This paper presents the first comprehensive pan-Iberian overview of one of the major episodes of cultural change in later prehistoric Iberia, the Copper to Bronze Age transition (c. 2400-1900 BC), ...and assesses its relationship to the 4.2 ky BP climatic event. It synthesizes available cultural, demographic and palaeoenvironmental evidence by region between 3300 and 1500 BC. Important variation can be discerned through this comparison. The demographic signatures of some regions, such as the Meseta and the southwest, diminished in the Early Bronze Age, while other regions, such as the southeast, display clear growth in human activities; the Atlantic areas in northern Iberia barely experienced any changes. This paper opens the door to climatic fluctuations and inter-regional demie movements within the Peninsula as plausible contributing drivers of particular historical dynamics.
Lost-wax casting is a metalworking technique that has long been regarded as an innovation imported from the eastern Mediterranean and only widely used in Western Europe since the Late Bronze Age. We ...now have evidence that this technique was in fact largely in use from the Middle Bronze Age onwards for the production of copper alloy adornments in the Atlantic area. Along with palstaves, these objects are the most abundant in Atlantic hoards from the 15th to the 13th centuries BC. Thanks to detailed morphological and technological study, combined with an experimental approach and analysis of their elemental composition, we can propose new chaînes opératoires for the manufacture of massive annular bracelets with geometric decoration.
•Lost-wax casting highly mastered as early as the Atlantic Middle Bronze Age.•Western Europe as an innovative area during the 2nd millennium BC.•Unsatisfactory theoretical chaînes opératoires, proposal of new technical processes.•Individually produced adornments using a standardised approach to wax preparation.
The globalizing connections that defined the European Bronze Age in the second millennium BC either ended or abruptly changed in the decades around 1200 BC. The impact of climate change at 3.2 ka on ...such social changes has been debated for the eastern Mediterranean. This paper extends this enquiry of shifting human–climate relationships during the later Bronze Age into Europe for the first time. There, climate data indicate that significant shifts occurred in hydroclimate and temperatures in various parts of Europe ca. 3.2 ka. To test potential societal impacts, I review and evaluate archaeological data from Ireland and Britain, the Nordic area, the Carpathian Basin, the Po Valley, and the Aegean region in parallel with paleoclimate data. I argue that 1200 BC was a turning point for many societies in Europe and that climate played an important role in shaping this. Although long-term trajectories of sociopolitical systems were paramount in defining how and when specific societies changed, climate change acted as a force multiplier that undermined societal resilience in the wake of initial social disjunctures. In this way, it shaped, often detrimentally, the reconfiguration of societies. By impacting more directly on social venues of political recovery, realignment, and reorganization, climate forces accentuate societal crises and, in some areas, sustained them to the point of sociopolitical collapse.
Summary
This study deals with the results of the 2023 fieldwork at the extramural cemetery of the Late Bronze Age harbour city of Hala Sultan Tekke. One of the three excavated tombs in 2023 was the ...undisturbed Chamber Tomb XX, which is dated around 1300 BC. It contained a riveted bronze mirror, a rare type in Cyprus at that time, which is part of a mortuary context of four individuals out of a total of 17 individuals and 264 complete objects, many of them imported from a vast area, which includes the Mycenaean, Minoan, Egyptian and Levantine cultures. The current paper presents this mirror and associated contexts. As regards the provenance of the mirror, the Aegean is suggested as the area of manufacture, and more precisely Crete, suggesting potential evidence of direct contact between individuals from Crete and Hala Sultan Tekke.
•Shang dynasty elite increasingly managed dog raising to provide animals for ritual.•Carbon isotopes show Bronze Age China dogs were fed a diet centered on millet.•Comparison of 95 dogs from 15 sites ...shows shift to specialized dog provisioning.•Isotopic data can enhance understanding of ancient human-animal relationships.
Although dogs played multifaceted roles during the early stages of urbanization in China’s Central Plains, research remains limited concerning the management of dogs, the dynamics of human–dog relationships, and dogs’ entanglements with the political economy, ritual, and daily life. Here, we compare stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data from 95 dogs and associated human skeletons from 15 Late Neolithic – Bronze Age sites. Results show two distinct dietary patterns in dogs. Early sites (Xinzhai-Erlitou period, 1900–1520 BCE) show more variability in dog diets, indicative of looser approaches to dog management. Later sites (Late Shang-Western Zhou periods, 1320–770 BCE) show a widespread, homogeneous diet among dogs characterized by higher consumption of C4 millet (greater than in humans’ diets), suggesting the possibility of the emergence of specialized, broadly shared dog management practices linked to increased ritual use of dogs. This study also underscores the complexity of management practices, which would have been influenced by site-specific conditions, including environment and available resources, the site’s position in hierarchical settlement networks, and the varying roles of the dogs. Importantly, this study demonstrates that the comparison of isotopic data from broad temporal and spatial contexts can shed light on animal management practices in early urban economic systems and political economies.
Maritime Mode of Production Ling, Johan; Earle, Timothy; Kristiansen, Kristian ...
Current anthropology,
10/2018, Letnik:
59, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
As exemplified by Viking and Bronze Age societies in northern Europe, we model the political dynamics of raiding, trading, and slaving as a maritime mode of production. It includes political ...strategies to control trade by owning boats and financing excursions, thus permitting chiefs to channel wealth flows and establish decentralized, expansive political networks. Such political institutions often form at the edges of world systems, where chieftains support mobile warriors who were instrumental in seizing and protecting wealth. Particular properties of the maritime mode of production as relevant to Scandinavia are the fusion of agropastoral and maritime modes of production. To exemplify these two sectors, we use the Thy and Tanum cases in which we have been involved in long-term archaeological research. The historic Viking society provides specificity to model the ancestral political society of Bronze Age Scandinavia. Our model helps understand an alternative path to institutional formation in decentralized chiefdoms with low population densities, mobile warriors, and long-distance trading and raiding in valuables, weapons, and slaves.
We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost 400,000 polymorphisms. Enrichment of these ...positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of Western and Far Eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, ∼8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in Germany, Hungary and Spain, different from indigenous hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ∼24,000-year-old Siberian. By ∼6,000-5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ∼4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ∼75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ∼3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.
Archaeological research is currently redefining how large-scale changes occurred in prehistoric times. In addition to the long-standing theoretical dichotomy between ‘cultural transmission’ and ...‘demic diffusion’, many alternative models borrowed from sociology can be used to explain the spread of innovations. The emergence of urnfields in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe is certainly one of these large-scale phenomena; its wide distribution has been traditionally emphasized by the use of the general term
Urnenfelderkultur/zeit
(starting around 1300 BC)
.
Thanks to new evidence, we are now able to draw a more comprehensive picture, which shows a variety of regional responses to the introduction of the new funerary custom. The earliest ‘urnfields’ can be identified in central Hungary, among the tell communities of the late Nagyrév/Vatya Culture, around 2000 BC. From the nineteenth century BC onwards, the urnfield model is documented among communities in northeastern Serbia, south of the Iron Gates. During the subsequent collapse of the tell system, around 1500 BC, the urnfield model spread into some of the neighbouring regions. The adoption, however, appears more radical in the southern Po plain, as well as in the Sava/Drava/Lower Tisza plains, while in Lower Austria, Transdanubia and in the northern Po plain it seems more gradual and appears to have been subject to processes of syncretism/hybridization with traditional rites. Other areas seem to reject the novelty, at least until the latest phases of the Bronze Age. We argue that a possible explanation for these varied responses relates to the degree of interconnectedness and homophily among communities in the previous phases.
This paper examines depictions of male nudity, flaccid penises and phalli (erect penises) attested in the representations of boys, defeated warriors and figures of authority in late Bronze Age Aegean ...(ca. 1700–1050 BCE). It is argued that, similarly to ancient Egyptian iconography, the flaccid penis, as a sign of weakness and the lack of developed masculinity, was contrasted to the phallus, as a sign of masculine strength and sexual virility. Moreover, the paper argues that there was a gradual change in the depictions of male nudity around 1420/1400 BCE. In the period between ca. 1700–1420/1400 BCE, male nudity was restricted to representations of boys and defeated warriors. After ca. 1420/1400 BCE, most depictions of male nudity represented figures of power and authority with erect penises/phalli. We believe that the depictions of male nudity in combination with phalli were used to accentuate masculinity of such figures.
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