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.
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.
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.
The Beibai’e cemetery is a high-status noble tomb group from the early Spring–Autumn period (770 B.C–476 B.C). Three sealed bronze vessels with mud and liquid residues were excavated from the M1 ...tomb. In a previous investigation, it was concluded that the residues were fruit wine since syringic acid was detected. However, this finding contradicts the grain-based brewing traditions prevalent in the central plains region of China since the Neolithic era. In the previous study, syringic acid was considered a unique biomarker for fruit wine. In this study, multiple analytical techniques, including microfossil analysis, HPLC‒MS and FTIR were applied. The results indicated that the residue was beer rather than fruit wine. This study demonstrated that comprehensive analysis and multiple pieces of evidence are necessary in wine residue research.
The article is devoted to the publication and new attribution of two bronze vessels originating from the looter’s excavations in 1912 of the Semikolennyy (“Seven-knee”) burial mound on the Shakhan ...mountain in the area of the Cossack village Tul’skaya in Adygea, confiscated from the inhabitants of the village and transferred to the Kuban Military Museum, currently stored in the Krasnodar State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve named after E.D. Felitsyn. Until now publishers have unanimously attributed the oinochoe to the Eggers 124 type and, correspondingly, dated it to the 1st century CE. Without any doubt the vessel belongs to the so-called Form 2 (variant B), according to the classification of T. Weber, represented by finds mainly from the Peloponnese, Central Greece and South Italy, dating back to the 5th century BCE. In the recent decades five similar vessels were found in Macedonia, including: two — in the Sindos necropolis in the burials of the last third of the 6th and the turn of the 6th — 5th centuries BCE, two —in the burials of the first and third quarters of the 5th century BCE of the necropolis of Pydna. In the North Pontic area one such oinochoe was known up to nowadays, originating from tomb no. 19 of the burial mound no. 24/1876 of the Nymphaion necropolis, dated to the mid-5th century BCE. The second item was published as a “krater stand” without comment in the text, but the very fact that it was included in a book on Roman imports suggests that this item was attributed to the first centuries CE. In fact, this is the stand of an exaleiptron (ἐξάλειπτρον, exáleiptron), a rare-shaped vessel used to store oils and ointments. To date, 8 stands of exaleiptrons are known, including two specimens from the princely burials of the Trebenishte necropolis in the region of Ohrid Lake in North Macedonia, as well as from Delphi and the Idean Cave on Crete. Various points of view on the dating of these objects were expressed, ranging from the middle to the end of the 6th century BCE, as well as their origin either from the workshops of North/North-Western Greece or Laconia. Obviously, the published fragment of the exaleiptron stand was repaired in antiquity. As a result of alterations (one or two), the original function of the object was changed — the hollow sleeve was turned into the body and neck of the vessel, the lower part of which was formed by a plate with a hollow cylindrical container at the bottom. In connection with the published finds of great interest is the so-called Maikop Treasure, which, as a result of several sales, is currently divided among the museums of Berlin, Cologne, New York and Philadelphia. The objects now in Philadelphia were acquired from the collection of E. Canessa under the general name the “Maikop Treasure”. In 1913, items most likely belonging to the same group were acquired by the Museums of Berlin from the Armenian merchant Karapet. The point of view of M.I. Rostovtsev about the allocation of a rich complex of the middle or second half of the 5th century BCE as part of the “Maikop Treasure” was supported by other scholars. There is every reason to consider the “Maikop Treasure” as a set of items from the looter’s excavations of 1912 in the Semikolenny burial mound and cemeteries in its vicinity. It is highly probable that the bronze vessels under discussion could come from this complex, the gold items from which, for the most part, are now in the museums in Germany and the USA. In this regard, noteworthy is the fact that along with the gold finds, fragments of bronze vessels were also acquired by the Museums of Berlin, some of which could relate to the finds published here, while others also date back to the 6th — 5th centuries BCE. In this connection it is worth noting that in the burial complexes of the first half of the 4th century BCE of the cemetery near aul Ulyap, located about 70 km north from Tul’skaya, quite numerous Greek bronze vessels were found, which date back to the first or second quarter of the 5th century BCE, including those with repairs. Accordingly, the Trans-Kuban region is the area with the highest concentration of Greek bronze vessels of the Late Archaic — Early Classical period.
In this paper, pulsed infrared thermography is applied to the study of a mold casting Chinese bronze
lei
罍 dated to the late Shang dynasty (c.a.1250–1050 BC), currently housed in the Capital Normal ...University Museum. Many spacers and a defective area of this ancient bronze are partly covered with repair material. By analyzing thermographic images using a one-layer thermal diffusion model, it is found that the spacers were specifically made for this bronze. The thickness of the repairing material in the defective area is measured using thermal quadrupole modelling in multi-layer materials. This is the first application of this method to the field of cultural heritage conservation. These results provide a deeper understanding of the manufacturing process of ancient Chinese bronzes from the viewpoint of archaeological research. They also help assess the repair status from the conservation viewpoint.
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