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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 547 of 1200

  • 18 - Sensuous Memory, Materiality and History: Rethinking the ‘Rise of the Palaces’ on Bronze Age Crete

  • from Materiality, Memory and Identity
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 320-336

  • Summary

    In the southern Levant, the early Iron Age witnessed the end of Egyptian imperial control and the breakdown of the Canaanite city-state system that characterized the region in the Later Bronze Age. New social and cultural groups, Philistines and Israelites, appeared on the historical stage. Since both groups are known from the Bible, their emergence in Canaan has long been the focus of research by biblical archaeology. When critically examined, it becomes clear that Philistine and Israelite identities are dialectically related. A variety of processes visible in the archaeological record, including migration, interaction, border encounters, and separation, led to ethnic negotiation and demarcation. In particular, this chapter talks about, Aegean Migration, interaction and ethnic demarcation of Egyptians and Philistines, interaction of Philistine and Canaanites, Canaanite cultural resistance and Israelite ethnogenesis. The Canaanite population, the substratum upon which the new group identities were built, played a neglected yet highly important role in the processes of ethnogenesis.

  • 21 - The Lure of the Artefact? The Effects of Acquiring Eastern Mediterranean Material Culture

  • from Materiality, Memory and Identity
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 367-378

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the interactions that took place in the western Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age between different communities that are usually grouped together under the homogenising and external labels of indigenous, Phoenician and Greek. It argues that the degrees of interaction and the local logic of actions are keys to a nuanced understanding of these situations. The chapter focuses on the practical decisions and actions of all the parties involved, both foreign and indigenous. Finally, it highlights relevant local practices of daily life such as knowledge transfer of pottery production techniques, social heterogeneity, Phoenician settlements, regimes of value in domains ranging from metal exchange to wine trade, changing patterns of food consumption and the creation of new foodways and even the display of forms of violence, taking into account the social, cultural and economic transformations of all the actors involved.

  • 20 - Changes in Perceptions of the ‘Other’ and Expressions of Egyptian Self-identity in the Late Bronze Age

  • from Materiality, Memory and Identity
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 352-366

  • Summary

    This chapter first discusses various methodological concerns related to Cypriote iconography, before turning to a series of limestone images depicting a tri-corporate warrior, traditionally associated with the Greek Geryon, that appears in Cypriot sanctuaries during the Archaic period. There have been two fundamental approaches to interpreting divine images dedicated in Cypriot sanctuaries. The first approach assumes a wholesale transferal of both image and meaning from a foreign origin to the island, and the second approach focuses on local contexts for divine iconography and related rituals. In Greek art, the myth was especially popular in the sixth century BC among representations of the many exploits of Herakles, who was himself a favorite in Archaic Greece. The isolation of hybridization processes in art shifts the focus from origins and streams of influence to genesis and agency. Finally, the chapter suggests a more nuanced approach that focuses on the transmission, translation, and reception of religious iconography and the productive capacity of cultural interactions.

  • 38 - Ritual and Ideology in Early Iron Age Crete: The Role of the Past and the East

  • from Ritual and Ideology
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 650-664

  • Summary

    This chapter examines cemeteries to investigate the complex dynamics of ethnogenesis and the construction of collective identity and elite group ideologies in central Italy during the Early Iron Age (EIA) and the so-called Orientalizing period. It overviews dynamics of interaction between Etruscans, Greeks, Phoenicians, and other people from the East in the Tyrrhenian context. The chapter investigates the notion of symbolic violence as proposed by Bourdieu and Godelier as a central aspect of collective group as well as individual strategies, and of power rituals in the EIA and the Orientalizing period in Etruria. As the funerary ideology of the Etruscan EIA recalls a picture of sociopolitical dialectics between collective trends and specific group or individual features and between conservatism and innovation in constant interplay with the criteria of status, gender, and age, there is no shortage of ambiguities and differences. Hut-shaped urns are of crucial importance for understanding the socio-ritual and gender dialectics, even if they are relatively uncommon.

  • 34 - The Violence of Symbols: Ideologies, Identity, and Cultural Interaction in Central Italian Cemeteries

  • from Life and Death
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 585-604

  • Summary

    This chapter examines cemeteries to investigate the complex dynamics of ethnogenesis and the construction of collective identity and elite group ideologies in central Italy during the Early Iron Age (EIA) and the so-called Orientalizing period. It overviews dynamics of interaction between Etruscans, Greeks, Phoenicians, and other people from the East in the Tyrrhenian context. The chapter investigates the notion of symbolic violence as proposed by Bourdieu and Godelier as a central aspect of collective group as well as individual strategies, and of power rituals in the EIA and the Orientalizing period in Etruria. As the funerary ideology of the Etruscan EIA recalls a picture of sociopolitical dialectics between collective trends and specific group or individual features and between conservatism and innovation in constant interplay with the criteria of status, gender, and age, there is no shortage of ambiguities and differences. Hut-shaped urns are of crucial importance for understanding the socio-ritual and gender dialectics, even if they are relatively uncommon.

  • 35 - The Early Bronze Age Southern Levant: The Ideology of an Aniconic Reformation

  • from Ritual and Ideology
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 609-618

  • Summary

    The El Argar culture, spanning the years 2200-1500 Cal BC in southeastern Iberia's Bronze Age, is one of the best-known prehistoric periods in the western Mediterranean. This chapter first discusses traditional accounts of Argaric culture. It then talks about recent developments in research on the mortuary records that question long-established assumptions, examines hitherto unstudied practices and opens up new avenues for interpretation and analysis. The chapter also focuses on the re-evaluation of the warlike nature of Argaric societies, and assesses studies of commensality rituals in funerals. There are two main sources of archaeological evidence that allegedly illustrate the warlike nature of Argaric society: the emergence of specialised weaponry and the very characteristics of Argaric settlements in relation to their location and some of their structures, interpreted as defensive. Commensal pottery and animal bones found in burials are two major sources of evidence for the study of Argaric funerary commensality practices. Finally, the chapter examines works dealing with daily maintenance activities.

  • 9 - Bronze Age European Elites: From the Aegean to the Adriatic and Back Again

  • from Mobility, Migration and Colonisation
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 157-177

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the specific forms of Sicily's interaction with Aegean and eastern Mediterranean groups who were consistently present and active in the central Mediterranean throughout the second millennium BC. The focus is on Sicily and the Aeolian islands. The chapter discusses the cultural differences between the main island of Sicily and the minor islands of the Aeolian group and Ustica throughout the Early Bronze Age. The Sicilian Middle Bronze Age is characterized by a formally homogeneous archaeological culture, the so-called Thapsos-Milazzese facies that was shared by Sicily and the Aeolian islands and that is also documented at Ustica, Pantelleria and on the Poro promontory of the Calabria coast. The label 'Ausonian I' was first used by Bernabo Brea to refer to the Late Bronze Age facies at Lipari. Throughout the Late Bronze Age, the Pantalica culture continued the local, long-established tradition of integration with Aegean groups who were still present and active in Sicily.

  • 26 - Long-Term Social Change in Iron Age Northern Iberia (ca. 700–200 BC)

  • from Community and Household
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 454-470

  • Summary

    This chapter explores practices of rock carving on the Anatolian peninsula from a diachronic perspective, with special emphasis on the Late Bronze Age and Early-Middle Iron Ages. Linking together the materiality of monuments, rock-carving technologies and issues of landscape imagination, it focuses on the commemorative rock reliefs across the Anatolian landscape. The monuments of concern range from Hittite and post-Hittite commemorative rock reliefs to Urartian, Phrygian and Paphlagonian practices of carving the living rock for cultic, commemorative and funerary purposes. The chapter also critiques the specialised art historical and epigraphic approaches to rock reliefs and rock-cut structures, which portray them as stand-alone monuments and show a certain disregard for their micro-geographical context. Finally, it contributes to studies of landscape and place in Mediterranean archaeology by promoting a shift of focus from macro-scale explanations of the environment to micro-scale engagement with located practices of place-making.

  • 5 - Sicily in Mediterranean History in the Second Millennium BC

  • from Insularity and Connectivity
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 74-95

  • Summary

    This chapter deals with the specific forms of Sicily's interaction with Aegean and eastern Mediterranean groups who were consistently present and active in the central Mediterranean throughout the second millennium BC. The focus is on Sicily and the Aeolian islands. The chapter discusses the cultural differences between the main island of Sicily and the minor islands of the Aeolian group and Ustica throughout the Early Bronze Age. The Sicilian Middle Bronze Age is characterized by a formally homogeneous archaeological culture, the so-called Thapsos-Milazzese facies that was shared by Sicily and the Aeolian islands and that is also documented at Ustica, Pantelleria and on the Poro promontory of the Calabria coast. The label 'Ausonian I' was first used by Bernabo Brea to refer to the Late Bronze Age facies at Lipari. Throughout the Late Bronze Age, the Pantalica culture continued the local, long-established tradition of integration with Aegean groups who were still present and active in Sicily.

  • 25 - Connectivity Beyond the Urban Community in Central Italy

  • from Community and Household
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 437-453

  • Summary

    The relationship between people and things is a crucial avenue of investigation in understanding past cultures. An examination of the social contexts and the consequences of consuming material culture are integral to a fuller understanding of archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean. The interplay of these spheres provides an intriguing lens for the examination of the lure of relics from the Bronze and Iron Ages. This chapter examines the collecting of archaeological materials, the deleterious effects on the archaeological landscape and the object biographies of those artefacts enmeshed in the trade in antiquities. As artefacts are collected, they undergo a series of transformations, utilitarian and metaphorical. The chapter presents case studies, Moshe Dayan, the Israel Museum, the quest for an Israeli Past, Shelby White and Leon Levy, admiration for the Keros Hoard, to illustrate the varied high-end collecting personae and rationales involved with the acquisition and longing for archaeological material from the eastern Mediterranean.

  • 4 - Islands and Mobility: Exploring Bronze Age Connectivity in the South-Central Mediterranean

  • from Insularity and Connectivity
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 57-73

  • Summary

    Using the concept of the maritory, this chapter explores the degree, extent and social significance of material connections between the island worlds of the south-central Mediterranean in the Bronze Age. Of all the ways that islands make a difference in a study about ancient human mobility, two are the most important: first, that throughout prehistory, contact between the island group of the central Mediterranean and the rest of the world was entirely through the medium of maritime connections; second, that the sea was the medium which could both isolate the islanders from and bring them into contact with their closest neighbours. The chapter considers three principal cycles of object/human/knowledge mobility that touch on the central Mediterranean over the longue duree, conscious of the fact that the difficulty to pigeonhole archaeological data and processes in neat periodisation schemes should assist constructive generalizations.

  • 19 - Beyond Iconography: Meaning-Making in Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Visual and Material Culture

  • from Materiality, Memory and Identity
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 337-351

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the island of Sardinia during the Iron Age to identify the types of interactions between the local Nuragic culture, which was already open to Mediterranean contacts in the Recent and Final Bronze Ages, and other populations around the Tyrrhenian Sea and in the Near East. In the Iron Age, as Sardinians managed contacts with Villanovan and Levantine peoples, they carefully selected ideological contributions and foreign materials, changing, adapting and integrating them into their own culture. Phoenicians first established themselves within Nuragic communities and later in coastal settlements, where their presence favoured the integration process. It contributed to the creation of a culture that was neither Nuragic nor Phoenician but that can define as Sardinian. The main differences between the coastal Phoenician sites and Nuragic sites of the interior consist of different proportions of handmade and domestic Phoenician pottery. Finally, the chapter discusses the variety of foreign imports in later Iron Age Sardinia.

  • 15 - Cultural Interactions in Iron Age Sardinia

  • from Hybridisation and Cultural Encounters
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 266-284

  • Summary

    Two main and opposing models have typically dominated the interpretation of the Phoenician Archaic colonisation phenomenon. The first one is a Marxist and Polanyian model, which maintains that Phoenician colonization was an enterprise conducted by the palace of Tyre and Gadir, its representative in the far west, whose main objectives were to disperse the excess population from the Levant, and to exploit the Tartessian territory by a workforce from the indigenous elites. The second one is agrarian model. This chapter presents evidence of people or imports such as wheelmade pottery, Aegean-type ship in the Laxe Auga dos Cervos Petroglyph, the SW Warrior stele, and local handmade stroke-burnished and painted pottery, in the Eastern Mediterranean before colonization. Wheelmade pottery is known in Later Bronze Age (LBA) pre-Phoenician contexts, which could be placed between the thirteenth and mid-ninth centuries BC in Iberia.

  • 24 - Households, Hierarchies, Territories and Landscapes in Bronze Age and Iron Age Greece

  • from Community and Household
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 417-436

  • Summary

    This chapter presents evidence from Theban tombs and mortuary temples to show that expressions of 'others' and of self-identity changed as the Egyptian elite adjusted to a new perceptual reality, one in which Egypt increasingly became part of the Mediterranean world. It states that texts and images included in Egyptian-mortuary contexts were not there primarily to record historical-events but to demonstrate the qualities of the person whom they commemorated. Representations in Theban private tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty show northerners as offering-bearers. These tombs generally belonged to members of the Egyptian high elite, high priests of Amun, viziers, and mayors of Thebes, many of whom held several positions during their careers. A pertinent example is Menkheperreseneb, a High Priest of Amun under Thutmose III in the Eighteenth-Dynasty, interred in Theban Tomb. Northerners depicted at Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of the Twentieth-Dynasty king now generally known as Ramesses III, serve a similar function, albeit in a different way.

  • Hybridisation and Cultural Encounters

  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp, University of Glasgow, Peter van Dommelen, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean
    Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    12 January 2015, pp 249-316

  • Summary

    This chapter traces the emergence of ritual authority in Bronze Age (BA) Cyprus against a background of increasing sectional interests and growing economic and political interaction with the wider Mediterranean world. First, it focuses on the funerary domain as an arena of social and ideological negotiation. Early Cypriot period and Middle Cypriot period burial grounds at Vounous, Lapithos and Karmi on the central north coast provide an extensive body of data from a bounded geographic region. The north coast cemeteries provide a remarkable insight into an emerging ritual iconography. Whereas, the Late Cypriot (LC) period saw a rapid institutionalisation of ritual practice and the emergence of a coercive ritual ideology. Enkomi played a major role in the negotiation of authority and compliance on Cyprus in the early stages of the LC. A clear ideological link between cult and metallurgy, however, is apparent in the iconography of the 'Ingot God', recovered from the Sanctuary of the Ingot God.

Page 547 of 1200