This paper aims to present new archaeobotanical data from the Late Bronze Age settlement of Tállya-Óvár in the North Hungarian Mountains. Upon investigating the area around a bronze hoard found ...earlier, the floor of a building was unearthed, and 16 archaeobotanical samples were taken. The interpretation of the botanical finds was difficult due to a low to medium density of remains and the judgement sampling method. This paper focuses mainly on cereal remains, attempting to interpret them by comparing them with the record of contemporary sites in Hungary and placing them in a broader European context. The samples from Tállya-Óvár were dominated by spelt, barley, and millet. In general, the archaeobotanical assemblage fits the hypotheses concerning Late Bronze Age agriculture. These results are important because no archaeobotanical data have yet been published from high-altitude fortified settlements in the North Hungarian Mountains.
The article deals with the issues related to the problem of the existence of urban-type settlements in the Early Middle Ages in the Volga-Kama. On the example of the materials of TetiushiII hillfort ...located on the right bank of the Volga, the author gives arguments confirming this thesis. Having been studied for six seasons since 2007, Tetiushi-II hillfort has a unique stratigraphy which made it possible to identify the chronological stages of its existence, as well as to determine the peak of its functioning — the second half of the 6th — first half of the 7th centuries. The hillfort, as well as the settlement adjacent to it from the side facing the enemy, belongs to the Imen’kovo culture. A clear layout of the hillfort was recorded: an industrial site with furnaces and melting pits in the northern part of this settlement, an area of craft workshops and residential estates in the southern part of the site near the rampart. The population of the hillfort was engaged in crafts, trade, and had a developed system of cults and was multi-ethnic.
The presence of the Avars in Eastern Europe, particularly in the lands between the Carpathian Mountains and the river Dnieper, has so far been a matter of concern for historians. Archaeologists are ...skeptical: except for a couple of finds from Budureasca, there are no Early Avar belt fittings anywhere to the north, east, and south from the Carpathian Mountains. In Poland, Avar-age finds cluster in the south (Silesia and Lesser Poland) and are dated after AD 700. The vast majority of those finds, however, are from the very end of the 8th or even the early decades of the 9th century. The sudden interest in Avar things in the lands north of the Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains may signal a desire of local elites to employ the modes of status (and, supposedly, power) representation inside the Avar Qaganate. It is however truly surprising that such an interest coincides in time with what historians believe to be a period of decline of the Avar polity. The symbolism of the Avar belt fittings was also harnessed by members of communities who buried their dead in cemeteries excavated in southern Romania. By contrast, there are no Avar-age belt fittings anywhere in the lands to the east from the Carpathian Mountains. During the second half of the 8th and the early 9th century, this region experienced something of a demographic boom, as indicated by the large number of settlement sites. There are also hillforts, but a true concern with marking social status in the material culture cannot be dated before the mid-9th century. When such markers of social prominence became necessary, the language of representation was completely different from that employed earlier by elites in southern Poland who wanted to emulate the Avars. In Eastern Europe, after 850, elites emulated the Khazars, not the Avars.
The presence of the Avars in Eastern Europe, particularly in the lands between the Carpathian Mountains and the river Dnieper, has so far been a matter of concern for historians. Archaeologists are ...skeptical: except for a couple of finds from Budureasca, there are no Early Avar belt fittings anywhere to the north, east, and south from the Carpathian Mountains. In Poland, Avar-age finds cluster in the south (Silesia and Lesser Poland) and are dated after AD 700. The vast majority of those finds, however, are from the very end of the 8th or even the early decades of the 9th century. The sudden interest in Avar things in the lands north of the Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains may signal a desire of local elites to employ the modes of status (and, supposedly, power) representation inside the Avar Qaganate. It is however truly surprising that such an interest coincides in time with what historians believe to be a period of decline of the Avar polity. The symbolism of the Avar belt fittings was also harnessed by members of communities who buried their dead in cemeteries excavated in southern Romania. By contrast, there are no Avar-age belt fittings anywhere in the lands to the east from the Carpathian Mountains. During the second half of the 8th and the early 9th century, this region experienced something of a demographic boom, as indicated by the large number of settlement sites. There are also hillforts, but a true concern with marking social status in the material culture cannot be dated before the mid-9th century. When such markers of social prominence became necessary, the language of representation was completely different from that employed earlier by elites in southern Poland who wanted to emulate the Avars. In Eastern Europe, after 850, elites emulated the Khazars, not the Avars.
The archaeological analysis of Historical mobility is an increasingly studied topic thanks to new geographic information technologies. This paper proposes a modelling exercise of the spatial ...behaviour of a Second Iron Age community in the Middle Tagus Valley: the hillfort of Villasviejas del Tamuja (Botija, Cáceres). Based on our knowledge of the configuration of the site and the surrounding settlements, we propose a heuristic use of a series of GIS tools to understand how the spatial relationship between both elements was structured. More specifically, we compare the results obtained with different calculation methods that combine two essential variables to address this issue: mobility and visibility relations. On the one hand, we evaluate the results with the application of an already developed methodology: the MADO analysis. On the other hand, we present a complementary procedure for the calculation of Least Cost Paths (LCP), considering the visibility as a key element in the mobility. The methodology uses the same data, in a paradigmatic case study for comparing results. The differences obtained through the use of different tools are thus evaluated in order to weigh up the additional or complementary knowledge that they can provide us with to investigate archaeological research questions such as the defensive architecture of the hillfort or the distribution of other nearby settlements.
•Advance spatial understanding without direct connections, vital when central locations are known but routes are not.•LCPV as an alternative for mobility analysis compared with MADO.•LCPV's flexibility includes adding visibility criterion in mobility analysis.
This article presents a statistically grounded method for the comparative analysis of polygonal masonry and the calculation of their architectural energetics. Four wall stretches of different Samnite ...hillforts (5th-3rd century BCE) have been recorded through 3D modelling to generate models suitable for calculating three variables (area, rectangularity and gap area) used for a comparative assessment of the different building techniques involved in their construction. This allowed the identification of masonry styles related to different costs of labor which were used to produce cross-regional energetic indexes suitable for the cost analysis of several hundred hillforts in south-central Italy. This formal and replicable approach to the cost analysis of polygonal masonry is not only suitable for analysing sites in Italy, but can also be applied to similar sites found widely in the Mediterranean.
•First method for statically grounded cross-regional comparison of polygonal masonry.•Identification of different masonry styles within single wall stretches.•Statistically derived calculation of architectural energetics of Italian polygonal masonry.•Transferable method for the analysis of other polygonal walls in the Mediterranean and beyond.•Full code and article are written in Quarto and available online.
A small silver coin complementary to the Augentyp-Stamm Tauriscan obols was found in controlled archaeological excavations at the Lobor hillfort. The hillfort was fortified in the late La Tène ...period (Lt D), which is also the most likely depositional context of the coin, since the site was clearly not occupied during the early imperial age. It can be assumed that the coin was produced in the earlier part of late La Tène (Lt D1), in accordance with the presently accepted chronology of Tauriscan coins. Similar obols were found at comparable hillfort sites in the Tauriscan area, but, due to their small number and lack of secure stratigraphic contextualization, this phenomenon is not easily explained in terms of commercial exchange.
In Bronze Age Ireland, the settlement record almost exclusively comprises individual, isolated farmsteads dotted throughout the island (Ginn in
Emania, 21
: 47–58, 2013; Ginn,
Mapping society: ...Settlement structures in Later Bronze Age Ireland
, Archaeopress, 2016). Recent studies have shown that these are incredibly homogeneous, with the nearly 700 excavated examples showing no signs of significant variation in terms of size or density and little in the way of high-status material culture. This conflicts with other evidence from this period, which points to an elite culture inferred from extensive long-distance trading, the manufacture of high-status goods and the construction of massive communal monuments such as hillforts. The latter comprise some of Europe’s largest and most impressive monuments and are often recognised as regional centres of power and authority. Until recently, these monuments have received little attention in Ireland and have rarely been integrated into the broader study of Irish Bronze Age settlement patterns. Indeed, it is at hillforts, which might be regarded as the permanent settlement of an elite and a central space for a disparate community, that we should find larger structures and more nuanced evidence for settlement hierarchies if they exist. This paper aims to collate the settlement evidence within Irish hillforts and other unenclosed upland settlements, integrating this within the broader narrative of the contemporary settlement pattern. It is argued that a clear hierarchy of settlement is apparent at some of the densely settled Irish hillforts, and that these formed central spaces for a disparate community where architecture formed the main arena for the display of status and group identity.
