| 1. |
- Bradley, Richard, et al.
(författare)
-
Meetings Between Strangers in the Nordic Bronze Age : The Evidence of Southern Swedish Rock Art.
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - : Cambridge University Press. - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; 86, s. 261-283
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The rock art of southern Scandinavia is characterized by depictions of watercraft. The majority are closeto the coast, and they have been the primary focus of research. Less attention has been paid to similarrepresentations associated with two large inland lakes in southern Sweden. In this article we present theresults of fieldwork around Lake Vänern and Lake Vättern and consider the relationship of this rock artto the better-known images on the coast. We explore the practicalities of navigating between the sea andthe interior and suggest that there was an important contrast between an early eastern sphere extendingto Lake Vättern from the Baltic and a later western sphere connecting Lake Vänern with the Atlantic.
|
|
| 2. |
- Horn, Christian, 1978
(författare)
-
Water and the Afterlife – Water-related Resources in the Burial Construction of the Nordic Bronze Age
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (PPS). - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; , s. 1-24
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The waterscape, including the sea, rivers, and lakes, was highly important to communities living during the Nordic Early Bronze Age (1800/1700–1100 bc). Waterways acted as highways that facilitated journeys, trade, and warfare, enabling maritime warriors and others to distinguish themselves. This is reflected in the maritime location of rock art and important Early Bronze Age burials, which have been used to reconstruct the Nordic Bronze Age cosmology. This centres on the journey of the sun across the sky during the day, and the underworld during night. This article analyses the use of water-related resources, such as seaweed, petrified organics, beach pebbles, and molluscs, in the construction of burials, which has received little attention despite renewed interest in the maritime seascape. The data demonstrate that local communities used different resources, indicating that a common belief system was realised in local differences. These marine materials were collected from the beach, which can be conceptualised as the liminal zone between the land of the living and the sea of the dead. It is suggested that these materials, in line with other funerary practices, helped to guide the recently deceased into the afterlife in the sea.
|
|
| 3. |
- Kristiansen, Kristian, 1948, et al.
(författare)
-
Connected Histories: the Dynamics of Bronze Age Interaction and Trade 1500–1100 bc
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; 81, s. 361-392
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Bronze Age was the first epoch in which societies became irreversibly linked in their co-dependence on ores and metallurgical skills that were unevenly distributed in geographical space. Access to these critical resources was secured not only via long-distance physical trade routes, making use of landscape features such as river networks, as well as built roads, but also by creating immaterial social networks, consisting of interpersonal relations and diplomatic alliances, established and maintained through the exchange of extraordinary objects (gifts). In this article, we reason about Bronze Age communication networks and apply the results of use-wear analysis to create robust indicators of the rise and fall of political and commercial networks. In conclusion, we discuss some of the historical forces behind the phenomena and processes observable in the archaeological record of the Bronze Age in Europe and beyond.
|
|
| 4. |
- Kähler Holst, Mads, et al.
(författare)
-
Bronze Age 'Herostrats': Ritual, Political and Domestic Economies in Early Bronze Age Denmark
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; 79, s. 265-296
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article we argue that within the Danish Bronze Age there was a short-lived period (roughly 1500–1150 BC) that witnessed a dramatic investment of resources into the construction of monumental architecture in the form of barrows and long houses. These investments had far-reaching long-term effects on the local landscape with negative consequences for agricultural productivity. We use two extraordinary well-documented excavations of a barrow (Skelhøj) and a long house (Lega°rd) as a model for labour organisation and resource allocation, which is calculated against the number of barrows and long houses recorded in the Danish Sites and Monuments database for the period. An astonishing minimum of 50,000 barrows were constructed, devastating an estimated 120,000–150,000 hectares of grassland. During the same time period an estimated 200,000 long houses were constructed and renewed every 30–60 years. In densely settled regions the effects are easily recognisable in pollen diagrams as a near-complete deforestation. Thereby, the productive potential of the economy was, in effect, reduced. The situation was unsustainable in a long-term perspective and, at least on a local scale, it implied the risk of collapse. On the other hand, the exploitation of resources also appears to have entailed a new way of operating in the landscape, which led to a new organisation of the landscape itself and a restructuring of society in the Late Bronze Age. The intense character of these investments in monumental architecture is assumed to rely primarily on ritual and competitive rationales, and it exemplifies how the overall economy may be considered an unstable or contradictory interplay between ritual, political, and domestic rationales
|
|
| 5. |
- Rose, Helene Agerskov, 1983, et al.
(författare)
-
Dynamic Funerary Monuments of North-western Europe: Chronological Modelling of a Late Neolithic–Pre-Roman Iron Age Cemetery Complex at Mang de Bargen, Northern Germany
- 2024
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (PPS). - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729.
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study presents the first extensive radiocarbon dating programme of Bronze Age material from northern Germany, and it combines radiocarbon dates, relative typo-chronological date ranges, and stratigraphic data within a Bayesian chronological framework. We estimate the cemetery complex at Mang de Bargen (Bornhoved, distr. Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein) to be in use for more than two millennia, which is exceptionally long in northern Germany and in a wider European context. The site provides a unique insight into the dynamic nature of burial monuments and associated burial practices, from the Late Neolithic and into the Pre-Roman Iron Age (c. 2500 50 BC). The barrow building tradition lasted around a millennium (c. 2350 1300 BC), with several barrows in concurrent use. The barrows were persistently re-used as burial ground, both within living memory of the primary graves, but also long after. The burial intensity varied over the cemeterys use-life, with distinct peaks in the Late Neolithic, when the first barrows were erected; in the Older Bronze Age when more barrows were erected; in the Younger Bronze Age, when secondary cremation graves were added to existing barrows; and finally in the Pre-Roman Iron Age, with the addition of an urnfield. The funerary rituals vary considerably over the period: from inhumation to cremation, and from primary and secondary graves in barrows to flat graves. Cremation was introduced in the 14th century BC but inhumation and cremation were used in parallel for around a century before the former ritual was abandoned c. 1300 BC. The study provides absolute chronological distributions of the grave types present at Mang de Bargen and shows them to be comparable to other sites at a regional and over-regional scale, successfully demonstrating how new types were quickly adopted across large parts of north-western Europe.
|
|
| 6. |
- Sabatini, Serena, 1974, et al.
(författare)
-
Bronze Age Textile & Wool Economy: The Case of the Terramare Site of Montale, Italy
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - : Cambridge University Press (CUP). - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; 84, s. 359-385
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- ABSTRACT At the onset of the 2nd millennium bc, a wool economy emerged across continental Europe. Archaeological, iconographical, and written sources from the Near East and the Aegean show that a Bronze Age wool economy involved considerable specialised labour and large scale animal husbandry. Resting only on archaeological evidence, detailed knowledge of wool economies in Bronze Age Europe has been limited, but recent investigations at the Terramare site of Montale, in northern Italy, document a high density of spindle whorls that strongly supports the existence of village-level specialised manufacture of yarn. Production does not appear to have been attached to an emerging elite nor was it fully independent of social constraints. We propose that, although probably managed by local elites, wool production was a community-based endeavour oriented towards exports aimed at obtaining locally unavailable raw materials and goods. © The Prehistoric Society 2018 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
|
|
| 7. |
- Skoglund, Peter, et al.
(författare)
-
A Multisensory Approach to Rock Art : Exploring Tactile and Visual Dimensions in the Southern Scandinavian Rock Art Tradition
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - : Cambridge University Press. - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; 86, s. 95-110
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper discusses rock art in southern Scandinavia as a multisensory format, where both sight and touch would have contributed to the comprehension of the images. From a structural semiotic point of view, we suggest that rock art can be construed as an organised set of features, such as visual and tactile elements, organised into heterogeneous unities with dynamic relations between elements that can change over time with respect to how they are experienced. We argue that in order to understand the rock art medium, it is crucial to take into consideration the multisensory interaction between the perceiver and the qualities of the rock art surface. The reason for including tactile elements in our interpretation of the conception of rock art is the way it was created: by hands interacting with tools and rock surfaces, as well as the spontaneous human tendency to explore the physical world through touch. One can identify key features in the images that would arguably facilitate tactile recognition, as well as be better explained from a multisensorial perspective. This includes the position of the images on horizontal outcrops, the moderate size of the images, the application of an orthographic perspective, the use of ‘tactile markers’ (ie crucial features having a strategic function for understanding images by touch), and the occurrence of incomplete images. A multisensorial perspective on rock art furthermore has semiotic implications. Incomplete images, for example, can be understood as indexical stand-ins for the whole imagined picture, ie as iconic indices. A multisensorial approach to Scandinavian rock art thus allows for new explanations for certain design choices, as well as a new understanding of how the images could relay meaning to a perceiver.
|
|
| 8. |
- Skoglund, Peter, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
-
Interpretations of footprints in the Bronze Age rock art of south Scandinavia
- 2017
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - : Cambridge University Press. - 0079-497X .- 2050-2729. ; 83, s. 289-303
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Scandinavian landscape is littered with postglacial outcrops, many of which carry engraved motifs. Although drawings of ships are most often discussed, this paper focuses on representations of feet. In Northern Europe ship motifs are often associated with cosmologies based on the movement of the sun. This paper investigates whether drawings of feet could have been associated with the same worldview. A number of interpretations are offered of the images at two sites in different parts of Sweden: Järrestad 13:1 and Boglösa 138:1.
|
|
| 9. |
|
|
| 10. |
- Olausson, Deborah
(författare)
-
Experiments to Investigate the Effects of Heat Treatment on Use-wear on Flint Tools
- 1983
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. - 0079-497X. ; 49:1983, s. 1-13
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A series of twenty controlled experiments was undertaken to determine if heat treatment alters the speed, intensity, or appearance of wear on the edges of flint tools. Four hypotheses were tested with the following results: Heat-treated tools wore more quickly and with more severity than tools which had not been heated. When used in the same fashion and on the same materials, heat-treated flakes showed longer microflake removals from use than did non-heat-treated tools. Flake scars from microflaking due to use had a shiny surface on flints which had been heat-treated, while such surfaces were matt on unheated materials. The results suggest that these effects should be taken into consideration when studies of use-wear are undertaken.
|
|
