Un mormânt de la sfârşitul primei epoci a fierului de la Pocreaca-Iaşi

In the Eurasian Iron Age arrow points comprise a prominent class of artifact. Projectile experiments are useful for studying the ballistic performance of ancient arrow points and implications of arrow point innovations in warfare and shifting socio politics in Eurasia. However, when projectile experiments are not representative of past weapon use, they can lead to misinterpretations of the archaeological record. Notable problems arise when homogeneous target simulants used in controlled experiments are not representative of the targets past weapons were designed to encounter. This article explores the relationship between arrow point morphology and design choices in the Iron Age using different target media. Shooting arrow points into pottery clay leads to the conclusion that more blades reduced penetrating performance on ancient battlefields, but a very different result obtains by shooting the same points into thick tooling leather as a simulant for leather body armor. The results help explain patterns observed in the Eurasian archaeological record, where trilobate arrow points-initially developed by lightly armored horse archers on the Eurasian steppe-were increasingly adopted by a wide range of societies across Eurasia throughout the Iron Age.

The borderland between the West Siberian Plain and the Kuznetsk-Salair mountain ridge is a narrow strip of the Mariinsk forest-steppe, which was a transit and contact area between two ancient cultural centers: one on the Upper Ob and the other on the Middle Yenisei. Archaeological finds from that area are especially interesting. One of important geographic features of the Mariinsk forest-steppe is Archekas mountain. About a dozen archaeological sites on this mountain date mostly to the Bronze and Early Iron Ages. In October 2015, several bronze items were found there: a cauldron, four arrow points, a “mirror”, a deer figurine, and a dagger, whose handle is decorated in the Scytho-Siberian style. All items are cast of stannic bronze; a small amount of arsenic is also present in certain cases. The article describes the context and the location of the find, the items, and their cultural affinities. Despite the generally Scythian appearance of all the artifacts and the wide distribution area of their parallels, we demonstrate that the assemblage belongs to the Tagar culture and, by the Tagar standards, should date to 600–400 BC. However, the artifacts resemble those manufactured in the forest-steppe periphery and were probably custom-made for the Kulai people of the taiga zone. If so, the date must be younger and fall within the 400–200 BC interval. The analysis of assemblages with cauldrons allowed us to assume that the Archekas assemblage was ritual, associated with a sanctuary.

In the Late Iron Age (650- ca, 500/350 B.C.), the Central Anatolian Region was divided into two areas as mentioned in the Western ancient sources, in Western sources of which the Western part of the Kizdirmak (Halys) was known as Phrygia and the eastern part as Cappadocia. In Ancient Eastern sources the middle part of the Kizilirmak region was known as Tabal, the nort­hern part as Kashku, the south western part as Tuvana (Tukhana) and the eastern part as Melid. Due to the cosmopolitan nature of this region's population structure, the painted pottery group with stylized deer representations of silhouette technique with concentric motifs, which were fo und in the main settlements of the region and known as Alisar IV, are considered to be the ma­in characteristic pottery of the Kizilirmak Bend in the Middle Iron Age (850-650 B.C.). The effects of political developments in the Late Iron Age (650- ca 500/350 B.C) were reflected in the new techniques introduced into the pottery production of the workshops that had been the centres of the Middle Iron Age tradition. The stylized deer figures began to be produced with new line­ar- and reserve techniques and gained a more naturalized in appearance. The numbers and vari­ety of bird representations increased arid these began to be the used as the main elements of compositions consisting of representations of bulls, horses, donkeys, wild goat, roe deer; lions, dogs and fish. In addition to these, representations of hybrid creatures such as winged bulls and sphinxes and unidentifiable strange creatures also appeared. Human figures, which were very few in number and extremely stylized in the Middle Iron Age, became important in the Late Iron Age. Kybele, the mother goddess of the Phrygians who was in fact worshipped in Anatolia from Neolithic times, was portrayed on pottery in this period. It is apparent that the pottery workshops of the Kizdirmak Bend Region continued to use traditional characteristics but also incorporated external influences into their pottery production from around the beginning of the 5 th century BC. From this period onwards some noticeable differences began to occur in pottery decoration techniques, for example the number of types of animal representations lessened while series of birds began to be widely used as the main elementin compositions. Changes in plant motife al­so occur from the beginning of the 5 th century. The composition of ivy leaf seen on a bowl from Amasya Museum (Fig. 1) can be attributed - on the basis of technique to influence from the Ae­gean and must have entered the Late Iron Age pottery decoration repertoire of the Kizilirmak Bend during the first half of the 5th century BC. However it seems that, on the basis of typological and decoration characteristics, the complete bowl with a decoration of ivy leaves (Fig 2-3) be­longs to the 3th century BC. The evaluations and examples presented above suggest that the La­te Iron Age and Hellenistic Age chronology of the Kizilirmak Bend Region and the pottery ter­minology need to be reviewed. It is apparent that, in spite of some changes in the details of mo­tifs, the Late Iron Age tradition within the Kizilirmak Bend continues to be strong until around the Middle of the 4th century BC, that is up to the Hellenistic Period. It is therefore clear that there was no real gap between the Late Iron Age and the Hellenistic Age but instead a cultural con­tinuity in pottery development can be traced and the pottery workshops, in existence horn the Middle Iron Age, continued without interruption into the Hellenistic Period. In the light of this, the chronological boundary of the Late Iron Age within the Kizilirmak Bend can be said to ex­tend to the middle of the 4 th century BC.

The article deals with the results of an instrumental and contextual study of the bone arrowheads found during urgent excavations on the Sagayskaya Protoka-4 kurgan cemetery (Khakassia, the Askiz district). The morphological characteristics of the artifacts and the results of their traceology study are presented as well as the circumstances in which the arrow points were found in burial assemblages. The material for studied in the present article artifacts were long bone walls of big animals. The study of changes on the points’ surface allowed us to determine the main peculiarities of their production technology. All studied artifacts were shaped with a metallic knife. In one case, polishing was used. The obtained data allow us to continue the database of technologies of production not only of bone arrow points but also Tagar bone objects in general. The materials of an assemblage (tomb 2 in kurgan 3) with a dead body with tools in situ pushed us to turn to the bone arrowheads in Tagar burials. It is noted, that the consistent presence of this category of tools in burial practice is connected to the Bidzha group of the Early Tagar burial assemblages (the 8th –6th centuries BC). Based on analogies, it was stated that the arrow points sets were always put on the left of the body. Compact arrangement and the same orientation of the points indicate that they were in a quiver (wrappage). The found regularities are specific to Bidzhin assemblages of the whole Tagar culture area.

The origins of the silver trade across the Mediterranean, and the role of the Phoenicians in this phenomenon, remain contentious. This is partly because of difficulties encountered when trying to assign archaeological silver to its geological sources. Here we present a reanalysis of Iron Age silver hoards in the southern Levant, which demonstrates not only that recycling of silver was widespread in the Early and Late Iron Age, but that the components of this mixed silver originated from the Aegean, Anatolia and the western Mediterranean. An assessment of lead isotope analyses combined with compositional data allows the identification of mixing lines based on gold levels in the silver and the Pb crustal age (or, more loosely, geological age) of the ore from which the silver originated. It is shown that, from as early as the 11th century BC, these mixed silver signatures derive from the Taurus mountains in Anatolia, from Iberia and an unknown source—with Sardinia as an additional possibility—and Laurion in Greece in the Late Iron Age. In contrast to copper, which was deliberately alloyed with silver, gold appears to have been mixed unintentionally, through the melting down of silver objects with gold parts. It is suggested that vertical mixing lines (with constant Pb crustal age but variable Au), may indicate the melting down and mixing of silver in times of unrest, both here and in other contexts. Gold and lead concentrations in the silver indicate that native silver from Iberia was most likely used in the Early Iron Age, suggesting that the first people to convey silver to the southern Levant were not miners but traders who had acquired silver directly from the indigenous Bronze Age inhabitants of Iberia. However, evidence of the exploitation of jarosite also supports that silver ore mining and cupellation was ongoing in Iberia at a similar time, and continued in the Late Iron Age—potentially a result of technological transfer from the East. In essence, the western Mediterranean origin of the silver in these Early Iron Age southern Levantine hoards supports an emerging picture of Mediterranean interactions and trade relations in the increasingly bright Dark Ages (c. 1200–800 BC).

Muldfjælsplovens tidlige historie – Fra yngre romersk jernalder til middelalder

The Nuragic village of Sant’Imbenia in Alghero in north-western Sardinia (Italy) was inhabited between approximately the 14 th and the 7 th century BC. Foreigners including Eastern Phoenicians and perhaps Greeks settled in the village during the last stages of its existence in the Early Iron Age, importing their own culture and technology and developing the area. Some of the pottery artifacts produced during this period do not seem to belong to the Nuragic tradition, which suggests that local craftsmen were influenced by these contacts and exchanges with foreign cultures. The objective of this work was to characterize the artifacts and analyze the evolution in production techniques during the Middle-Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The main changes seem to have occurred during the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age, and there was also a clear distinction between cooking and serving wares. We observed that the decoration on the surface of the ceramics changed from the smooth surfaces of the Middle-Late Bronze Age to the partially vitrified, normally red slip wares of the Early Iron Age. Fragments of volcanic rocks were detected in the Early Iron Age cooking wares instead of calcite, the temper typically used during the Middle-Late Bronze Age. Firing temperatures were slightly higher in the Early Iron Age, as inferred by the presence of new mineral phases and the vitrification of the matrix. The surfaces of the ceramics were red, especially during the Early Iron Age, while the mixture often had a black heart.

In July 2009, part of a stable farm from the end of the 3rd century BC at Spijkenisse was excavated. This farm was at the time situated in wet grassland with rough vegetation used as pasture. The excavated house plan consists of a living area, a hall and a stable part. After the occupation phase (around 210-200 BC ) the site was used as a craft zone for beer or glue production (beginning of the 2nd century BC ). In the archaeological research, attention was paid to the finding level (whether or not consecutively), the phasing in the tracks, the raw material supply and the food economy. The data concerning the pottery is entered in a Microsoft Access database. The hand-formed pottery found can be roughly dated as late Middle Iron Age and Late Iron Age. The majority of the animal component of the diet consisted of meat from domestic animals (especially beef, and also meat of sheep and/or goat). Emmer wheat and barley are the most important ingredients in the grain macro residues from the hearths. The habitation of the residential stable farm will have lasted about 10 to a maximum of 20 years. The next generation may have built a new farm in the vicinity.

This article considers early boats in Scandinavian spanning a timeframe from Early Mesolithic colonization at c. 9500 cal BC up until the beginning of the Late Iron Age around AD 600 from a northern Norwegian perspective. The role of boats in current models of maritime colonization and proxy evidence from carved rock art images of Bronze Age to Early Iron Age boats are evaluated before focusing on newly dated boat remains from bogs in Arctic Norway currently housed at The Arctic University Museum of Norway. These include paddles predating the Iron Age and finds supporting the existence of rowed plank-built vessels in the early Pre-Roman Iron Age (500–0 BC). Rowing evidence includes a boat frame and oar radiocarbon dated to the sixth to fifth century BC and two oars from the later Pre-Roman Iron Age. Consequently, a revision of thinking about early Iron Age boat development is necessary, not only in Arctic Norway but also elsewhere in Scandinavia and Fennoscandia. The context of the earliest plank-built vessel in Scandinavia, the paddled war canoe from Hjortspring, Denmark, dated to c. 350 BC, is reevaluated in light of a probable coexistence with rowed boats.

The development of the first urban centers is one of the most fundamental phenomena in the history of temperate Europe. New research demonstrates that the earliest cities developed north of the Alps between the sixth and fifth centuries BC as a consequence of processes of demographic growth, hierarchization, and centralization that have their roots in the immediately preceding period. However, this was an ephemeral urban phenomenon, which was followed by a period of crisis characterized by the abandonment of major centers and the return to more decentralized settlement patterns. A new trend toward urbanization occurred in the third and second centuries BC with the appearance of supra-local sanctuaries, open agglomerations, and finally the fortified oppida. Late Iron Age settlement patterns and urban trajectories were much more complex than traditionally thought and included manifold interrelations between open and fortified sites. Political and religious aspects played a key role in the development of central places, and in many cases the oppida were established on locations that already had a sacred character as places for rituals and assemblies. The Roman conquest largely brought to an end Iron Age urbanization processes, but with heterogeneous results of both abandonment and disruption and also continuity and integration.

Metalworking at Megiddo during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages

These two simultaneously published works mark an important stage in French Iron Age research, for the end of the early (or first) Iron Age and beginning of the later (or second) Iron Age, i.e. the Hallstatt D and La Tene A phases. The discoveries made since the nineteenth century in Bourges in central France carried out as a prerequisite of urban and suburban redevelopment since the 1980s, have radically altered our understanding of the sixth and fifth centuries BC.

<p>MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) undertook intermittent archaeological mitigation works for the A43 Corby Link Road, Northamptonshire, between June 2012 to October 2013.</p> <p><br> </p> <p>Early Bronze Age funerary and domestic features/activity were recorded in one location largely on the flood plain on either side of Harper’s Brook. Here an undated palaeochannel, a ploughed-out barrow and a dispersed spread of four pits were recovered. Two of the pits had possible placed animal deposits. The barrow was respected by a late Bronze Age cremation. Nearly 2km away there was an isolated early Bronze Age pit contained significant parts of two collard urns.</p> <p><br> </p> <p>Around 0.8km from the early Bronze barrow was a moderate sized middle Bronze Age flat cremation cemetery. Here there were 30 probable pits of which 25 produced varied quantities of cremated human remains and two other pits retaining pyre deposits. At a different part of the road scheme was a late Bronze Age/early Iron Age pit alignment which was backfilled in the middle Iron Age when a settlement was established. In the early Iron Age, there was a small area comprising postholes and small pits which may denote short term occupation.</p> <p><br> </p> <p>In the last part of the middle Iron Age in c2nd century BC there were possibly three separate areas of occupation/activity established in different places. This comprised part of a small single-phase (with limited recutting) farmstead which was abandoned by the Conquest period. The second was a very small, segmented enclosure system which was in use for a short period in the 2nd century BC and/ or 1st century BC and the third middle-late Iron Age settlement continued into the early Roman settlement. In two further areas there was a new settlement established in the latest Iron Age or early Roman period and both these were short lived. It was noticeable there was no middle or late Roman settlement remains from any locations within the A43 scheme.</p> <p><br> </p> <p>Along the valley side to the north of Newton and parallel to a watercourse there was a Saxon settlement of at least hamlet size. This comprised both timber-frame buildings and sunken-featured buildings associated with household industry including a weaving house and iron smelting, the latter occurred within and probably adjacent to the settlement. The evidence of middle Saxon iron smelting is especially rare, and it is within the national important Rockingham Forest ironworking area. The remains of one furnace was found in situ and others suspected nearby, with other iron working related features excavated included roast-ore pits and quarry extraction pits. At another location there was a single Saxon SFB next to Harper’s Brook, which was either isolated or had been part of a dispersed settlement.</p>

The use of mudbricks in Early Iron Age ramparts is an uneven feature of defensive architecture on the Iberian Peninsula. The use of mudbricks as a building material has been linked to the arrival of Levantine building traditions with the Phoenicians, and its appearance among local societies varies between the eighth and sixth centuries BC according to the public or domestic nature of the structures. In this article, we present the geoarchaeological analyses of the mudbricks used in constructing one of the defensive towers or bastions at Villares de la Encarnación (Caravaca de la Cruz, Spain). This site, endowed with two complex fortification lines and towers, is one of the main settlements for understanding the development of the Early Iron Age among the inland and mountain communities of the region. The analytical program includes wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence, CHN elemental analysis, and thin-section petrography and provides new data about soil procurement and manufacturing choices. These results highlight the technical and social complexity behind mudbrick constructions and the adoption of new earthen practices among Early Iron Age communities in order to build more imposing and elevated towers that might convey an image of the power and strength of these inland settlements.

The site of Tell Atchana/Ancient Alalakh is located in the Amuq valley, now in the modern province of Hatay, in Southern Turkey. While it was previously thought that the site was abandoned towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, recent excavations at the site have demonstrated the presence of Iron Age levels, suggesting a prolonged period of occupation. This thesis presents a detailed analysis of the pottery assemblages excavated from the Iron Age levels of Alalakh; makes a major contribution to defining a new chronology for the site of Alalakh and sheds a new light on the last centuries of occupation. Based on the pottery assemblages this thesis proposes a new interpretation of the Early Iron Age period as being not a period of crisis and collapse but of accomplishment and regeneration. Moreover, by applying a more holistic and anthropological approach to the study of ceramics, this thesis investigates the patterns of consumption and of social dynamics in Early Iron Age Alalakh and links them within the broader regional framework of the Northern Levant. The morphological analysis carried out in this thesis defines a typology for the Iron Age pottery assemblages and establishes a relative chronology for the Iron Age levels. This enables the Iron Age settlement on Alalakh to be dated to the Iron Age I and II (12th-9th century BC). The functional analysis performed on the pottery assemblage recovered from square 42.10, the only square that yielded a reliable stratigraphy, results in the identification of the square as an open area devoted to the processing and consumption of food. This approach determines a change in the way food was cooked and displayed, but not in the way it was served and consumed. Finally this thesis draws conclusions related to continuity and change detectable in the local pottery assemblage and proposes a new historical narrative regarding Alalakh and the Amuq valley for the first centuries of the Early Iron Age.