The economic role of temples in the interrelated world of the Middle and Late Bronze Levant in the prism of cuneiform evidence

The faunal assemblages of the Late Bronze and Iron Age southern Levant reveal a great complexity of objectives and methods of livestock exploitation. The assemblages come from sites located in diverse climatic settings populated by individuals engaged in a variety of activities. Analyses of the sites reflect a uniformity of practices related to livestock and reveal that the animals were symbols of wealth. The article reveals the symbolic values linked to the husbandry of assorted livestock based on their economic potential and their interaction with humans. The author concludes that differential access to specific animals and their meat played a socio-cultural and economic role in building social structure.

The Origins of Milk and Wool Production in the Old World: A Zooarchaeological Perspective from the Central Balkans [and Comments

This famous account relates to the shipwreck of the Egyptian priest, Wenamun, on the coast of Alashiya and provides us with the earliest known account of a high-status woman of Cyprus who appears to have wielded some degree of political power and influence. The text dates to the Twenty-First Dynasty (Third Intermediate Period), which places it after the widespread political and economic breakdown throughout the East Mediterranean at the end of the Late Bronze Age (LBA). It provides a fleeting and tantalizing glimpse into life on the island during the final stages of the Bronze Age – an unsettled period, a time when strangers from overseas were viewed with suspicion, but during which life in the coastal towns persisted with at least some degree of central governance. Whether this brief and essentially external account reflects an ancient Cypriot reality is unclear – but it is nonetheless intriguing that one of the few named individuals from Alashiya is a woman, Hatiba, and, moreover, she was clearly someone of some influence and standing within her community. Whether we can extrapolate from this a wider understanding of the social and economic roles of the women of (LBA) Alashiya is another matter. In this chapter, I will review some of the archaeological evidence in an attempt to situate Hatiba within her wider social context.

The story of swine in the Near East reveals a complex evolution of one cultural element. Several processes stand out—the domestication of pigs from wild boar in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and their occasionally haphazard integration into agricultural systems; the evolving ritual roles of pigs, especially during the Bronze Age; the economic roles that pigs played (or did not play) in state-level societies; and, ultimately, the formation and evolution of the pig taboo. The long and complex evolution of the pig taboo in Judaism and Islam has created a tradition that has, in some ways, developed a life of its own, trapping the people of the Near East and around the globe into a peculiar relationship with swine.

As an important port to the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus has been the geopolitical focus of any power residing in the region for ages. The Karpas Peninsula in Cyprus, as a strategic location, is of unique value to both the whole of Cyprus and to the Eastern Mediterranean. Due to the sea currents and the direction of the wind, the first feasible landmass reachable in Cyprus, the Karpas Peninsula, constitutes a key location for sea-based civilizations of the region, specifically during the Bronze Age. A novel example, a village referred to as Kaleburnu in the southeastern part of the peninsula, retains exclusive significance as a location facing the Ugarit during the Bronze Age. Kaleburnu-Kral Tepesi/Galinoporni-Vasili was a settlement in the southeastern part of the Karpas Peninsula. The area of Kral Tepesi, based on a tall hill that holds 2 km inland from the coastal line, geographically possesses visibility to detect approaching sea vessels or land-based messengers and perhaps attacks coming from the eastern direction, making it a secure site. The Kral Tepesi center of Late Bronze Age Cyprus hosts unfamiliar build plans boasting properties exclusive to the site. In addition to the deviation of architectural norms of the time, the finds unearthed during excavations in Kral Tepesi have also supplemented to defining the uniqueness of the site. Furthermore, the work on Kral Tepesi has unraveled 2 distinct bronze hordes in Cyprus in situ and with regards to finds related to architectural contexts of buildings. These discoveries comprise the most wholesome and comprehensive list of pieces both in quantity and quality of Cyprus up to date. Conclusions drawn with the available data and research depict the inhabitants of Kaleburnu-Kral Tepesi to have had significantly vigorous economic roles as agents of the Late Cypriot Bronze Age IIC. As maritime trade routes reveal, the location of Kral Tepesi on the island as a settlement, establishes it as the sole mediator between Cyprus and the dominant and economically vibrant coastal cities of the Levant of the Eastern Mediterranean in contemporary time.

Analysis of the pottery production technology has suggested large-scale production of pottery in both the Late Bronze Age (1400-1200 ВС) and Early Phrygian (ca 950-700 ВС) periods at Gordion (Turkey). Chemical characterization of both pottery and local clay samples has defined markedly different patterns of resource use in the two periods, suggesting a different geographic scale in the economy as Gordion s socio-political and economic roles changed from local center to royal capital city.

This article explores social practices and the material world at Aredhiou Vouppes, a Late Bronze Age rural community in the Cypriot hinterland. In-depth analysis of the excavation results demonstrates that this site was more complex than current typologies of inland production centers, based mainly on survey data, would suggest. Instead, it was multifunctional and played an important economic role within the wider Cypriot landscape. This article addresses the evidence for initial occupation at Aredhiou during Middle Cypriot III–Late Cypriot (LC) I, but the main focus is on the substantial LC IIC remains. Through a detailed contextual analysis and the identification of a multiplicity of activities practiced at the site, I examine social practice, gender relations, and ritual performance within a small farming community.

ABSTRACTBronze Age Anatolia is characterized by the emergence of an elite class situated at the apex of society, where they controlled enormous resources; wielded great authority; and sought, conspicuously displayed, and consumed distinctive high-status material culture. In this article, I explore the use of domesticated cattle as a material and symbolic source of power for these elites. I address the central economic role of cattle and their “secondary products” in supporting Bronze Age agricultural systems and as sources of elite wealth. I also discuss the symbolic role of cattle in gift exchange, iconography, ritual, and display for creating narratives of power in which elites are situated in an elevated place within in a hierarchical cosmos.

During the final stages of the Late Bronze Age the territory of northern Bosnia was characterised by remarkable cultural dynamics, visible primarily in the distribution of metal finds: weapons, tools, jewelry, and functional costume objects. The new type of funeral practice – inhumation – emerged here and was perhaps an important factor in the formation and social stratification of communities living here at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age. The area of northern Bosnia is situated between the Pannonian Basin to the north and the mountainous region of the western Balkans to the south commonly referred to as Dinarides. Thanks to its geographical location, the upper course of the Sava River facilitates direct connections with the Alps, while its lower course leads to the Danube that creates a link with the Black Sea region. To the north, the area is open to the wide peripanon regions of Slavonia and Syrmia. Up the Danube valley, the communication corridor reaches Transdanubia and, along the Tisza River, the central part of the Carpathian Basin. This paper presents a specific form of material culture, a bronze pins with disk-shaped head and short thickening on the neck. A total of six pins are known; two of which have been discovered in hoards (Osredak and Gajina pećina), one in a grave (Ostrožac near Cazin), while the remaining pins are chance finds (Donja Dolina, Prud, and Soukbunar). They all come from a very limited region south of the Sava River and chronologically cover the period from the 10th to the end of the 9 century BC or with Ha B2/3 horizon of Central European periodization.
 The pins with a disk-shaped head and short thickening on the neck most likely became part of women’s headgear or complex hairstyles, suggesting the development of special local habits and dress codes intended to promote status and rank. The choice of jewelry and local costume of the females yields information on their origins, affiliations, status, and social and economic role within the community. This paper posits that female costume in nothern Bosnia played the role of an important medium of social communication and interaction, and that it was important for the self-identification of its wearer in identifying their status. Furthermore, women’s mobility played an important role in spreading cultural habits at the end of the Late Bronze Age and in the Early Iron Age in the Western Balkans, with such mobility being evidenced through the distribution of personal items, especially jewellery and ornaments. Reasons for this mobility are related to economic, artisanal, military-political, ritual, and other various practices of the time. A special place in these exchanges was afforded to women, who, through exogamous marriages, became visible in the processes of cultural and social interaction.

The mountain area bordering Mesopotamia witnessed remarkable transformations to the human and cultural landscape starting from the end of the 2nd millennium. Stone hilltop structures began to spread and became the most distinct settlement form. Moreover, there was a dramatic increase in metalworking and weapons production, showing how the local social structure shifted towards militarization of society. These heavily fortified settlements have usually been labeled as “cyclopean fortresses” due to their similarity to European defensive structures. However, being built with large stones on strategic hilltops, they played different political and economic roles, and some were likely the seat of important local political entities. Fortresses from the southern Caucasus have attracted the attention of several distinguished scholars and studies, especially structures in present-day Armenia and northern Iran. This paper aims to present the evidence currently available regarding cyclopean structures in Western Azerbaijan, combining both remote sensing and soviet-era publications. A remarkable culture flourished during the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age in this area, generally known as “Hochdali-Kedabeg”.

Pigs are fascinating in that they transcend the “good to eat/good to think” dichotomy: More than any other domesticated meat animal, they remained a powerful, active symbol that retained its divisive socioreligious potency unto the twenty-first century. They are bound in intricate ways to human migrations, urban ecology, and informal economy, and they are a textbook case for the anthropological study of taboo.From a Levantine perspective, archaeological interest in pigs expanded in the late 1980s following the important contributions by Hesse (1986) and Lev-Tov (2000), which revealed the important economic and cultural role pigs had among the Philistines. These studies placed pigs in a nexus where Iron Age migrations, the ethnogenesis of ancient Israel, and zooarchaeology met, culminating in the suggestion that the absence of pig bones in archaeological sites can be used as an ethnic marker to mark the presence of early Israelites (Finkelstein 1996). With few exceptions (e.g., Redding 2015), the recent decades have seen only slow advancement in understanding the complex interactions of pigs and humans in the southern Levant. A reductionist concept of pigs as binary “ethnic markers,” however, persists among nonspecialists: It finds a place among other reifications of past social entities promoted in part by the archaeological application of recent breakthroughs in human genetics (Heyd 2017). The more exciting research front on pigs appears to have left anthropology behind: it has moved on to the study of domestication, spread, and hybridization of pigs using paleogenetic and morphometric methods, which are biological in essence.Against this background, Price's new book opens up a new vista on the anthropological study of pigs in the Near East, and it manages to do that, surprisingly, from the much-frequented viewpoint of the pig taboo. It is innovative in two important ways: First, in its temporal scope, ranging from the Pleistocene to our day; and second, in turning its back on reductionist general explanations and attributing a much greater role to contingency. As the title of the book suggests, the long-duration perspective adopted by the author views the taboo as a social fact in constant development. The taboo's lasting vitality is the accumulative outcome of Early Bronze Age urban ecology, informal economies, imagined pastoral pasts, Jewish diasporas and revolts, and choices of orthodoxy and orthopraxy among the founders of Christianity and Islam. No single-cause explanation is provided; the right sequence of contingencies, one dependent on the other, opens the evolution of the taboo like a combination lock. Things could have been otherwise, and a strong, persistent pig taboo does not emerge as an inevitable outcome of sociological, ecological, or other general laws.The scope and its emphasis on historical development necessitate the book's chronological arrangement into chapters covering Paleolithic hunters, early agriculturalists, Early Bronze Age urban centers, the Iron Age, classical periods, and Islamic to recent times. Additional chapters provide necessary background on pigs, geography, and previous work on the pig taboo. The omnivorous mixture of Near Eastern archaeology, archaeozoology, and general anthropology invites digressions to introduce domestication, population genetics, feasting, urbanization, and other staples of current scholarship. These asides are well written and instructive, and their concise summaries of otherwise broad topics are valuable in and of themselves.In summary, Max Price's book offers a fresh look at pigs in the ancient Near East, making an important contribution to the study of the much-discussed taboo. The broad perspective and nuanced view of the topic evades the pitfalls of simplistic explanations, yet the text is written in a simple and communicative manner. It is a laudable contribution that will be appreciated by a potentially broad audience of archaeologists, anthropologists, and others.

Recent archaeological excavations of the cave of Cyclops, located in the southern cliffs of the islet of Youra (northern Sporades, Greece) have provided evidence of continuous human activity from the Mesolithic Period (10000–6800 BC) up to the beginning of the Final Neolithic (4600/ 4500–3300/3200 BC). The results of the investigation of its Mesolithic stratigraphy lead to the assumption that the economy of the prehistoric local human community was based predominantly upon the exploitation of marine resources (Sampson 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Powell 2003). Archaeological evidence suggests that the island fishermen also exploited mammals, as indicated by the discovery of a huge assemblage of bones of Sus scrofa, particularly numerous in the Lower Mesolithic levels, where they also displayed a larger size in comparison to those of the same species found in the Upper Mesolithic layers (Trantalidou 2003). Thus, beyond the marine resources, Sus appears to represent the wild animal most widely consumed by the local human community. The date of 7530 cal. BC–7100 cal. BC (8th millennium BC) was obtained for the oldest bones of these prehistoric ungulates, by radiocarbon analysis performed at the Beta Analytic Laboratory of Miami (USA) (Masseti 2002). In the light of archaeozoological evidence, early human societies which based their subsistence mainly on marine resources also feature a certain association with pigs, which has been registered from other prehistoric European and Mediterranean archaeological contexts. In Italian coastal areas, for example, this can be observed in the reports from the II Mesolithic phase of the cave of Uzzo, in north-western Sicily (Tagliacozzo 1993), from the Early Neolithic–Chalcolithic layers of the Grotta del Genovese on the small island of Levanzo in the Egadi archipelago (Sicily) (Graziosi 1962; Cassoli & Tagliacozzo 1982), and possibly also from the proto-Mycenaean settlement (Middle–Late Bronze Age) of the islet of Vivara, in the Phlegraean archipelago (Gulf of Naples) (Marazzi 1998, 2001; Costantini & Costantini 2001; Pepe 2001). In northern Europe, the exploitation of pig resources has been found associated with several postglacial human settlements of the Baltic area, such as the Ertebølle Mesolithic culture of western Denmark (Rowley- Conwy 1984), of southern Sweden (Rowley-Conwy 1998), and of the Jutland peninsula (Rowley-Conwy 1994).

This PhD research focuses on the functional occupation of the coastal area of central Tyrrhenian Italy between the Final Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (1150–850 BC). These coastal sites have in common the presence of large amounts of fragments of reddish ceramic jars, hypothesized to result from sea salt production, similar to the production mode of the northern European ateliers de briquetage. Despite the fact that around forty known installations are known along the Middle Tyrrhenian coast, systematic archaeological investigations of these sites remain rare. The research focused on an area located in Tuscany, along the gulf of Follonica, where emergency archaeology revealed a concentration of coastal installations on the edge of an ancient lagoon and in the bay of the ancient Portus Scabris not far from Etruscan Vetulonia. A multidisciplinary approach was applied, comprising two excavation campaigns, in combination with the analysis of unpublished data from previously investigations by the Superintendency. The diagnostic ceramic finds collected in the study area have been studied taking into account their morphology, technology and their typo-chronological comparisons. Archaeometrical analyses were applied to a small range of samples to assess the function of the ceramic jars. Variance analysis of their dimensions was applied to evaluate the degree of the standardization of production. This research extends the chronological range of coastal exploitation documented up to now in northern Etruria till the Archaic period. In addition, it shows the multiple purposes of the ceramic jars, indicating a key economic role for the coastal settlements, as places of production and maritime hubs in the early economic development of Villanovan and Etruscan communities.

Standardized weights and measures play an important role in the economies of complex societies. Traditionally, archaeometrologists have employed individual weights as their basic units of analysis and, as a result, they have been able to address a limited range of questions concerning the economic role of weights. I propose a shift in emphasis from individual weights to sets of weights as the primary units of analysis. Using cases from the Aegean Bronze Age, I present a method for reconstructing sets of weights, offer criteria for their analysis and discuss the implications of this new perspective.