‘Foreign’ markers in Černotín type hoards. A contribution to the discussion of the phenomenon of “culture shock” in Central Europe in the Late Bronze Age

Author(s):  
Jan Chochorowski
The Holocene ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Kołodyńska-Gawrysiak

Past Pleistocene topography of the loess uplands is rich in local sinks (closed depressions (CDs)) influencing sediment fluxes. Soil-sediment sequences from CDs constituting geoarchives where landscape changes under natural and anthropogenic conditions have been recorded. Pedo-sedimentary archives from 10 CDs in the Polish loess belt and human settlements were analysed. Phases of the Holocene evolution of the CDs were correlated with landscape dynamics in loess areas in Poland and Central Europe. Phases of infilling of CDs occurring (2) from the late Boreal/early Atlantic Period until the (middle) late Bronze Age/early Iron Age and (4) since the early Middle Ages until today were documented. These were phases of long-term soil erosion and colluviation corresponding to the increasing agricultural land use of Polish loess uplands. Phases of soil formation related to geomorphic stabilization of CDs occurred (1) from the late Vistulian until the late Boreal/early Atlantic Period and (3) from the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age until the early/high Middle Ages. These were phases of decreased soil erosion and landform conservation in a considerable part of Poland’s loess areas. Pedo-sedimentary archives from the CDs have recorded soil erosion strongly related with human-induced land-use changes. The mean soil erosion rate in the catchment of CDs was 0.33 t·ha−1·yr−1 during prehistory and 4.0 t·ha−1·yr−1 during the last approximately 1000 years. Phases of CD evolution are representative for the main phases of sediment and landscape dynamics in Poland’s loess areas recorded in various archives, and are not synchronous with some of these phases in Central Europe.


1976 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Britnell

SummaryA group of antler cheekpieces are described and illustrated which provide a small but significant contribution to the evidence of horsemanship in the later Bronze Age in the British Isles. Although independent dating evidence is meagre, they form a coherent stylistic and functional type which has parallels in the late Urnfield period in Central Europe. An attempt is made to reconstruct other elements of the bridle, and they are compared with a number of bronze cheekpieces which show some affinity.


1965 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Snodgrass

This paper is concerned with the nature of the relationship that existed between Central Europe and the Aegean area in the early 1st millennium B.C. Interest in Aegean-continental connections has been strong for a considerable time, but has been intensified, particularly from the continental standpoint, in the past fifteen years. Although some of these studies have been concerned with the contacts between 2nd millennium (Late Bronze Age) Greece and the north, others have examined in detail the evidence for the links between the Urnfield culture and Greece during the 10th, 9th and 8th centuries. For Greece, this is an utterly different period from the preceding one; the evidence for foreign contacts suddenly becomes scarce and that for military disasters is virtually non-existent. Yet some scholars have reached very similar conclusions, involving the transmission of objects and of the people who carried them from Central Europe into Greece, for this period as for the preceding Late Bronze Age. Such arguments have a recent exponent in Professor W. Kimmig, whose paper Seevölkerbewegung und Urnenfelderkultur ranges over the whole period from about 1200 to 700. His list of objects and practices in this period, which he considers to have been donated by the Danube-Balkan peoples to the Mediterranean world, is comprehensive indeed: it would include bronze shields and body armour, the equipment of Goliath, the knobbed ware of Troy VII B, the practice of cremation in the Iron Age, the ritual spoliation of weapons in graves, iron swords, spears, knives, bits, lugged axes, spits, fire-dogs, bronze personal objects generally, clay idols, the maeander pattern and the swans of Apollo.


Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (329) ◽  
pp. 819-838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandru Szentmiklosi ◽  
Bernhard S. Heeb ◽  
Julia Heeb ◽  
Anthony Harding ◽  
Rüdiger Krause ◽  
...  

A massive Late Bronze Age fortified settlement in Central Europe has been the subject of a new and exemplary investigation by excavation and site survey. This prehistoric enclosure, nearly 6km across, had a complex development, dense occupation and signs of destruction by fire. It can hardly be other than a capital city playing a role in the determinant struggles of its day — weighty and far reaching events of the European continent now being chronicled by archaeology.


Author(s):  
Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

The Late Bronze Age Urnfield Period in Central Europe (BA D, Ha A/B, c.1300 to 800 BC) is characterized by the dominance of cremation as a burial rite. The simple appearance of urn burials give an impression of simplicity, but they are the endpoint of a chain of actions and practices that constitute the funerary ritual, many of which may not be simple at all, but include a large number of people and resources. The washing, dressing, and furnishing of the body as it is laid out prior to cremation leave no traces. The funerary pyre, as spectacular as it may have looked, smelled, and felt during the cremation, preserves only under exceptional circumstances. The rituals and feasts associated with selecting the cremated remains from the funerary pyre and placing them in a suitable organic container or a ceramic urn prior to their deposition do not leave much evidence. The large-scale spread of cremation during the Late Bronze Age has traditionally been explained by the movements of peoples (e.g. Kraft 1926; Childe 1950), or a change in religious beliefs (e.g. Alexander 1979). More recently, a change in how the human body is ontologically understood and how it has to be transformed after death is seen as the more likely underlying cause (Harris et al. 2013; Robb and Harris 2013; Sørensen and Rebay-Salisbury in prep.), although a simple and single reason is rarely the driver of such pan-European developments. This chapter will be concerned with another transition, the change from cremation back to inhumation, several hundred years later during the Early Iron Age, and investigates its background and causes. In Central Europe, cremation is given up as the solitary funerary rite, and a range of different options, including inhumations in burial mounds, bi-ritual cemeteries, and new forms of cremation graves emerge. This change happens at a different pace in the various areas of the Hallstatt Culture and adjacent areas, which will be surveyed here. Despite doubts about the validity of the term ‘Hallstatt Culture’ as a cultural entity (e.g. Müller-Scheeßel 2000), it remains a convenient shorthand to the Early Iron Age in Central Europe, c.800–450 BC, in eastern France, southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and parts of northern Italy.


1990 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 329-343
Author(s):  
Marianne Görman

By means of modern archeological research it is today possible to gain much information even from non-written material, This paper covers the late bronze age and early iron age, ca. 1000 B.C. —O. It is based on material from Denmark, the Southwest of Sweden, and the Southeast of Norway. This region formed a cultural unity since the sea bound the area together. Our main sources of knowledge of Nordic religion during this time span are votive offerings and rock-carvings. During the bronze age and early iron age the Nordic peasant population had intensive contacts with the Southeastern and Centralparts of Europe. A great quantity of imported objects bear evidence of widespread connections. The inhabitants of the Nordic area not only brought home objects, but also ideas and religious conceptions. This is clearly reflected in the iconography. The cultures with which connections were upheld and from which ideas were introduced were those of Hallstatt and La Tène. They were both Celtic iron age cultures prospering in Central Europe at the same time as the late bronze age and early iron age in the Nordic area. This means that the new symbols in the Nordic area come from a Celtic environment. Consequently, Celtic religion such as it may be found in the pre-Roman period, can clarify the meaning of the conceptions, linked with these symbols.


Author(s):  
Dennis Harding

Hillforts are conventionally regarded as a phenomenon of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age of temperate Europe, with some sites being constructed or reoccupied in the post-Roman Iron Age or Early Medieval period. In broad chronological terms, 1000 BC to AD 1000 covers the two millennia of the ‘long Iron Age’ in which hillforts are a major field monument. The concept of enclosure nevertheless has a much longer ancestry, from at least the earliest Neolithic. Some enclosed sites of the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age in central Europe may be located on elevated ground or on promontories and may involve palisades or earthworks around their perimeter, just like Iron Age hillforts, so that the question arises whether these should not qualify as hillforts. To argue that their topographic location, or the scale or layout of enclosure, is not indicative of a primarily defensive purpose will not do, because some Iron Age hillforts seem to be compromised on these criteria. Nevertheless, by not entirely rational convention, hillforts as a regular class of field monuments are generally recognized from the Late Bronze Age, when their appearance in central and western Europe coincides with an intensification in the quantity and number of types of weaponry and defensive armour associated especially with the Urnfield culture. There are a number of hillfort sites in Britain where there is underlying evidence of Neolithic occupation, including occupation that was originally defined by enclosing works of earth or stone. There is no question of claiming continuity of occupation from Neolithic to Iron Age, but since the earlier earthworks would almost certainly still have been visible—at Maiden Castle, for instance, where the earliest Iron Age hillfort follows almost exactly the extent of the Neolithic enclosure—there is every reason to suppose that the existence of earthworks that would have been recognized as ancient, even if they were not formally venerated as places of ancestors, may have encouraged choice of these sites. An alternative interpretation would be simply to assume that the same advantages of location that commended themselves to Neolithic communities coincidentally satisfied equally the requirements of their Iron Age successors. But in that event the earlier monuments, like the Hambledon Hill long barrow or the Foel Trigarn cairns (Plate 14b), would hardly have been accorded the respect by later occupants that their condition indicates they were.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-71
Author(s):  
Eszter Fejér ◽  

The paper presents a Late Bronze Age bronze tanged dagger with a ring-shaped handle tip, which was discovered during an excavation in Süttő-Sáncföldek (Hungary) in 2018. The intact object was found inside a large feature of unknown function together with some other bronze items and hundreds of ceramic, stone and bone fragments. The material can be dated to the period of the Late Tumulus and Early Urnfield cultures. Similar daggers from Europe have been collected and their typology has been revisited in the article. They are known mainly from Moravia and the Carpathian Basin. In particular, the innovation of adding a ring at the end of the daggers has been investigated, together with the distribution of other artifacts sharing the same feature. It has been pointed out that although the tanged daggers with ring were produced in separate workshops, they reflect on an intensive cultural interaction between the Eastern Alps, Moravia and the inner territories of the Carpathian Basin during the Br D and Ha A1 periods.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Masalha

The Concept of Palestine is deeply rooted in the collective consciousness of the indigenous people of Palestine and the multicultural ancient past. The name Palestine is the most commonly used from the Late Bronze Age (from 1300 BCE) onwards. The name Palestine is evident in countless histories, inscriptions, maps and coins from antiquity, medieval and modern Palestine. From the Late Bronze Age onwards the names used for the region, such as Djahi, Retenu and Cana'an, all gave way to the name Palestine. Throughout Classical Antiquity the name Palestine remained the most common and during the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods the concept and political geography of Palestine acquired official administrative status. This article sets out to explain the historical origins of the concept of Palestine and the evolving political geography of the country. It will seek to demonstrate how the name ‘Palestine’ (rather than the term ‘Cana'an’) was most commonly and formally used in ancient history. It argues that the legend of the ‘Israelites’ conquest of Cana'an’ and other master narratives of the Bible evolved across many centuries; they are myth-narratives, not evidence-based accurate history. It further argues that academic and school history curricula should be based on historical facts/empirical evidence/archaeological discoveries – not on master narratives or Old Testament sacred-history and religio-ideological constructs.


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