many innovations can be traced to Anatolian antecedents. These include a very wide array of domestic as well as agricultural and industrial technologies. Their nature and range make it possible to argue strongly for the movement of people to the island, rather than for other mechanisms of technology transfer and culture change. This identification of an intrusive group, with distinctive patterns of behaviour (habitus), opens up questions of prehistoric ethnicity, and the processes by which the initial maintenance of different lifeways by indigenous and settler communities eventually gave way to a common cultural system.

Regional and Local Schools of Metalwork in Early Bronze Age Anatolia Part I

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 59-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jak Yakar
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Early Bronze Age ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Past ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Geological Surveys ◽  
Ancient Metallurgy ◽  
Work Done

The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the development of ancient metallurgy in the Near East, and in particular, in Anatolia. Most of the work done in this field however, with the exception of analytical studies conducted in laboratories and geological surveys, hardly goes beyond the re-examination of known historical, archaeological and geological data. The results, as can be expected, are derived mainly from the re-evaluation of previous conclusions on the development of early technologies and the emergence of major production centres in the Aegean, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean.Until a few years ago the origins of southeast European metallurgy were thought to be in northwest Anatolia. This traditional thesis of diffusion from the Troad to the Aegean and into the Balkans had rested on the chronological argument that the Chalcolithic cultures of Old Europe were contemporary with the EB I in Anatolia and the Aegean. The “diffusionists” lost substantial support for their theory when the chronological priority of Old European cultures based on tree-ring calibrated C-14 dates over the more traditional Near Eastern chronology was generally accepted.

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