Ceramics, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography: Locating Meaning in Southern African Iron Age Ceramic Assemblages

For ceramics to be relevant in the Southern African Iron Age, archaeologists must broaden their theoretical base to include social and other contexts when interpreting material culture items such as pottery. Pottery remains critical in understanding cultural dynamics in the region for the past two millennia, but current usage is narrow in scope. Using ethnohistorical data and archaeological examples from South Africa and Zimbabwe, we argue that pottery provides valuable information on the region's Iron Age, if archaeologists address the social meaning of ceramic assemblages. Ceramic production among rural communities provides the basis on which a wide range of social issues are discussed and used to critique pottery recovered from archaeology. Ethnography suggests that ceramic assemblages are context specific, and archaeologists are cautioned against making generic statements on the basis of similarities of vessel shape and decoration motif.     

Self-Citation in Archaeology: Age, Gender, Prestige, and the Self

Citation analyses in archaeology have detected prestige tactics, shifts in research agendas, and patterns of gender differentiation. This paper focuses on self-citation in archaeology and systematically analyzes the factors that affect rates of self-citation. Self-citation rates in archaeology are significantly higher than in socio-cultural anthropology but are average for a social science with interdisciplinary ties to the physical sciences. Self-citation correlates weakly with the gender of the citing author and the geographic and thematic focus of research, but correlates strongly with the age of the author. Additional analyses reveal partial evidence for the use of self-citation as a prestige tactic. The paper concludes with a discussion of citations to writers close to the author (mentors, friends).     

Finding Fear in the Iron Age Of Southern France

Abstract

Changes in settlement organisation in Mediterranean France throughout the Iron Age have long been viewed as a social and cultural by-product of contact with Greece and Rome. While relationships with the state societies of the Mediterranean would doubtless have left their mark on settlement structures, it is possible that changing habitat-forms during this period could also be used to extrapolate patterns of conflict in the region.

Recent anthropological research has revealed a correlation between 'warlike', non-state societies and 'socialization for fear'. In ethnographic accounts this manifests itself as an increased delineation of personal space and reductions in social access on an individual level. It is possible that the fairly commonplace sets of evidence which reveal this 'fear' are apparent in the settlement record of the later Iron Age throughout the Bouches du Rhone.     

从黏土到人工制品:非洲早期铁器时代制铁技术的资源选择

在漫长的人类史中,铁器时代占有重要的地位,而早期铁器时代的炼铁技术则更值得研究和探索。本文是麻省理工学院的S.特里·乔尔兹写于上世纪80年代的一篇实验性研究文章。其中阐述了对于东非坦桑尼亚卡盖拉地区早期铁器时代炼铁所选用黏土的实验过程以及研究结果。作者长期在卡盖拉地区进行考察,并通过田野采集、实验分析和测试焙烧的方法对该地区早期铁器时代炼铁熔炉的材质选择进行了研究。结果表明,卡盖拉地区的史前炼铁工人对于建炉材质有着自己的认识,他们会选择耐火性较高的黏土来建造可能会承受极高温度的部分,如焙烧中心、风口末端,并且已经掌握了通过向黏土添加瘠性掺合料,从而提高黏土的耐火性并防止其在极端高温中膨胀、破裂、剥落。同时,他们在材料黏土的耐火性、稳定性和可获得性方面进行了权衡。他们并不完全依赖从远处沼泽地区采集的高品质黏土,而是更多地选择居住环境周围容易获得的沙质黏土和白蚁冢。通过向其中添加掺合料,这些材料同样在建炉过程中取得了良好的效果。本文的研究揭示出非洲早期铁器时代的炼铁工人对材料黏土的选择方式和依据,说明了他们非常重视综合考量,权衡技术控制、劳动效率和材料可获得性等诸方面因素,从而对于制铁资源做出了合理的折衷选择。     

Revisiting Kalundu Mound,Zambia: Implications for the Timing of Social and Subsistence Transitions in Iron Age Southern Africa

African Archaeological Review - Novel trajectories of food production, urbanism, and inter-regional trade fueled the emergence of numerous complex Iron Age polities in central and southern Africa....     

Cities of the Sea: Maritime Trade and the Origin of Philistine Settlement in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant

The question of the origins of the Philistines, who settled in the southern Levant in the early Iron Age (12th century BC) has long been the subject of debate. Traditionally, they have been understood to lie with the 'Sea Peoples,' raiders who were thought to have wreaked havoc in the eastern Mediterranean at this time. A new conceptualization of the 'Sea Peoples,' phenomenon as the emergence of decentralized maritime trade leads to new questions regarding the settlements associated with it, namely those along the southern Levantine coastal plain and especially those considered 'Philistine.' It is the aim of this paper to reinterpret these sites in terms of their functional role within this decentralized network and it is suggested that they were established and maintained specifically for that purpose. Finally, the development of this network of interconnections is related to the parallel emergence of the Phoenicians and the Israelites in the eleventh and tenth centuries.     

From Iberia to the Southern Levant: The Movement of Silver Across the Mediterranean in the Early Iron Age

Journal of World Prehistory - The origins of the silver trade across the Mediterranean, and the role of the Phoenicians in this phenomenon, remain contentious. This is partly because of...     

Excavations at Mlambalasi Rockshelter: a Terminal Pleistocene to Recent Iron Age Record in Southern Tanzania

The Mlambalasi rockshelter in the Iringa Region of southern Tanzania has rich artifactual deposits spanning the Later Stone Age (LSA), Iron Age, and historic periods. Middle Stone Age (MSA) artifacts are also present on the slope in front of the rockshelter. Extensive, systematic excavations in 2006 and 2010 by members of the Iringa Region Archaeological Project (IRAP) illustrate a complex picture of repeated occupations and reuse of the rockshelter during an important time in human history. Direct dates on Achatina shell and ostrich eggshell (OES) beads suggest that the earliest occupation levels excavated at Mlambalasi, which are associated with human burials, are terminal Pleistocene in age. This is exceptional given the rarity of archaeological sites, particularly those with human remains and other preserved organic material, from subtropical Africa between 200,000 and 10,000 years before present. This paper reports on the excavations to date and analysis of artifactual finds from the site. The emerging picture is one of varied, ephemeral use over millennia as diverse human groups were repeatedly attracted to this fixed feature on the landscape.     

Urbanization in Iron Age Europe: Trajectories,Patterns, and Social Dynamics

The development of the first urban centers is one of the most fundamental phenomena in the history of temperate Europe. New research demonstrates that the earliest cities developed north of the Alps between the sixth and fifth centuries BC as a consequence of processes of demographic growth, hierarchization, and centralization that have their roots in the immediately preceding period. However, this was an ephemeral urban phenomenon, which was followed by a period of crisis characterized by the abandonment of major centers and the return to more decentralized settlement patterns. A new trend toward urbanization occurred in the third and second centuries BC with the appearance of supra-local sanctuaries, open agglomerations, and finally the fortified oppida. Late Iron Age settlement patterns and urban trajectories were much more complex than traditionally thought and included manifold interrelations between open and fortified sites. Political and religious aspects played a key role in the development of central places, and in many cases the oppida were established on locations that already had a sacred character as places for rituals and assemblies. The Roman conquest largely brought to an end Iron Age urbanization processes, but with heterogeneous results of both abandonment and disruption and also continuity and integration.     

Sheep wool in Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe

This study presents the results of a series of wool measurements from Bronze Age and Iron Age skins and textiles from Hallstatt, and Bronze Age textiles from Scandinavia and the Balkans. A new method of classification that was set up and applied on mostly mineralised Iron Age material has now been applied to a large body of non-mineralised material from the Bronze and Iron Ages. Three types of microscopes were used and their advantages and disadvantages assessed. The results of the investigation cast new light on sheep breeding and fibre processing in prehistoric Europe, and suggest that different sheep breeds existed in Bronze Age Europe.     

Elite Strategies and the Spread of Technological Innovation: The Spread of Iron in the Bronze Age Societies of Denmark and Southern Korea

I look at the process and speed of innovation spread, examining the economic aspects from the perspective of those who adopt the innovation. Defining innovation adoption as an investment which requires initial cost and risks, I argue that at the time of introduction of a new technology that is expected to have socioeconomic importance, elites of adopting societies try to avoid the initial cost and risks of adoption, actively intervening in the process of its spread. Thus, it is crucial to analyze the strategies and needs of elites, which strongly influence the speed of spread. One of these strategies is to change innovation's role by locating the innovation in a different realm of economy. Comparing the spread of iron technology in the Danish and southern Korean Bronze Ages, I demonstrate that differences in what elites needed to obtain through iron technology in different contexts critically affected the speed and process of iron spread into the two regions.     

Ceramics,settlements and Late Iron Age migrations

Summary The Late Iron Age Luangwa pottery tradition represents some matrilineal Western Bantu speakers, with an origin in a Forest Neolithic, who moved into parts of Central Africa previously occupied by patrilineal Eastern Bantu speakers, represented by the Chifumbaze Complex. Eastern Bantu speaking Nguni and Sotho-Tswana probably had their Early Iron Age origins in a Urewe facies in southern Tanzania, and their movement into South Africa appears to have been connected with the Late Iron Age spread of the Luangwa tradition.

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Résumé La tradition céramique Luangwa de l'âge du fer récent est la manifestation archéologique des gens matrilinéaires qui parlaient des langues Bantu occidentales. Ces gens, originaires d'une Néolithique des forêts, pénétraient des régions de l'Afrique central dominées jusqu'ici par des gens patrilinéaires, qui parlaient des langues Bantu orientales et qui sont représentés archéologiquement par le complexe Chifumbaze. Les origines des gens Nguni et Sotho-Tswana, qui parlent des langues Bantu orientales, sont vraisemblablement à chercher à l'âge du fer ancien dans un faciès Urewe du sud tanzanien. L'immigration de ces gens dans l'Afrique du Sud semble avoir été liée à la diffusion de la tradition Luangwa.

     

Tunnel engineering in the Iron Age: geoarchaeology of the Siloam Tunnel,Jerusalem

The Siloam Tunnel (ST) is the best-identified biblical structure that can be entered today. We use geological, structural, and chemical features of ST and its internal deposits to show that it is an authentic engineering project, without any pre-existing natural conduit that could have guided its excavators. Radiometrically and historically dated to ∼700 BCE, ST pinpoints the technological advance in leveling techniques that was essential for the construction of such a long tunnel without intermediate shafts. A combination of geological and archaeological evidence demonstrates that the circuitous route of ST and the final meeting of the two excavating teams are associated with continuous modifications of the plan to allow acoustic communication between hewers and the surface teams. Hydraulic plaster was applied throughout the tunnel in order to seal voids of dissolution and tectonic origin. Organic material accidentally entrapped in the plaster was carbon 14 dated, and speleothems were dated by U–Th, both corroborating the historic and epigraphic evidence ascribing the engineering advance in tunneling techniques to the Judahite King Hezekiah.