•New archaeomagnetic data from the Early Iron Ages were obtained for Spain.•High geomagnetic fluctuation rates up to 8° and 16 μT/century were observed.•A new reconstruction model (SHAWQ-Iron Age) ...has been obtained.•New hints about the evolution of the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly (LIAA) are shown.•Normal flux patch (NFP) linked to the LIAA is observed at the core-mantle boundary.
Variations of geomagnetic field in the Iberian Peninsula prior to Late Iron Age times are poorly constrained. Here we report 14 directional and 10 palaeointensity results from an archaeomagnetic study carried out on 17 combustion structures recovered from six archaeological sites in eastern Spain. The studied materials have been dated by archaeological evidences and supported by radiocarbon dates (8th-5th centuries BC). Rock magnetic experiments indicate that the characteristic remanent magnetization is carried by a low coercivity magnetic phase with Curie temperatures of 500-575°C, most likely titanomagnetite/maghemite with low titanium content. Archaeointensity determinations were carried out by using the classical Thellier-Thellier experiment including pTRM-checks and magnetic anisotropy corrections. A new full vector Iberian Paleosecular Variation Curve for the Iron Age is presented. High fluctuation rates on both directions and intensities are observed during the Early Iron times that seems to be related with the Levantine Iron Age Anomaly (LIAA), the most prominent anomaly of the geomagnetic field of the last three millennia. Two intensity maxima were observed at Iberian coordinates, the oldest around 750 BC (associated with easterly declinations of around 23°) and the second 275 yrs later (475 BC) with northerly directions. The related virtual axial dipole moment was up to 14⋅1022 Am2 for the oldest materials (750 BC) and reaching 16⋅1022 Am2 for the materials corresponding to the end of the Early Iron Age.
In order to investigate the origin of the unusually high fluctuations of the palaeofield we have developed a new global geomagnetic field reconstruction, the SHAWQ-IronAge model, which is based on a critical revision of the global archeomagnetic and volcanic dataset. The new model provides an improved description of the evolution of the LIAA, which is related to a normal flux patch at the core-mantle boundary (CMB) below Arabian Peninsula clearly observed at around 950 BC. This flux patch expanded towards the north-west, while decreasing in intensity, reaching Iberia at around 750 BC. Around 600-500 BC, it underwent a revival below the European continent after that it seems to vanish in situ.
The peoples who inhabited Europe during the two millennia before the Roman conquests had established urban centers, large-scale production of goods such as pottery and iron tools, a money economy, ...and elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Yet as Peter Wells argues here, the visual world of these late prehistoric communities was profoundly different from those of ancient Rome's literate civilization and today's industrialized societies. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, Wells reconstructs how the peoples of pre-Roman Europe saw the world and their place in it. He sheds new light on how they communicated their thoughts, feelings, and visual perceptions through the everyday tools they shaped, the pottery and metal ornaments they decorated, and the arrangements of objects they made in their ritual places--and how these forms and patterns in turn shaped their experience.
How Ancient Europeans Saw the Worldoffers a completely new approach to the study of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, and represents a major challenge to existing views about prehistoric cultures. The book demonstrates why we cannot interpret the structures that Europe's pre-Roman inhabitants built in the landscape, the ways they arranged their settlements and burial sites, or the complex patterning of their art on the basis of what these things look like to us. Rather, we must view these objects and visual patterns as they were meant to be seen by the ancient peoples who fashioned them.
Ovaören, located in geologically rich and diverse Cappadocia in Central Anatolia, represents an archaeological integrity consisting of three distinct units, 2.5 km south of the town of Ovaören in ...Gülşehir county of Nevşehir Province. The area, which is also called the “Ovaören Archaeological Settlement Area”, consists of Topakhöyük and the Terrace Area to the west, and Yassıhöyük in the east, which is 350 m away from these units. While the excavations carried out between 2007 and 2021 in Ovaören proved that these three units are chronologically complementary areas, Early and Middle Bronze Age layers in Topakhöyük and the Terrace Area; Late Bronze Age layers, Iron Age layers, and weakly structured Hellenistic-Roman layers were unearthed as to in Yassıhöyük. Ovaören is one of the settlements affected by the political and cultural changes in the region in the Early Iron Age, and which grew and developed within the boundaries of Tabal Country in the Middle Iron Age. Ovaören, which was considered one of the important centers of the Tabal country in the Late Hittite period, developed into a city within the borders of the satrapy of Cappadocia in the Late Iron Age. In this context, architectural remains and archaeological finds from the Iron Age layers in the settlement contribute to understanding the Iron Age culture of the region. Iron Age layers covering this development and alteration process in Ovaören are represented by YH 8-7 dated to the Early Iron Age, YH 6-4 dated to the Middle Iron Age, and YH 3-2 dated to the Late Iron Age in Yassıhöyük.
•The studied materials highlighted the extent of the relationships in areas of the Iberian inland, also connected to the Mediterranean world, during the iron age.•The ceramic characterisation showed ...only a main production, with two body fabrics, but both used to produce all ceramic types, either traditional or ceremonial, manufactured in local workshops.•The material knowledge of these inland communities provided them the suitable ability to understand the fashions and industrial uses of the coastal circuits to replicate the characteristic elements of the social elites of that time with adequate mastery.
The archaeological site called El Pueyo de Marcuello (Huesca, Spain) is an Iron Age urban settlement, geographically situated in inland Iberia, and dated of the second half of the first millennium BCE. The nature and manufacture of their archaeological remains allow identifying this site as a contact point for relevant exchanges, with remarkable connections with Central and Western Mediterranean cultures. These cultural influences and exchanges were investigated through the characterisation of the ceramic objects found during the archaeological excavations. More than forty fragments were studied, including some of the most peculiar ceramic types, and analysed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) and Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The petrographic observations of the thin-sections highlighted two ceramic fabrics, with a similar matrix and mineralogy, but the second one using sparite crystals of crushed calcite as intentionally added temper. The statistical treatment of the chemical data supported the identification of two main compositional subgroups; both included very similar low-calcareous clay bodies. All these data allowed for highlighting a main production, with two body fabrics, but both used to produce all ceramic types, either traditional or ceremonial. These objects could have been largely manufactured in local workshops. The materials from El Pueyo de Marcuello highlighted the extent of the relationships in areas of the Iberian inland, also connected to the rhythms of Mediterranean world, during the Iron Age.
This article discusses the results of the excavations conducted in the Iron II site near the En-Gedi Spring in 1961-1962 and 2019. The site, consisting of a prominent stone platform documented as ...early as the 19th century and other recently discovered structural remains, is interpreted as a Judahite outpost built in a strategic location within the oasis of En-Gedi. On the basis of the ceramic assemblage, it is suggested that this site was founded during the early 7th century BCE and was abandoned before the end of that century-making it the earliest Iron Age occupation in the oasis. Combined with historical considerations and a regional analysis, the En-Gedi Spring site enhances our understanding of the Judahite expansion into the Judaean Desert during the late Iron Age.
Complex Communitiesexplores how sedentary settlements developed and flourished in the Middle East during the Early Iron Age nearly four thousand years ago. Using archaeological evidence, Benjamin ...Porter reconstructs how residents maintained their communities despite environmental uncertainties. Living in a semi-arid area in the present-day country of Jordan, villagers faced a harsh and unpredictable ecosystem. Communities fostered resilience by creating flexible production routines and leadership strategies. Settlements developed what archaeologists call "communal complexity," a condition through which small-scale societies shift between egalitarian and hierarchical arrangements.Complex Communitiesprovides detailed, scientifically grounded reconstructions of how this communal complexity functioned in the region.These settlements emerged during a period of recovery following the political and economic collapse of Bronze Age Mediterranean societies. Scholars have characterized west-central Jordan's political organization during this time as an incipient Moabite state.Complex Communitiesargues instead that the settlements were a collection of independent, self-organizing entities. Each community constructed substantial villages with fortifications, practiced both agriculture and pastoralism, and built and stocked storage facilities. From these efforts to produce and store resources, especially food, wealth was generated and wealthier households gained power over their neighbors. However, power was limited by the fact that residents could-and did-leave communities and establish new ones.Complex Communitiesreveals that these settlements moved through adaptive cycles as they adjusted to a changing socionatural system. These sustainability-seeking communities have lessons to offer not only the archaeologists studying similar struggles in other locales, but also to contemporary communities facing negative climate change. Readers interested in resilience studies, Near Eastern archaeology, historical ecology, and the archaeology of communities will welcome this volume.
Iron Age Myth and Materiality: an Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 considers the relationship between myth and materiality in Scandinavia from the beginning of the post-Roman era and the ...European Migrations up until the coming of Christianity. It pursues an interdisciplinary interpretation of text and material culture and examines how the documentation of an oral past relates to its material embodiment.
While the material evidence is from the Iron Age, most Old Norse texts were written down in the thirteenth century or even later. With a time lag of 300 to 900 years from the archaeological evidence, the textual material has until recently been ruled out as a usable source for any study of the pagan past. However, Hedeager argues that this is true regarding any study of a society's short-term history, but it should not be the crucial requirement for defining the sources relevant for studying long-term structures of the longue durée, or their potential contributions to a theoretical understanding of cultural changes and transformation. In Iron Age Scandinavia we are dealing with persistent and slow-changing structures of worldviews and ideologies over a wavelength of nearly a millennium. Furthermore, iconography can often date the arrival of new mythical themes anchoring written narratives in a much older archaeological context.
Old Norse myths are explored with particular attention to one of the central mythical narratives of the Old Norse canon, the mythic cycle of Odin, king of the Norse pantheon. In addition, contemporaneous historical sources from late Antiquity and the early European Middle Age - the narratives of Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, and Paul the Deacon in particular - will be explored. No other study provides such a broad ranging and authoritative study of the relationship of myth to the archaeology of Scandinavia.
PDF
