This article presents the Chadar burial mound near the village of Iskritsa, Stara Zagora district. It is situated on a hill to the northeast of the village in the Kashlaka locality. The mound ...measures 25.50 m in diameter and is 3.15 m high. During its excavation, several round pits were documented. They should probably be associated with specific funerary and post-funeral practices. A single grave was recorded at Chadar mound. The burial pit is dug into a grey layer comprising soil mixed with sand. The boundaries of the pit cannot be determined since the surrounding terrain has the same characteristics as the grave fill. The funeral rite was inhumation. The burial inventory consisted of a bronze lekane with two wishbone-shaped handles, an aryballoid bronze vessel and an iron spearhead. In addition to introducing this mound in a scientific context, the article pays particular attention to the bronze vessels found in the grave. An attempt is made to attribute them to a specific production centre or workshop using the comparable characteristics of well-known finds, including those fashioned from other materials. The analysis of the bronze vessels suggests a narrow chronological framework. The opinions of other scholars currently dealing with this issue have also been considered.
Although cast bronze vessels of the 6th–8th centuries are not recorded in particularly large numbers, their production and distribution provide a representative sample of the general economic trends ...and of the evolution of trade networks in the post-Roman Mediterranean. The geographical dissemination of these objects shows that at the turn of the 6th century, the northern Adriatic region became the main gateway of ‘eastern-style’ vessels into Central Europe and the Western Mediterranean. The region was thus replacing the Rome area as the main Western hub for redistributing this type of object. From the northern Adriatic area, several types of vessels were distributed both over land along the Po and Rhine valleys and through maritime routes connecting the Adriatic with Carthage and the Spanish Levant. The intrinsic features and the depositional contexts of the post-Roman cast bronze vessels suggest that they were manufactured according to different quality standards, which targeted different social milieus. Furthermore, mapping the distribution of the different quality standards reveals that each of them might have been distributed by different networks of merchants and unveils the impact of transportation costs on the final price of these products.
Archaeologists have long looked to Homeric epic, which describes the collection of heroes’ ashes in metal vessels for interment, as a comparison to high-status burials found in the Greek world and, ...beyond, in temperate Europe. Rarely, however, has the phenomenon of aristocratic metal-urn cremation burials across Bronze and Iron Age Europe and the Mediterranean been analysed as a single phenomenon. The author presents a continental-scale study based on a corpus of nearly 600 burials, identifying chronological and geographical patterns. The results emphasise how this elite funerary custom drew on and extended a set of shared aristocratic values and practices across Europe and the Mediterranean in the first millennium BC.
During the 6th and 7th c. CE, Carthago Spartaria (modern Cartagena) became one of the most important cities in the Byzantine province of Spania. Recent archaeological excavations at Cerro del ...Molinete have significantly increased our knowledge of the ancient city, enabling the exploration of an early Byzantine neighborhood built over the Roman Forum district. A cast bronze ewer of type Werner A2 was found in a pit dug over the temple that presided over the Forum. The associated materials, mainly pottery and glass vessels, are compatible with a deposition between 580/90 and 650/60 CE. This assemblage improves our understanding of the trade networks interconnecting the Mediterranean basin during the 6th and 7th c. CE. In this context, we argue that the unknown production center of the A2 ewers was located in the northern Adriatic, probably in Ravenna.
The cemetery of Borova is situated in the region of Kolonja in south-east Albania. The cemeteryhad around 49 graves which contained rich inventories of pottery, jewelry , weapons, etc. The artifacts ...date the cemetery mainly in the late Iron Age, i.e., around 6th-5th centuries BC, and attest to intensive exchange of a part of the local productions with northern Greece. The typology of the tombs is closely associated to the princely graves of the Balkans as attested by the richness of the inventory.The discovery of a bronze olpe, two phiales and a bronze cylix demonstrates the presence of Greek Archaic and classical imports of bronze vases in the Illyrian territory. The geographical vicinity enabled an active trade in the region, probably between the pastoral societies which did not trade very valuable goods, as was the case of the tombs of Trebenishte and Novi Pazar, but more modest finds in bronze. These artifacts indicate an Iron Age society in transition to the Archaic and classical period, with the use of valuable bronze vases by the Illyrian chiefs as the first signs of their ‘Hellenization’.Keywords: bronze vessels, funerary, Iron Age, archaic period, Illyria.
Although cast bronze vessels of the 6th–8th centuries are not recorded in particularly large numbers, their production and distribution provide a representative sample of the general economic trends ...and of the evolution of trade networks in the post-Roman Mediterranean.
The geographical dissemination of these objects shows that at the turn of the 6th century, the northern Adriatic region became the main gateway of ‘eastern-style’ vessels into Central Europe and the Western Mediterranean. The region was thus replacing the Rome area as the main Western hub for redistributing this type of object. From the northern Adriatic area, several types of vessels were distributed both over land along the Po and Rhine valleys and through maritime routes connecting the Adriatic with Carthage and the Spanish Levant.
The intrinsic features and the depositional contexts of the post-Roman cast bronze vessels suggest that they were manufactured according to different quality standards, which targeted different social milieus. Furthermore, mapping the distribution of the different quality standards reveals that each of them might have been distributed by different networks of merchants and unveils the impact of transportation costs on the final price of these products.
Northern Anhui was an important region for diverse bronze culture convergence and extensive metal resource circulation in the Pre-Qin Period. In this paper, metallographic microstructure analysis, ...chemical composition analysis, and lead isotope ratio analysis were conducted on 12 samples of 6 Warring States Period (476–221 BCE) bronze vessels excavated from Chutai Cemetery M1, Fuyang, Anhui Province, revealing the integrated application of diversified manufacturing processes, such as casting, forging, cold working, and welding and multiple metal minerals. The analytical results showed that 2 Ding vessels (鼎) were made by casting, and 2 He vessels (盒) and 2 Dui vessels (敦) were made by forging followed by cold working. These two types of bronze vessels made by different manufacturing processes have significantly distinct alloy ratios and mineral sources, among which the Cu and Sn contents of the 2 cast bronze vessels are lower and the Pb content is higher, while the Cu and Sn contents of the 4 forged bronze vessels are higher and the Pb content is lower. The lead minerals of the two types of bronze vessels might come from Western Henan and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, respectively. In addition, the 3 pieces of solder used to weld bronze vessels were all made of pure Sn, their metal minerals should come from the densely distributed area of tin ore in Southern China, and Sn solders were mainly discovered in the Chu culture area during the Eastern Zhou Period.
The publication is dedicated to a bronze vessel found in a robbed burial of the second half of the 4th century BCE in the Burial-mound no. 1 of the Chastye Kurgany group on the outskirts of Voronezh, ...excavated by the Voronezh Scientific Archive Commission in 1910. A vessel with a handle attachment in form of a mask under the edge on the outside and a gorgoneion-medallion at the bottom inside is a patera with a handle lost in antiquity. Such pateras with similarly shaped edges of the bowl and handles ending in a ram's head are known after a very small number of finds of the second half of the 4th century BCE almost all of which come from Macedonia and Thrace. Given the fact that lion's paws are depicted on the sides of the neck of the person shown on the mask, there is every reason for its attribution as the head of Herakles. A similar iconography is typical for vessel attachments from Northern Greece. The treatment of hair strands, in particular symmetrical curls over the forehead (anastole / ἀναστολή), resembles the hairstyle in the portraits of Alexander the Great and imitations of them. Taking into account this observation, it is hardly possible to date the patera from Chastye kurgans earlier than the last quarter of the 4th century BCE. In the North Pontic region, bronze vessels of this shape have not yet been known, despite the fact that the finds of bronze vessels of the Macedonian-Thracian circle of the 4th century BCE are represented both in Scythia and in the Bosporus. Taking into account the known finds of bronze vessels of the Macedonian types at the Elizavetinskoe fortified settlement and in its necropolis at the mouth of the Don, it can be assumed that such vessels could have reached the Middle Don in this way. At the same time, given the relative rarity of bronze (silver) pateras in Macedonia and Thrace in the second half of the 4th — early 3rd century BCE and their finds in very rich complexes, including in the royal burials in Vergina and Golyamata Kosmatka, one cannot exclude the possibility of a different way for the patera from Chastye Barrows. In Macedonia and Thrace, such pateras, together with the oinochoai, were part of the banquet sets, therefore, in this case, the patera, which, perhaps, originally had a pair (oinochoe) could also be a diplomatic gift. In any case, the patera from Chastye Burial-mounds fits into the circle of finds of Thracian horse-bridle pieces and Thracian and Macedonian toreutics found in the burials of the Scythian nobility in the Middle Don region.
•Hoard containg 8 bronze vessels, iron cauldron hanger and 2 iron heads of rods is described.•Spectroscopy proved the presence of lead used as fastener.•Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry pointed ...to the presence of fat residues.•The pre-deposition and post-deposition process are suggested.•The use of the set for elite feast and prolonged burial ceremony is discussed.
The Hallstatt hoard from Kralice na Hané, containing eight bronze vessels, iron hanger for cauldrons and two iron heads of supporting rods used in fire pits, represents a unique evidence of deposition of luxury items from the period of 625–500 BCE (Ha D1–D2) in the Czech Republic. The hanging assembly for cauldrons and the supporting heads do not have any known analogies in the Hallstatt Period and constitute the oldest find of its kind to the North of the Alps. The bronze vessels are also unique in their own way, there are no analogies to the ladles with levered handles, and bowls with what is known as omphalos are very rare. The detailed analysis of the hoard reveals the social roots of the owners. They were probably members of the elite class. Chemical analysis proved the presence of animal fat residue in the bronze vessels. The possible usage of the vessel is discussed in the details. Additionally, the three sequences of the existence of the set, i.e. – origins of the set, predisposition processes of the set and the background of its placement in the proximity of a magnate homestead in the centre of the Platěnice group of the East Hallstatt culture in Central Moravia, are described. Authors are suggesting the use of luxurious set in the banquet of elites combined with prolonged burial ceremony.
The aim of the article is to assess the significance of a solitary find of a Roman bronze barrel-shaped bucket and a handle from another bronze vessel. Besides a necessary artefactual analysis, the ...authors also pay attention to palynological findings and mainly to the interpretation of the find, whose location on a spur above the river Dyje is unusual, without any confirmed relations to the surrounding barbarian settlement from the Roman Period.
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