青铜器与青铜时代

青铜是指红铜（纯铜）与锡或铅等元素的合金,因表面色泽黄中泛白,略显青色而得名。青铜的熔点比红铜低,而硬度却比红铜高,所以具有较强的可塑性与较高的耐用性,适合于铸造各种器具。     

The Early Bronze Age at Tel Nagila

The excavations of R. Amiran and A. Eitan at the site of Tel Nagila are best known for the Middle Bronze Age remains exposed at the site. Yet Early Bronze remains were sporadically excavated in restricted locations where the excavators deepened their investigations below Middle Bronze strata. As such, a study of the albeit limited EB remains furnishes us with an opportunity to provide a more complete settlement history of the site, as well as a limited view of ceramic tradition that was common at the site. The following paper will present the stratigraphic and ceramic information available, and suggests a rather early date within Early Bronze III of the remains, as well as evidence for Early Bronze Age I occupation of the site.     

The Origins of the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia

White and Hamilton (J World Prehist 22: 357–97, 2009) have proposed a model for the origin of the Southeast Asian Bronze Age founded on seven AMS radiocarbon determinations from the Northeast Thai site of Ban Chiang, which would date the initial Bronze Age there to about 2000 BC. Since this date is too early for the derivation of a bronze industry from the documented exchange that linked Southeast Asia with Chinese states during the 2nd millennium BC, they have identified the Seima-Turbino 3rd millennium BC forest-steppe technology of the area between the Urals and the Altai as the source of the Southeast Asian Bronze Age. We challenge this model by presenting a new chronological framework for Ban Chiang, which supports our model that the knowledge of bronze metallurgy reached Southeast Asia only in the late 2nd millennium BC, through contact with the states of the Yellow and Yangtze valleys.     

Buccino: The Early Bronze Age Village of Tufariello

Abstract

The excavation of the Early Bronze Age village at Tufariello (Buccinno) in southern Italy represents a major archaeological advance in a little-known period of Italian prehistory in this region. The emphasis of the following report is in the integration of archaeological material, especially the statistical study of abundant pottery material from three distinct stratigraphic phases of the site, and the discussion of the unexpected rectangularly planned buildings of the site, with reports on evidence of flora and fauna. The result is the first synthetic view of the life of a southern Italian community of the end of the third millennium B.C.

The excavation has been the most recent phase of the exploration of this area undertaken since 1968 by Brown University in collaboration with the Superintendency of Antiquities of Salerno. This report is made up of the following sections.

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Introduction and Stratigraphy by R. Ross Holloway</list-item><list-item>

Architecture by Ned P. Nabers</list-item><list-item>

Pottery by Susan Snow Lukesh</list-item><list-item>

Stock Economy by Graeme Barker</list-item><list-item>

Stone and Bone Objects by Nicholas B. Hartmann</list-item><list-item>

Pottery Manufacture by Ethel R. Eaton</list-item><list-item>

Metal Tools by Hugh McKerrell and Ethel R. Eaton</list-item><list-item>

Vegetal Remains by William LaCroix Phippen</list-item><list-item>

Preliminary Geological Note by Giuseppe Leuci</list-item></list>     

香港的青铜时代及其分段

早在 2 0世纪 2 0年代 ,香港地区就有了考古活动。 2 0世纪 70年代 ,特别是 80年代以来 ,为了配合工程建设 ,香港地区进行了大量的考古工作 ,迄今为止 ,发现认为是青铜时代的遗址达 2 6处① ,石刻数处。目前已有条件对香港青铜时代及其遗存作一初步探索。一、香港青铜时代的确认在学术界 ,对香港青铜时代这一基本问题有不同的看法。这些看法是在一些文章中顺带提出来的。大多数学者认为香港的史前人们经历过这个时代② ;也有学者认为香港为青铜文明的边缘地带 ,迄今为止未发现过本地区特征性的青铜器 ,因而是否经历过青铜时代还有待深入的探…     

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.     

The existence of archery in Early Bronze Age southern Levant warfare: a note

The Early Bronze Age was a time of major changes in southern Levantine regions. The spread of urbanisation in the course of the third millennium BC was accompanied by various socio-political transformations, tensions and also violent encounters, even if the evidence for the latter is hard to detect in the archaeological record. The almost complete absence of arrowheads from settlements and tombs in the southern Levant from this period has led to the assumption that combat archery was not employed during the Early Bronze Age.

This paper challenges this orthodoxy using evidence from the southern Levant and beyond, and it concludes that archery was employed in combat activities during the Early Bronze Age, albeit on a small scale that was determined by military considerations.     

Empire as network: Spheres of material interaction in Late Bronze Age Anatolia

Hegemonic dominance relationships and the limited intentional material expressions of imperial power they usually encompass pose an interesting and well-known problem for the archaeology of early empires. One way of approaching domination in the archaeological record is through the synthetic analysis of different modes of imperial-local interaction at overlapping socio-political levels and spheres of culture. In this paper, four material culture categories are considered with the aim of characterizing Hittite imperial relationships in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and northern Syria. They include pottery traditions and their degree of susceptibility for central influence, diachronic settlement developments, the distribution of imperial administrative technology, and an ideological discourse carried out through landscape monuments. From the spatial and chronological signatures of these overlapping networks of interaction, a more nuanced understanding of the process of empire is beginning to emerge.     

Agriculture in the Central Asian Bronze Age

Journal of World Prehistory - By the late third/early second millennium BC, increased interconnectivity in the mountains of Central Asia linked populations across Eurasia. This increasing...     

A Bronze Age Quarry in Eastern Crete

Abstract

The sandstone quarry at Mochlos is one of four major quarries in eastern Crete that were worked during the New Palace Period of Minoan civilization (ca. 1700–1450 B.C.) to produce large ashlar blocks for nearby Minoan sites. At that time sandstone, or ammoudha, as it is known locally, was especially valued as a building material, partly because of its distinctive color and texture, but mainly because of the ease with which it could be cut, and the stone was used extensively for exterior façades, for walls around interior courts, and for other architectural features of the more important buildings on these sites. This article describes the quarry at Mochlos in some detail, including the quarrying techniques employed, and argues that the destination of the stone from the Mochlos quarry was the Minoan palace at Gournia. The article ends with a comparison of the four ammoudha quarries in eastern Crete.