IRON AGE MORTUARY PRACTICES AND MATERIAL CULTURE AT THE INLAND CEMETERY OF TSIKALARIO ON NAXOS: DIFFERENTIATION AND CONNECTIVITY

2018 ◽  
Vol 113 ◽  
pp. 143-198
Author(s):  
Xenia Charalambidou
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
The People ◽  
Insight Into

Naxos, the largest of the Cycladic islands, offers a nuanced insight into Iron Age funerary behaviour in the Cyclades and relations between social groups as reflected in the archaeological record. The focus of this paper is the cemetery of Tsikalario in the hinterland of the island, with emphasis on two burial contexts which exhibit a range of activities related to funerary ceremonies and the consumption of grave-offerings. The grave-tumuli found in the Tsikalario cemetery comprise a mortuary ‘phenomenon’ not found otherwise on Naxos during the Early Iron Age. Such a differentiation in mortuary practice can be interpreted as a strategy used by the people of inland Naxos to distinguish their funerary habits from the more typical Naxian practices of, for example, the inhabitants of the coastal Naxos harbour town. This distinctive funerary practice can speak in favour of an attempt by the kinship group(s) that buried their deceased in the cemetery of Tsikalario to articulate status and identity. Beyond these tumuli, evidence from a different type of grave context at Tsikalario – Cist Grave 11 and its vicinity (Burial Context 11) – offers an additional example of a well-thought-out staging of funerary beliefs in the inland region of Naxos. Not only does it illustrate the coexistence of other types of burials in the cemetery, but, alongside the tumuli and their finds, it also demonstrates, through the symbolic package of the grave-offerings and the multifaceted network of interactions they reveal, that inland Naxos participated in the intra- and supra-island circulation of wares and ideas.

scholarly journals Homer's Entangled Objects: Narrative, Agency and Personhood In and Out of Iron Age Texts

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitley
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Classical Archaeology ◽  
Narrative Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Of Greece

In recent years, material culture studies have come to embrace contemporary Melanesia and European prehistory, but not classical archaeology and art. Prehistory is still thought, in many quarters, to be intrinsically more ‘ethnographic’ than historical periods; in this discourse, the Greeks (by default) become proto-modern individuals, necessarily opposed to Melanesian ‘dividuals’. Developments in the study of the Iron Age Mediterranean and the world of Homer should undermine such stark polarities. Historic and proto-historic archaeologies have rich potential for refining our notions both of agency and of personhood. This article argues that the forms of material entanglements we find in the Homeric poems, and the forms of agency (sensu Gell 1998) that we can observe in the archaeological record for the Early Iron Age of Greece (broadly 1000–500 bc) are of the same kind. The agency of objects structures Homeric narrative, and Homeric descriptions allow us precisely to define Homeric ‘human–thing entanglement’. This form of ‘material entanglement’ does not appear in the Aegean world before 1100 BC.

The perpetuated past: re-use or continuity in material culture and structuring of identity in Early Iron Age Crete

2003 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 251-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saro Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Settlement Movement

Some re-uses of Bronze Age remains in Early Iron Age Crete and mainland Greece have been identified as attempts at legitimation and/or identity construction which operated at various social levels and were instrumental in the rise of the polis. This paper enlarges the scope of analysis in assessing the meaning of references to material remains of early EIA (Late Minoan III C/SM), as well as Bronze Age, date during the Protogeometric to Archaic periods in Crete. This was a time at which major spatial and social readjustments were taking place, themselves ultimately rooted in transformations occurring c. 1200 BC. The wealth of settlement data now available for EIA Crete adds an important new dimension to the discussion, which recognizes nucleation through PG–A at a significant number of sites established in the 1200 BC defensible settlement movement. The paper's conclusions are that this, and other elements of continuity and reuse in settlement, cult and mortuary practices, both reflected and helped to create a sense of history and of local regionally-based community early in the EIA.

Summary of Part IA Brief History of Death in Judah during the Iron Age

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The State ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Surrounding Landscape ◽  
Insight Into

The remains of Judahite mortuary practices provide invaluable insight into the historical role of the dead in the culture of the biblical writers. The events of the eighth and seventh centuries proved formative for the kingdom of Judah, and the development of the state during this period became intricately tied to mortuary practices. Burying the dead in a particular way became part of being Judahite. Collective interments served to identify ancestors and connect living communities to the surrounding landscape. These actions involved distinct notions of family and religion, and the use of mortuary culture to express these ideas impacted the area long after the Southern Kingdom was destroyed. I offer the following history based on the inscriptions and material culture that have been collected and reviewed up to this point....

The History of the Judahite Bench Tomb

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Suriano
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Insight Into

The history of the Judahite bench tomb provides important insight into the meaning of mortuary practices, and by extension, death in the Hebrew Bible. The bench tomb appeared in Judah during Iron Age II. Although it included certain burial features that appear earlier in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, such as burial benches, and the use of caves for extramural burials, the Judahite bench tomb uniquely incorporated these features into a specific plan that emulated domestic structures and facilitated multigenerational burials. During the seventh century, and continuing into the sixth, the bench tombs become popular in Jerusalem. The history of this type of burial shows a gradual development of cultural practices that were meant to control death and contain the dead. It is possible to observe within these cultural practices the tomb as a means of constructing identity for both the dead and the living.

Material Culture and Making Visible: On the Portrayal of Philistine Gath in the Book of Samuel

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Book Of Samuel

Over the past twenty years our understanding of Philistine Gath's history (Tell es-Safl) has been transformed by what has been revealed through the site's early Iron Age remains. But what has received much less attention is the effect these ruins have on how we read references to the location within the Hebrew Bible. The intent of this study is to draw on the archaeological evidence produced from Tell es-Safl as an interpretive lens by which to consider the biblical portrayal of the site rendered in the book of Samuel, where the material traces of more amicable associations between Gath and highland populations invite us to reconsider the city's depiction in this ancient literary work.

scholarly journals Fish and other faunal remains from a Late Iron Age site on the Letaba River, Kruger National Park

Koedoe ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Plug ◽  
Paul Skelton
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
National Park ◽  
Fish Population ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Hunting Strategies ◽  
The People ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Fish Remains ◽  
Insight Into

Fish remains from Late Iron Age sites in the Transvaal are relatively scarce. It seems as if the people did not utilize the riverine resources extensively. Therefore the unique assemblage of large numbers of fish bones on a Late Iron Age site, provides some insight into the fish population of a section of the Letaba River a few hundred years ago. The presence of other faunal remains provides some information on prehistoric utilization of the environment in general. Hunting strategies and aspects of herding can also be deduced from the faunal remains.

scholarly journals Aegean diffusions - Diffusions of power: Cultural connections between Minoan Crete and Pharaonic Egypt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Vinko Kerr-Harris
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The People ◽  
Minoan Crete ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
The Bronze Age

<p>The development of Minoan society has traditionally been considered by scholars to have been an insular phenomenon unique to the southern Aegean. Such assumptions, however, fail to acknowledge the wider context of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean. Contact between the people of Crete and their contemporaries in Egypt and the Levant is well attested in the archaeological record, with a plethora of artefacts – imported and imitation – appearing on both sides of the Libyan Sea. Whilst investigations into the economic nature of these exchanges have been undertaken, little thought has been given to the cultural consequences of inter-regional contacts. This thesis examines the evolution of palatial society upon Crete and considers the extent to which interactions with comparatively more mature civilisations may have influenced the increasingly hierarchal trajectory of Minoan society, by re-evaluating the corpus of material culture and interconnectivity.</p>

Connected by More Than Exceptional Imports: Performance and Identity in Hallstatt C/D Elite Burials of the Low Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasja van der Vaart-Verschoof ◽  
Robert Schumann
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Funerary Practices ◽  
Frequent Contact ◽  
Bronze Vessels ◽  
Burial Practice ◽  
Similarities And Differences

The Low Countries' Early Iron Age is marked by the emergence of lavish burials known as chieftains’ graves or princely burials. These extraordinary elite burials of the Hallstatt C/D period contain weaponry, bronze vessels as well as decorated wagons and horse-gear imported from the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe, where the same objects are found in the famous Fürstengräber. While the connection between these regions has long been recognized, the nature of this contact remains poorly understood. Here we present the preliminary results of an on-going re-examination of elite funerary practices in both regions and the likely direct long-distance interactions reflected in them. Similarities and differences in the treatment of objects and the dead in funerary rituals indicate that, to a certain extent at least, these geographically separated social groups were integrated in a specific elite burial practice, indicating frequent contact across hundreds of kilometres.

Memory and its Materiality: The Case of Early Iron Age Khirbet Qeiyafa and Jerusalem

2015 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel D. Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Over Time

In den wenigen Jahren seitdem Ausgrabungen in Khirbet Qeiyafa durchgeführt wurden, haben sich schon einige wichtige Studien mit seiner beeindruckenden Hinterlassenschaft aus der frühen Eisenzeit beschäftigt. Was bislang unberücksichtigt blieb, sind die Folgerungen der Befunde für die Schriftkultur, die für das Bild dieser Periode in der Hebräischen Bibel verantwortlich ist. Die Absicht dieser Studie besteht darin, das literarische Schicksal von Khirbet Qeiyafa mit dem des frühen und späten eisenzeitlichen Jerusalem zu vergleichen und zu ermitteln, was das Nichtvorkommen bzw. Vorkommen dieser Standorte in der Hebräischen Bibel über die Quellen der biblischen Verfasser aussagt, über die sie im 11. und 10. Jh. v. Chr. verfügten. Zugleich wird gefragt, welchen Beitrag Ort und Erinnerung bei der Überlieferung dieser Geschichten im antiken Israel und Juda hatten.In the few short years since excavations were first carried out at Khirbet Qeiyafa a number of important studies have been devoted to its impressive early Iron Age remains. Yet what has not been pursued within these discussions are the implications of the settlement’s material culture for our understanding of the scribal cultures responsible for the portrayal of this time period in the Hebrew Bible. In comparing the literary fate of Khirbet Qeiyafa with that of the contemporaneous site of late Iron I/early Iron IIA Jerusalem, the intent of this study is to examine what the absence and presence of these two sites in the Hebrew Bible indicates about the sources biblical scribes possessed about the 11th–10th centuries BCE, and how place and memory contributed to the transmission of these stories over time in ancient Israel and Judah.Dans les quelques années qui ont suivi les fouilles à Khirbet Qeiyafa, un bon nombre d’études conséquentes ont été consacrées à ses impressionnants vestiges du début de l’âge de Fer. Cependant, ce qui n’a pas été développé dans ces discussions, ce sont les implications de la culture matérielle de ce site pour notre compréhension milieux de scribes responsables de la description de cette période dans la Bible hébraïque. En comparant le destin littéraire de Khirbet Qeiyafa avec celui de Jérusalem, site contemporain de la fin du Fer I et du début du Fer IIA, cette étude cherche à examiner ce que la présence et l’absence de ces deux sites dans la Bible hébraïque indiquent au sujet des sources que les scribes bibliques possédaient sur les 11–10

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