Late Early Bronze Age Research Articles

Bronze Alloys from Canaan During the Middle Bronze Age

The chemical composition of 50 figurines, jewellery, weapons and tools of Middle Bronze Age from Canaan was studied. Although tin-bronze was already being alloyed in the late Early Bronze Age, our results show that during the Middle Bronze Age, arsenical bronze was still in use simultaneously with tin-bronze, mostly in weapons and tools. On the other hand, casting of tin-bronze figurines and jewellery flourished during the Middle Bronze Age, enhancing the creativity of artistic and sophisticated metal objects in the Land of the Canaanites.

Umm el-Marra, a Bronze Age Urban Center in the Jabbul Plain, Western Syria

A team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam has initiated a multistage program of excavation and regional analysis based at Tell Umm el-Marra in the Jabbul plain east of Aleppo. Archaeological and textual evidence from Ebla and elsewhere has demonstrated that the Aleppo region was an important center of early complex society in western Syria, and the joint project will focus on tracing its developmental trajectory. As the first stage of this project, excavations at Umm el-Marra, a major Bronze Age center of the Jabbul, were conducted in 1994 and 1995. Deposits from Roman and Hellenistic occupations were identified above an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement with evidence of a site-wide destruction in the early Late Bronze Age, while Middle Bronze Age remains indicated the apparent importance of the town in the period of the Yamḫad state.

Urban Development at Mid-Late Early Bronze Age Titriș Höyük in Southeastern Anatolia

This article examines the role of Early Dynastic III and Akkadian period imperial ambitions of southern Mesopotamian states in shaping the initial process of urbanization in the upper Euphrates River Basin, encompassing portions of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria during the latter half of the third millennium B. C. Evidence is drawn primarily from recent excavations at the site of Titriș Hoyuk, capital of a small city-state that developed and collapsed in southeastern Turkey between the mid- and late Early Bronze Age (ca. 2600/2500-2400 and 2400-2100 B. C., respectively). The article investigates site morphology, organization of space, rate of urban growth and decline, and evidence for contacts with southern Mesopotamia. The genesis and growth of Titriș as an Early Bronze Age capital may be best understood as an opportunistic response by an indigenous polity benefiting from intensified trading contacts in the second half of the third millennium B. C. between the resource-starved alluvial lowlands o...

Transcaucasia at the End of the Early Bronze Age

Transcaucasia was the heartland of the Kura-Araxes, or Early Transcaucasian culture, which holds an important place in the culture history of eastern Anatolia. The transition from this Early Bronze Age culture to the more fragmented regional cultures of the Middle Bronze Age remains poorly defined. The transition is marked by a shift away from fairly autonomous village life, the appearance of evidence for enhanced social hierarchy, and the first use of tin-bronzes in Transcaucasia. Traditional chronology places the transition at the end of the third millennium B. C. However, radiocarbon evidence indicates a mid-third millennium date for the transitional cultures, thus aligning Transcaucasian developments more closely with those in eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran (late Early Bronze Age) and in Ciscaucasia (Maikop). Transcaucasia seems to have continued to play an important interregional role even after the disappearance of the Kura-Araxes cultures.

Land Use and Soil Erosion in Prehistoric and Historical Greece

AbstractSoil erosion resulting from human exploitation of the land has attracted much public and scientific interest. Being regarded mainly as a modern phenomenon, however, its prehistoric and historical extent remain largely unexplored. Here we summarize three regional studies of Holocene erosion and alluviation in Greece, together with information derived from the literature, and conclude that most recorded Holocene soil erosion events are spatially and temporally related to human interference in the landscape. Wherever adequate evidence exists, a major phase of soil erosion appears to follow by 500–1000 years the introduction of farming in Greece, its age depending on when agriculture was introduced and ranging from the later Neolithic to the late Early Bronze Age. Later Bronze Age and historical soil erosion events are more scattered in time and space, but especially the thousand years after the middle of the 1st millennium B.C. saw serious, intermittent soil erosion in many places. With the exception...

Seal Impressions on Jars from Ebla in the Late Early Bronze Age

vored by persons living in Egypt, where the image of. the lion was closely linked with the all powerful king. The association of lion and serpent in the Dab'a seal, as well as on pl. 65, fig. 3, where the little serpent seems to belong more closely to the lion than to any other figure in the scene, remains to be determined. In summary, it may be said about the cylinder from Dab'a that it is carved in a style dependent on, but not belonging to, known Syrian cylinder seals and that it may be the product of a local seal cutter. This seal cutter probably worked in the eighteenth century B.C. and selected motifs of special significance to his clientele.19

The Later Bronze Age in Ireland in the light of recent research

The term ‘Later Bronze Age’ is being used in this paper to cover that period of the Bronze Age in Ireland that started around 1200 B.C. and continued on until supplanted by iron-using cultures during the second half of the first millennium B.C. This term provides a means of escaping from the nomenclature that is applied to the period covering the last two centuries of the second millennium B.C. and the beginning of the first millennium B.C., a phase considered by some as a late Middle Bronze Age and by others as an early Late Bronze Age. Here both terms are being avoided and the period is called the ‘Bishopsland Phase’. This is followed by the ‘Roscommon Phase’ of roughly the 9th and a large part of the 8th centuries B.C. Finally comes the ‘Dowris Phase’. It is hoped that this new terminology will allow the Irish material to be more readily incorporated in any future overall scheme for the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. The Middle Bronze Age in Ireland is here restricted to cover approximately the 14th and 13th centuries B.C.