•Table ware from 13th c. BC at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, was identified as Sardinian.•Cypriot and Sardinian ceramics and sediments were analysed by petrography.•Additional analyses include NAA and ...FTIR.•Results confirm trade related connections between Hala Sultan Tekke and Sardinia.
In the course of the Swedish excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke, Cyprus, table ware and domestic pottery of unknown provenance were discovered in offering pits dating to the 13th century BCE. These vessels comprise six hand-made and black burnished vessels, all of which have close typological parallels in the Nuragic culture of Sardinia. Comparative petrographic investigation confirmed their Sardinian provenance. Other archaeometric analyses include FTIR on the Cypriot and Sardinian material, and NAA on the Sardinian vessels from Hala Sultan Tekke. These vessels further extend the nature of intercultural relations of the site, which comprise a vast area including the Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt. The paper presents the archaeometric results and briefly discusses their implication for Cypro-Sardinian connections in the Late Bronze Age.
In the Late Bronze Age, Egypt controlled the city-states of the Southern Levant, even though local rulers maintained partial autonomy. However, the period ended with a crisis that seems to have ...considerably changed the local power structures along with the disappearance of the Egyptian empire in the region. This paper investigates shows how both Egyptian power and its relatively rapid disappearance worsened the crisis. Three factors are highlighted: Egyptian policy of weakening the defensive capabilities of Levantine city-states, the Egyptians’ demand for different resources and how these two aspects made city-states unable to adapt successfully to the new post- Egyptian situation.
The present study presents the analysis of the elemental composition of four bronze sickles, three with hooked handle and one with holes on the handle, two from the deposit at Valea lui Darie, Vaslui ...county, one from the bronze deposit at Ciorani, and one discovered in a dwelling from the settlement belonging to the Noua culture from Dodești, following systematic archaeological research. The sickles from the Valea lui Darie deposit belong to the Ghermănești type, the Ghermănești variant, the Ciorani sickle to the Ilișești variant of the Ghermănești type, and the Dodești sickle to the Heleșteni type. These types of sickles are characteristic for the Late Bronze Age east of the Carpathians, being chronologically placed between XII – X BC. The elemental composition of the four pieces was identified by employing non-invasive analysis with a mobile spectrometer, Thermo Niton XL3, resulting in a composition of a binary copper-tin alloy (Cu-Sn), to which a number of secondary elements are added: arsenic, antimony, iron, nickel, lead, titanium, and sulphur. In the case of the sickle from Dodești, the percentage of lead is 1.593% which could come from the composition of the copper or tin ores used, given that the percentage should be higher than 2-3% to be considered an intentional addition. Arsenic was also identified in the composition of the four sickles, but in small percentages, > 1%, most likely coming from the composition of the copper ore used. The elemental composition of ancient artefacts enables the establishment of correlations between different types of objects, production areas, raw material resource areas, and distribution patterns. Based on the elemental composition, the four sickles fall into the group of copper objects with arsenic, antimony/antimony, and nickel as the main secondary elements.
The Late Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke (HST) is located on the south-eastern coast of Cyprus, c. 7 km south of modern-day Larnaca. The most recent excavations revealed four new city quarters ...(CQ1–4), where domestic and industrial activities took place. While the earliest occupational remains are from c. 1650/1600 BCE, the so far best attested period lasted from the 13th century to its final destruction in the mid-12th century BCE, after which the city was abandoned, never to be occupied again. The find material demonstrates intense industrial and trade activities resulting in an increased wealth. Agricultural products from the city’s hinterland certainly added to its rank as a leading trade hub in the eastern Mediterranean. The most recent archaeobotanical research revealed charred plant remains including that of barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, fig, olive, grape and lentil. These contribute to understanding the function and use of areas, spaces and specific installations at HST, and shed further light on Late Bronze Age agriculture on Cyprus.
Research over the last few decades has greatly enhanced our understanding of the production and distribution of glass across time and space, resulting in an almost kaleidoscopically colourful and ...complex picture. We now recognise several major ‘families’ of glass composition, including plant-ash based glass in Late Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the Islamic World; mineral natron glass in the Greek, Roman and Byzantine Empires; mineral-based lead- and lead–barium glass in Han period China and medieval Europe; and wood-ash and ash-lime glass in medieval Europe. Other glass groups include a peculiar granite-based glass in medieval Nigeria, and probably mineral-based glass in Bronze Age southern Europe. However, despite two centuries of research, we know very little about the actual production locations and technologies for most of these glass groups, and how and where glass making was invented.
The early literature reflects the comparatively limited number of individuals and research groups working on glass; only recently there is a significant broadening of the research community and expansion and refinement of the data base. This enables us now to take stock of our current understanding and identify major lacunae and areas where additional work may make the most significant contributions to our understanding of the complex picture. Hopefully this will help moving from the traditional descriptive and often fragmented opportunistic data-gathering phase (asking ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’) to a more interpretative period looking with fresh eyes at the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of compositional and technical developments. This opening of the research field includes addressing the relationship of the different glass industries to the societies that used glass, and how they organised its production and distribution. A major overarching issue remains the question of the initial invention of glass, and how the idea as well as the material itself spread. Major debates should ask whether there were multiple inventions of glass making; how best to identify and interpret long-distance trade; how to ensure data compatibility and quality; and how to integrate different types of data, from archaeology through craftsmanship and typology to chemistry and optical properties.
•Major progress has been made in characterising ancient glass.•Larger pattern emerges based on numerous case studies.•Important research lacunae still persist.
A planned excavation was conducted at the Late Bronze Age settlement of Baks-Temetőpart (Csongrád–Csanád County, Hungary) in 2007 by Gábor V. Szabó with archaeologists and students of the Eötvös ...Loránd University, Institute of Archaeological Sciences (Budapest). A previously known but unexcavated, rather large, and intensive settlement was researched during the short campaign. More than 4,000 ceramic objects were discovered in different pits, with 71 special ceramic objects among them. This article evaluates these anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, wagon- and wheel models, sun discs, and miniature vessels that can give us some insight into the beliefs and ways of artistic expression of the classical Gáva pottery style community of Baks-Temetőpart.
•Halehaxite provides the first zooarchaeological record from the East Tianshan Mountains in Late Bronze Age.•Halehaxite is a pastoralist settlement and the herd is dominant by cattle, different from ...other contemporaneous sites in the surrounding regions.•The majority of the herd was slaughtered before one-year-old, indicate a focus on the exploitation of meat and milk and less on wool and traction.•The birth was deliberately controlled in spring, substantial kill happened in autumn.
Northwestern China is a key region for the exchange of population, commodity, technology, custom and culture between the east and west part of the Old World since prehistoric times. However, we lack zooarchaeological evidence from settlement sites in Xinjiang province, which makes it difficult to understand the pastoral economies and livestock herding activities of the Late Bronze Age in this area. Here, we present a study of the earliest and meanwhile the first systematic zooarchaeological analysis from the Late Bronze Age settlement, the Halehaxite site in northwestern Xinjiang. Our findings pointed out that the herd of Halehaxite comprises four domestic animals: cattle, sheep, goats and horses. The herd is dominated by cattle, different from other contemporaneous sites in the Central and East Tianshan Mountains. Mortality patterns of the domesticates were linked to sophisticated milk exploitation and not many individuals were kept for long-term secondary production.
Lead Isotope Analysis (LIA) has been applied most often as a means of provenancing copper at the macro scale. Here we use LIA at the regional scale to expose the relationship between long-distance ...communication and local metal management strategies. We conducted lead isotope and chemical analysis on 82 objects and ingots from Late Bronze Age hoards of the south Carpathian Basin, a node in long distance networks. From a social perspective, results indicate the presence of a community of practice of metalworkers that went beyond socio-political boundaries. Analyses of ingots demonstrate that communities imported copper from a variety of distant sources, but local circulation and specific mixing and recycling practices created a characteristic chemical signature unique to this region. Moreover, metalworkers' choices of copper sources were tailored to specific object types. From an analytical perspective, we demonstrated that the frequent mixing of copper from different sources with varying lead concentrations to make objects resulted in the masking of LIA signatures for some sources – we termed these ‘ghost fractions’ in mixtures – by others with more lead.
•Late Bronze Age south Carpathian Basin groups accessed multiple copper sources.•Distinct local metal management strategies biased according to object types.•Specific chemical signature created by regional metalworking conventions.•Variable lead concentrations shown to mask some copper sources due to mixing.
The paper discusses certain funerary finds, especially some possible ones, belonging to the Bronze Age, from the Mediaş-“Hăşmaş” site. Besides a Wietenberg cremation grave, there are arguments for ...including other finds among those with a Wietenberg funerary character, including a vessel conserved in the Mediaş museum, which outlines a group of graves in the respective site. Another discovery, kept in the same museum, may belong to a funerary discovery, namely a quadrilobed vessel with a perforated bottom, which documents burials during the Late Bronze, at the level of the Gligoreşti group, or the Noua culture. As we are talking about ancient finds, some without a precise context, certain information is missing, but those that could be recovered indicate some burials during the Middle and Late Bronze.
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