Maritime Worlds Collide: Agents of Transference and the Metastasis of Seaborne Threats at the End of the Bronze Age

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seems to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference’, as well as an increase in the scale of ship­–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collapse. This paper addresses this in two parts, beginning with the ‘background’ evidence for a constant state of maritime threat in the centuries leading up to the end of the Bronze Age, and concluding with the ‘foreground’ evidence for zones of transference and the transmission of groundbreaking elements of naval technology in the years surrounding the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.     

Vices Are Not What They Used To Be: The Archaeological Importance of the Term “Vices” in Argentinean Historical Military Documents of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

This article characterizes the sense and use of the word vicios (vices) in historical documents in nineteenth-century Argentina. The term was frequently used among soldiers, indigenous people, and criollos who occupied the border. The “vices” consisted of a range of highly appreciated edible goods (including tobacco, yerba mate [Ilex paraguariensis], and sugar). Documentary sources do not agree what products fall under the term vicios. We propose some archaeological expectations with regard to each of these products.     

The Transition from the Later Stone Age to Iron Age in Kondoa, Central Tanzania

Many scholars assume that the spread of Iron Age (IA) agropastoralism traditions to Sub-Saharan Africa was associated with the domination, assimilation, or dislocation of Later Stone Age (LSA) autochthonous populations. Archaeological data from Kondoa, central Tanzania show evidence of interaction between IA agropastoralists and LSA hunter-gatherers around 1030 years bp. Despite that, replacement of the LSA traditions seems to have taken a considerably slow pace, leading to the suggestion that autochthonous LSA groups were not displaced or assimilated by IA people but became agropastoralists through a process of acculturation. This outcome raises questions about the reliability of the assimilation or displacement models typically used by scholars to account for the fate of prehistoric LSA hunter-gatherers during contact with IA agropastoralists in Sub-Saharan Africa.     

Book Reviews

Ellen Juhl Christiansen, The Covenant in Judaism &; Paul. A Study in Ritual Boundaries as Identity Markers (Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Christentums XXVII; Brill, Leiden 1995, pp 396.

Eberhard Bons, Psalm 31, Rettung als Paradigma. Eine synchron‐le‐serorientierte Analyse (Frankfurter Theologische Studien 48; Verlag J. Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1994), pp 307.

Magne Sæb?, editor (in co‐operation with Chris Brekelmans and Me‐nahem Haran), Hebrew Bible I Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300). Part 1. Antiquity. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck &; Ruprecht 1996. 847 pp. Price: DM 210.

Martin Rösel, Bibelkunde des Alten Testaments. Neukirchen 1996. Pp.182.

Hans M. Barstad, The Myth of the Empty Land. Symbolae Osloenses fasasuppl. XXVIII, Scandinavian University Press, Oslo 1996. Pp 113.

Klaus Samuel Davidowicz, Gershom Scholem und Martin Buber. Die Geschichte eines Mißverständnisses. Neukirchener Theologische Dissertationen und Habilationen 5; Neukirchen 1995, Pp 166.