Textual evidence for Aegean Late Bronze Age ritual processions

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 151-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jörg Weilhartner
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Textual Information ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Religious Festival ◽  
Aegean Bronze Age ◽  
Linear B

In the Aegean Late Bronze Age there exists rich iconographic evidence for the ritual practice of processions, demonstrating the practice’s importance within Mycenaean official cult. In contrast, due to the nature of the Linear B documents which are the records of the palace administration referring to particular aspects of the palace economy, hardly any explicit textual information about processions in Mycenaean times is available. Among the rare exceptions is the outstanding tablet Tn 316 from Pylos whose lexical items seem to point to a ritual of this kind. Moreover, the term te-o-po-ri-ja/*θεοφóρια (“the carrying of the gods”) is generally understood as the name of a religious festival in which a (terracotta) cult figurine representing a deity was carried in a procession. Some additional textual evidence on processions may be provided by terms ending in -po-ro/-φóρος. Along these lines, this paper argues that the term to-pa-po-ro may denote men whose description reflects activities they have performed in connection with processions. Similarly, it is suggested that the individuals who are described as ka-ra-wi-po-ro (“female key-bearer”) and di-pte-ra-po-ro (whose traditional interpretation as “wearer of hide” is disputed) may act as carriers in the course of a procession. The textual and linguistic analysis of these words is combined with iconographic evidence of the Aegean Bronze Age.

Late bronze age Greece and the Balkans: a review of the present picture

1994 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 217-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bouzek
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The North ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Aegean Bronze Age

This article brings a reassessment of the survey of relations published in the author's 1985 book. The discrepancy in chronology seems now to be much nearer to a solution: more material evidence is known from the frontier area and from the Balkans in general, thus enlarging the documentation of the extent of Mycenaean influence in the north, and also clarifying the situation in Late Mycenaean times, when various northern influences were felt in Mycenaean Greece. The crisis at the end of the Aegean Bronze Age was connected with an influx of new populations, though substantial local traditions were also retained. The joint efforts of tradition and innovation prepared the further development of Greece.

scholarly journals ‘LITERACIES’ – 60+ YEARS OF ‘READING’ THE AEGEAN LATE BRONZE AGE

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
JOHN BENNET
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Linear B

Abstract Inaugurated in January 1954, the ‘Minoan Linear B Seminar’ explored the information emerging from Ventris' decipherment of Linear B in 1952. The new academic discipline of ‘Mycenaean Studies’ rapidly moved on from questions influenced by the field's ‘pre-history’ dating back a further 60 years to Evans' first publication on Aegean scripts. Intense philological and epigraphical research in the 1950s and 1960s laid the foundations for comparative study of the Mycenaean palatial societies, while a greater appreciation of archaeological data and contexts moved interpretation on in the 1980s and 1990s. Building on this tradition, Mycenaean studies currently needs more documents to sustain a ‘critical mass’ of researchers and, ideally, a new Ventris to unlock the Aegean scripts that remain undeciphered.

scholarly journals The deposition of bronzes at Swiss lakeshore settlements: new investigations

Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (330) ◽  
pp. 1298-1311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktoria Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Shallow Water ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Special Places

The famous lakeside sites of Switzerland have long been known for their pile dwellings and their massive quantities of Late Bronze Age metalwork. On the most recent excavations, the bronzes have been mapped in situ, allowing comparison with assemblages from dryland sites and rivers, as well as providing a context for the nineteenth-century collections. The pile dwellings emerge as special places where depositions of selected bronze objects in groups or as single discards, comparable to those usually found in dryland deposits or in rivers, accumulated in the shallow water during a unique 250-year spell of ritual practice.

scholarly journals Orthographic variation as evidence for the development of the Linear B writing system

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-197
Author(s):  
Anna P. Judson
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Orthographic Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diachronic Development ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Linear B

Abstract This paper investigates the issue of orthographic variation in the Linear B writing system in order to explore ways in which studying a writing system’s orthographic conventions may shed light on the history of its development. Linear B was used in the palatial/administrative centres of Late Bronze Age Greece and Crete (c.1400–1200 B.C.E.) and records an early Greek dialect known as ‘Mycenaean’. The writing system’s structure and orthographic conventions permit flexibility in the spelling of particular phonological sequences: this paper discusses the varying orthographic representation of such sequences and shows that synchronic variation is common or even the norm in many cases. Investigating the factors which underlie this variation demonstrates the potential for a study of synchronic variation to illuminate a writing system’s diachronic development; it also underlines the importance of analysing the ways in which writers actually choose to use writing systems in order to fully understand their development.

Troy in Regional and International Context

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jablonka
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
International Context ◽  
Strategic Position ◽  
Aegean Bronze Age

This article presents an overview of Troy's place in the larger Aegean/Anatolian world, highlighting the continued important role this settlement played over three millennia. From the point of view of archaeology, Hisarlık–Troy ranks high among important sites of the Anatolian and Aegean Bronze Age. Both its Early and Late Bronze Age architecture, the treasures as well as ceramics and other finds reflecting long-distance contacts, the size of the site, its layout comprising a fortified stronghold surrounded by a larger, outlying settlement, and its strategic position clearly show that Troy served as the center of the surrounding region.

Late Bronze Age Writing-Boards and their Uses: textual evidence from Anatolia and Syria

1991 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorit Symington
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Subject

It has been known from textual sources for some time that besides clay tablets, the traditional writing material in the Ancient Near East, wooden writing-boards were also used by the scribes.M. San Nicolò first drew attention to the fact that writing-boards were widely employed in temple and palace administration in Mesopotamia in the first millennium B.C. and the textual evidence gathered by him was soon to be confirmed archaeologically by the discovery of several such writing-boards at Nimrud. Equally, the existence of wooden writing material in Hittite context has long been established, but no example has ever been found. It is generally thought that private and economic records which are almost totally lacking in the archives at Boǧazköy must have been written on perishable material.The elusive nature of wooden writing-boards manifests itself not only archaeologically by the unlikelihood of their survival but also by the fact that, as a rule, they deserved little mention in the cuneiform texts. Consequently, the quantity of wooden writing material that may have been in use and did not survive is impossible to gauge. Similarly, it would be unwarranted to deduce that centres whose archives have not contributed to the subject, were unfamiliar with writing on wood.

Mycenaean Pottery in the Middle East: Notes on Finds since 1951

1967 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 107-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Hankey
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Absolute Dating ◽  
Aegean Bronze Age

In his basic and indispensable study Mycenaean Pottery from the Levant, published in 1951, Stubbings pointed out that it is only by cross-contacts with the civilizations of the Middle East that any absolute dating for the Aegean Bronze Age can be reached. It is, therefore, rather startling to find that since the diffusion of the Furumark concept and his monumental typology, Mycenaean pottery is itself often used as the cultural cross-contact to date levels at sites in the Middle East where the local pottery has, as yet, a less accessible typology, and where Egyptian dated finds or seals from Syria and Mesopotamia, however abundant, often have to be mistrusted for dating, as they provide too wide a margin in time.The present attempt to locate and assess some of the recent Mycenaean contacts is unevenly representative, since much of the material from new excavations was not available for study, and I had to leave the Middle East before I had finished my notes. These were made at intervals between June 1962 and April 1966, when I visited most of the Late Bronze Age sites in the Antioch district of Turkey, in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan and saw the Mycenaean pottery in the museums. I did not see recent finds from Egypt or Israel.

scholarly journals The Vedic Agni and Scandinavian Fire Rituals: A Possible Connection

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-97
Author(s):  
Anders Kaliff
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Archaeological Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

To use ethnographic analogies is not the same as picking up ready-made interpretations from one cultural context and importing them into another. On the contrary, analogies are a powerful and necessary tool for any archaeological interpretation. If we as scientists are not aware of this we will most certainly use our own time and culture as an unconscious analogy: it is not possible to make interpretations, or even to think, without references outside oneself, and such references are nothing but analogies. l will put forward the hypothesis that the Late Bronze Age society of Scandinavia had rituals resembling, and probably related to, the Vedic tradition. As in Vedic tradition, fire sacrifice seems to have been an important ritual practice in Scandinavia. The Vedic fire altars are built as a symbolic microcosmos, repeating the creation of the world, and the fire (Agni) is seen as a link between earth and the heavenly fire —the sun.

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