The first part of this research published previously proved without doubt that the metals dated to the Nordic Bronze Age found in Sweden were not smelted from the local copper ores. In this second ...part we present a detailed interpretation of these analytical data with the aim to identify the ore sources from which these metals originated. The interpretation of lead isotope and chemical data of 71 Swedish Bronze Age metals is based on the direct comparisons between the lead isotope data and geochemistry of ore deposits that are known to have produced copper in the Bronze Age. The presented interpretations of chemical and lead isotope analyses of Swedish metals dated to the Nordic Bronze Age are surprising and bring some information not known from previous work. Apart from a steady supply of copper from the Alpine ores in the North Tyrol, the main sources of copper seem to be ores from the Iberian Peninsula and Sardinia. Thus from the results presented here a new complex picture emerges of possible connectivities and flows in the Bronze Age between Scandinavia and Europe.
•New lead isotope & chemical data of 71 Swedish metals dated to the Nordic Bronze Age.•The results are surprising and bring some information not known from previous work.•The main sources of copper are ores from the Iberian Peninsula, Sardinia and Austria.•A new picture of flows between Sweden and BA Europe emerges are presented here.
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.
Este estudio ofrece nuevos datos sobre la apropiación local de los ideales asociados al guerrero en Europa durante la Edad del Bronce Final a través del nuevo estudio de los grabados de Cancho Roano ...y Arroyo Tamujoso 8, situados en el Suroeste de la península ibérica, de sus soportes y contextos paisajísticos. Emplea tecnologías digitales de vanguardia para identificar algunos de los particularismos más distintivos de esa iconografía, revelando diversas respuestas a los ideales de guerrero que estaban en circulación en Europa durante dicho período. Para comprender los contextos de circulación desde una perspectiva local, también consideramos brevemente las conexiones multi-escala en las que estaban involucradas las comunidades que crearon estelas de guerrero en Iberia. El objetivo final de este artículo es sentar las bases para un próximo trabajo donde se comparan con mayor detalle la iconografía de las estelas de guerrero y la de los guerreros del arte rupestre escandinavo, teniendo también en cuenta otros aspectos.
Picturing the Bronze Age Johan Ling, Peter Skoglund, Ulf Bertilsson
2015, 20150228, 2015-02-28, Letnik:
3
eBook
Pictures from the Bronze Age are numerous, vivid and complex. There is no other prehistoric period that has produced such a wide range of images spanning from rock art to figurines to decoration on ...bronzes and gold. Fourteen papers, with a geographical coverage from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula, examine a wide range of topics reflecting the many forms and expressions of Bronze Age imagery encompassing important themes including religion, materiality, mobility, interaction, power and gender. Contributors explore specific elements of rock art in some detail such as the representation of the human form; images of manslaughter; and gender identities. The relationship between rock art imagery and its location on the one hand, and metalwork and networks of trade and exchange of both materials and ideas on the other, are considered. Modern and ancient perceptions of rock art are discussed, in particular the changing perceptions that have developed during almost 150 years of documented research. Picturing the Bronze Age is based on an international workshop with the same title held in Tanum, Sweden in October 2012.
Today, it is widely accepted that typology is a biased and inconsistent attempt to classify archaeological material based on the similarity of a predefined set of features. In this respect, machine ...learning (ML) works similar to typology. ML approaches are often deployed because it is thought that they reduce biases. However, biases are introduced into the process at many points, e.g., feature selection. In a project applying ML to Scandinavian rock art data, it was noticed that the algorithm struggles with classifying certain motifs correctly. This contribution discusses the consistency in applying biases by ML in contrast to the inconsistency of human classification. It is argued that it is necessary to bring machines and humans into a meaningful dialogue attempting to understand why apparent “misclassifications” happen. This is important to inform us about the classification output, our biases, and the rock art data, which are in themself inconsistent, ambiguous, and biased because they are the outcomes of human creativity. The human inconsistency is a necessary component because in rock art not everything that looks similar has a similar meaning.
North Meets South Skoglund, Peter; Ling, Johan; Bertilsson, Ulf
12/2017, Letnik:
6
eBook, Book
This latest volume in the Swedish Rock Art series bridges the gap between analysis and interpretation of rock art imagery, location and chronology in the northern and southern regions of Scandinavia. ...Long viewed as belonging to distinctive regional traditions, there are many underlying similarities, themes and formats in common, overlain by regional complexities and variations. The authors explore new approaches and methods of analysis. There has been a tendency in rock art research to focus merely on either the Northern Tradition or the Southern Tradition of Scandinavian rock art and there is certainly a need to broaden this discussion. Thus, the aim of this collection of new research papers is to stimulate different perspectives and themes that place emphasis on the intersection between these traditions. North meets South puts the focus on Scandinavian rock art regardless of regions and traditions. Even though there are obvious differences in space and time regarding these two traditions, there are also features and formats in common across both time and space, and a significant theme running thourgh the contributions presented here is to highlight the interaction between these rock art traditions. A major conclusion to be drawn from this exercise is the great complexity and variation of rock art and the need for perspectives comparing various regions across Scandinavia. This volume is the outcome of an international symposium organised by the Swedish Rock Art Research Archives (SHFA).
Southern Scandinavia is Europe’s richest region in terms of figurative rock art. It is imperative to document this cultural heritage for future generations. To achieve this, researchers need to use ...the most objective recording methods available in order to eliminate human error and bias in the documentation. The ability to collect more data is better, not only for documentation, but also for research purposes. Recent years have seen the wider introduction of image based 2.5D and 3D modelling of rock art surfaces. These methods are Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), Structure from Motion (SfM), and Optical Laser Scanning (OLS). Importantly, these approaches record depth difference and the structure of engraved lines. Therefore, they have clear advantages over older methods such as frottage (rubbings) and tracing. Based on a number of short case studies, this paper argues that 2.5D and 3D methods should be used as a standard documentation techniques, but not in an exclusionary manner. The best documentation, enabling preservation and high-quality research, should employ all methods. Approaching rock art with all the research tools available we can re-appraise older documentation as well as investigate individual action and the transformation of rock art.
Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely ...focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently, the eifects of recycling, both temporal and spatial, on the composition of the circulating metal stock have received much attention. Also, discussions of the value and perception of bronze, both as individual objects and as hoarded material, continue to be the focus of scholarly debate. Here, we bring together the sometimes-diverging views of several research groups on these topics in an attempt to find common ground and set out the major directions of the debate, for the benefit of future research. The paper discusses how to determine and interpret the geological provenance of new metal entering the system; the circulation of extant metal across time and space, and how this is seen in changing compositional signatures; and some economic aspects of metal production. These include the role of metal-producing communities within larger economic settings, quantifying the amount of metal present at any one time within a society, and aspects of hoarding, a distinctive European phenomenon that is less prevalent in the Middle Eastern and Asian Bronze Age societies.
Since the beginning of the 20th century rock art in Bohuslän has traditionally been interpreted, on the basis of its adjacent location to the clay-soil plains, as an indicator ofpermanent pastoral or ...agrarian settlement units. However, recent results ofthe first substantial and extensive shoreline study, covering the whole of Bohuslän, have shown that, during the entire Bronze Age, many of these lower, clay- soil plains were in fact sea bottoms in shallow bays. On the basis of these results new measurement of the rock art panels and the surrounding terrain were made. The study showed that many rock carvings had been placed on or near the contemporary shore during the Bronze Age. It therefore seemed essential to present new questions about the social and ritual behaviour, as manifested by the rock art in these particular areas. It is here suggested that the rock art in the investigated area may be a materialised reflection of seasonal maritime interactions during the Bronze Age.
Rock art carvings, which are best described as petroglyphs, were produced by removing parts of the rock surface to create a negative relief. This tradition was particularly strong during the Nordic ...Bronze Age (1700–550 BC) in southern Scandinavia with over 20,000 boats and thousands of humans, animals, wagons,
etc
. This vivid and highly engaging material provides quantitative data of high potential to understand Bronze Age social structures and ideologies. The ability to provide the technically best possible documentation and to automate identification and classification of images would help to take full advantage of the research potential of petroglyphs in southern Scandinavia and elsewhere. We, therefore, attempted to train a model that locates and classifies image objects using faster region-based convolutional neural network (Faster-RCNN) based on data produced by a novel method to improve visualizing the content of 3D documentations. A newly created layer of 3D rock art documentation provides the best data currently available and has reduced inscribed bias compared to older methods. Several models were trained based on input images annotated with bounding boxes produced with different parameters to find the best solution. The data included 4305 individual images in 408 scans of rock art sites. To enhance the models and enrich the training data, we used data augmentation and transfer learning. The successful models perform exceptionally well on boats and circles, as well as with human figures and wheels. This work was an interdisciplinary undertaking which led to important reflections about archaeology, digital humanities, and artificial intelligence. The reflections and the success represented by the trained models open novel avenues for future research on rock art.
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