Flaked-Stone Artifacts in Greece during the Historical Period

Abstract

The evidence for historical flaked-stone artifacts in Greece is summarized. In recent years a number of such artifacts have been recognized in stratified deposits of the early Iron Age, the Protogeometric, Geometric, and Classical periods. Historical flaked-stone artifacts were probably used for making agricultural tools and were low-cost substitutes for metal. The evidence indicates that an ancient Greco-Roman flaking tradition may bridge the gap between the latest Bronze Age tradition and the gun-flint and threshing sledge flint knappers of recent times. An economic model of innovation is used to explain the use of stone tools after the introduction of metal.     

A PROVENANCE STUDY OF THE GILGAMESH FRAGMENT FROM MEGIDDO

A Late Bronze Age fragment of a clay cuneiform tablet with the Gilgamesh Epic was found in the 1950s on the surface at Megiddo. The presence of scribes in Megiddo is evident from the el‐Amarna letters. This is the only first‐class literary Mesopotamian text ever to be found in Canaan. The aim of the present study was to examine the origin of this tablet, by mineralogical and elemental methods. The petrographic and NAA results indicate that the tablet was not Mesopotamian, but was written in southern Israel. The implications of this result in view of the small corpus of scholarly cuneiform texts discovered in Egypt and the southern Levant in the second millennium bce are discussed.     

Heat treatment of Polish flints

In Poland three types of flint (chocolate, spotted and banded) were intensively mined from the Terminal Palaeolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Although heating of flint to improve its flaking properties was practised across the world from ∼110,000 years ago to the recent, particularly in southwestern Europe, heat treatment of flint in Poland is known from only two sites.     

Slicing Cut Marks on Animal Bones: Diagnostics for Identifying Stone Tool Type and Raw Material

Abstract

Butchering implements leave identifying signatures on bones. From these signatures, it is possible to distinguish the different raw materials and types of chipped stone butchering tools. The results of recent experiments enable us to distinguish the different types of raw materials and tools used in the butchering process, in particular those implements that produce slicing cut marks. Three types of chipped stone tools (blades,flakes, and side scrapers) and raw materials (flint, obsidian, and quartzite), as well as issues relevant to lithic production and use were examined and tested. Silicone molds of cut marks produced by each of the instruments were made and subjected to analysis in light optical and scanning electron microscopes under various levels of magnification. The criteria used for distinguishing tool type, raw material, type of production and use characteristics of the respective cutting instruments are presented, as well as a discussion of the application of the experimental results to the Early Bronze Age I site of Afridar, Israel. The data from Afridar indicate that almost all of the butchering marks on animal bones from the site were made by stone tools, in particular haphazardly-made flakes.     

FLINT PROCUREMENT AND NEOLITHIC AXE PRODUCTION ON THE SOUTH DOWNS: A RE-ASSESSMENT

Summary. This paper reviews the evidence for Neolithic flint axe production on the South Downs in the light of recent chemical analysis of axes and the author's own research involving surface flint collections. The organisation, status and chronology of the Sussex flint mines is discussed and the distribution of flint axes described. Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age settlement is shown to concentrate on the clay-with-flints which is also a major flint source. It is argued that the production of axes from mined flint was replaced by utilisation of surface deposits in the later Neolithic and case studies are presented.     

THE MAIKOP CRANIA REVISITED

Measurements of crania of people associated with the Early Bronze Age Maikop culture of the Northern Caucasus are analyzed. Data on Maikop males, new and previously published, were compared with those concerning chronologically and geographically related people using the canonical variate analysis. The Maikop series turned out to be isolated and no close parallels to it were found among the Bronze Age groups, either from the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe or from the Caucasus and Southwestern Central Asia. While certain parallels seem to point to the Near East, they are too few to warrant definite conclusions.     

The History and Charters of Ingulfus Considered

The current Bronze Age settlement model for the middle and upper Great Ouse valley is based on the distribution of ring ditches from aerial photography, their excavation and the occurrence of stray finds. This settlement study, which is part of a broader survey programme, has initially concentrated on obtaining flint distribution patterns by field walking to see in what ways these could amplify and perhaps solve the problems posed by present evidence. It was also intended to assess its value as a tool for problem solving in the context of landscape archaeology and settlement studies. Although the areas examined were small and selective, the flint distribution patterns, when considered with other evidence suggested that ring ditches were part of complex and extensive settlement locations. However it was evident that the ring ditches were set away from the main habitation foci.     

THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN LATE BRONZE AGE GLASS TRADE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE PANAZTEPE FINDS

The Late Bronze Age is a period during which intensive transactions occurred in the Mediterranean and Near East. The glass trade became a real industry, exhibiting the innovations of the period from around the region. The glass finds of the Late Bronze Age consisted of valuable gifts exchanged between the elite classes of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Aegean. The objective of this study is to reconstruct Late Bronze Age glass trade systems in the light of archaeological data recovered from Panaztepe, located in the Izmir region of west Anatolia. The glass finds at Panaztepe are represented by examples such as necklace spacers, relief beads, and spherical and circular beads recovered from the two burial grounds. While the interior chronologies of the tombs have not been completely distinguished, it is thought that most of these finds were used during the Late Helladic III A–B periods.     

A Comparison Study of Middle Bronze Age II Daggers and Their Rivets as a Tool for a Better Understanding of Their Production

The Middle Bronze Age II is a period during which there exists a contemporaneous usage of arsenic copper and tin bronze for metal weaponry production. In order to learn more about the alloys used in this period, the blades and rivets from 65 daggers of two significantly different types, which were discovered at the Rishon LeZion (RL) cemetery, Israel, were tested by the non‐destructive method of X‐ray fluorescence (XRF). The results reveal new knowledge of the alloys selected for dagger and rivet production, both of which represent fine examples of the Middle Bronze Age II Southern Levant in metal industry.     

Worked Human Femur from Gohar Tepe,Iran

A simple tool made from a gracile human femoral shaft was retrieved from a small animal bone assemblage found in a Late Bronze Age stratum at Gohar Tepe, Iran. The specimen has been identified as a chisel or gouge for which no analogous examples are known in the Near East. Studies examining similar tools from other regions suggest that such a tool may have been used for wood processing or pottery smoothing. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A pottery workshop with flint tools on blades knapped with copper at Nausharo (Indus civilisation, ca. 2500 BC)

Twenty years after its discovery, the pottery workshop of Nausharo (province of Baluchistan, Pakistan), which yielded a series of knapped stone tools in association with unbaked sherds and clay waste, is still of unique importance in Asian protohistorical studies. The types of pottery production (sandy marl fabrics) identified in this workshop, which is dated to ca. 2500 BC, correspond to the majority of the domestic pottery discovered at the site during the first two phases of the Indus Civilisation. The flint blades discovered in the workshop were made from exotic flint, coming from zones close to the great Indus sites such as Mohenjo-Daro and Chanhu-Daro. This is also the origin of a small amount of the pottery (micaceous fabrics) found at Nausharo in domestic contexts, e.g. Black-Slipped-Jars. The butts of the blades display features characteristic of pressure detachment with a copper pressure point. Gloss and microwear traces (polish) testify to the blades' having been used for finishing the clay vessels: for actual finishing (trimming) while they were being turned on a wheel, and possibly also for scraping by hand. Both of these operations are distinctly attested to by the presence in the workshop of two different types of clay shavings.     

Original DocumentsRalph Lord Cromwell

The excavation of four ploughed-out round barrows in Milton Keynes has produced evidence of relevance to barrow design, ceramic chronology, economy, settlement patterns and population in the second millennium B.C.

The chronological usefulness of Longworth's Collared Urn Classification is considered and a long survival of All-Over-Cord Beaker tradition in southern Britain is suggested. Three of the sites produced a mixed flint assemblage ranging in date from Mesolithic to Bronze Age. A local pastoral economy, possibly associated with transhumance, is indicated at two sites. It is suggested that barrow distribution coincided with settlement distribution. An estimate is made of the proportion of the population who received barrow burial and a formula is derived for computing the size of local Bronze Age populations.     

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.     

An investigation of the origins of cattle and aurochs deposited in the Early Bronze Age barrows at Gayhurst and Irthlingborough

The Early Bronze Age round barrows at Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire and Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire contained remarkably large quantities of cattle (Bos taurus) remains. At Irthlingborough, at least 185 skulls with smaller numbers of mandibles, shoulder blades and pelves were found together with a small number of skeletal elements from aurochs (Bos primigenius). In contrast, the remains from Gayhurst are dominated by the limb bones from more than 300 animals. This study employed strontium isotope ratio analysis of cattle tooth enamel from 15 cattle and one aurochs to investigate the diversity of the animals' origins at both sites and provide insights into Early Bronze Age funerary practices. Although strontium results show that most of the cattle and the aurochs included in this study were consistent with local origins, one animal from each barrow was born remotely, most likely in western Britain. In addition, a second Gayhurst animal was consistent with origins in a region of chalk rather than the local Jurassic sediments.     

Facilitating Interaction: Board Games as Social Lubricants in the Ancient Near East

This re‐evaluation of existing data on board games from the Near Eastern Bronze Age demonstrates their function as social lubricants in cross‐cultural interaction. Board games are situated theoretically as liminoid practices, which lie outside the bounds of normative social behaviour and allow for interaction across social boundaries. Utilizing double‐sided game boards, with an indigenous game on one side and a newly introduced game on the other, the games of senet, mehen and twenty squares provide evidence for social interactions. Cypriots had adopted Egyptian mehen and senet by the third millennium BC, and indigenized the games. This lies in contrast to the game of twenty squares, which had a particular role among elites in the Late Bronze Age interaction sphere. This anthropological discussion of evidence relating to gaming seeks to inspire further research on the role of board games in society.     

Specialization and social inequality in Bronze Age SE Arabia: analyzing the development of production strategies and economic networks using agent-based modeling

This paper investigates the role of specialized production strategies in the development of socio-economic inequalities in Bronze Age south-eastern (SE) Arabia, and particularly, the ways in which a localized, internal exchange economy may have produced stress and instability in the SE Arabian socio-economic system. While archaeological research has established that the communities of SE Arabia participated in a widespread Bronze Age exchange system that included areas of the ancient Near East, South Asia, and Central Asia, it is unclear to what degree this interaction fostered the broad-scale socio-economic changes seen in the Early Bronze Age of SE Arabia. Here we present the results of an agent-based model that suggest the nature of the internal exchange economy in SE Arabia itself may have precipitated the social conditions necessary for change by allowing individuals to profit disproportionately. We thus emphasize the importance of local production strategies in generating socio-economic change, in addition to the well-established economic and cultural contacts with the wider Bronze Age world.     

YUGOSLAVIAN TIN DEPOSITS AND THE EARLY BRONZE AGE INDUSTRIES OF THE AEGEAN REGION

Summary. This paper provides a synopsis of those tin sources available to prehistoric communities in Europe and the Near East. Moreover, it is designed to introduce to archaeologists the recent discovery of substantial cassiterite deposits in Yugoslavia, and to discuss their potential and possible exploitation by Early Bronze Age metallurgists in the area around the Aegean.