In 1864, a large metal hoard of copper, bronze and silver objects was discovered at Pile in the southern Swedish region of Scania. The hoard has been dated to the onset of the rich Nordic Bronze Age, ...and emerges as the earliest, finest and one of the largest of the Nordic sacrificial deposits of metalwork in or near water. The Metal Hoard from Pile in Scania, Sweden provides the first detailed documentation, scientific examination and historical interpretation of the assemblage. Around 2000 BCE the site of Pile was networked with places near and far in a manner that boosted the political economy of Southern Scandinavia, adding to an atmosphere of tensions and charge - and it made history. The chapters unfold as a 'history from beneath' beginning with place, Things and time and concluding with metals and the worlds that intersected in Pile at the threshold of the long Bronze Age.
During the first season of excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ, identified with biblical Abel Beth Maacah, a fused clump of silver items inside a small pottery jug was found in a Late Bronze IIB ...context. This article presents the context and proposed date of the hoard, a description of its contents, chemical and isotope analyses and suggested provenance of the silver, as well as the significance of the find in the broader regional, chronological and cultural context.
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More than quarter of a century ago Richard Bradley published The Passage of Arms. It was conceived as An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive Deposits, but, as the author ...concedes, these terms were too narrrowly focused for the complex subject of deliberate deposition and the period covered too short. A Geography of Offerings has been written to provoke a reaction from archaeologists and has two main aims. The first is to move this kind of archaeology away from the minute study of ancient objects to a more ambitious analysis of ancient places and landscapes. The second is to recognise that problems of interpretation are not restricted to the pre-Roman period. Mesolithic finds have a place in this discussion, and so do those of the 1st millennium AD. Archaeologists studying individual periods confront with similar problems and the same debates are repeated within separate groups of scholars – but they arrive at different conclusions. Here, the author presents a review that brings these discussions together and extends across the entire sequence. Rather than offer a comprehensive survey, this is an extended essay about the strengths and weaknesses of current thinking regarding specialised deposits, which encompass both sacrificial deposits characterised by large quantities of animal and human bones and other collections which are dominated by finds of stone or metal artefacts. It considers current approaches and theory, the histories of individual artefacts and the landscape and physical context of the of places where they were deposited, the character of materials, the importance of animism and the character of ancient cosmologies.
Die Reihe Topoi. Berliner Studien der Alten Welt versammelt Beiträge aus allen altertumswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen, von der Ur- und Frühgeschichte über die Klassische Archäologie bis zur antiken ...Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie. Einen Schwerpunkt bilden Monographien und Sammelbände, in denen die Forschungsergebnisse des Exzellenzclusters Topoi vorgestellt werden. Weitere Schwerpunkte sind in Planung.
The essays in this volume, which are conducted across a broad geographical range, reveal the great potentialof studying Bronze Age hoard sites. This volume provides a glimpse into current research on ...Bronze Age hoard sites between the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Basin while also opening up new perspectives on a phenomenon often regarded as fully researched. Svend Hansen, Daniel Neumann,Tilmann Vachta, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin.
