Mid-first Millennium Research Articles

Land and Sea Links: 1500 Years of Connectivity Between Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim Regions, ad 700 to 1700

From the mid-first millennium ad onwards, southern Africa gradually became enchained to the Indian Ocean rim region, initiating over 1500 years of commodities and values exchange, which linked and transformed not just coastal regions but also their conjoined hinterlands in contrasting ways. Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean worlds had varying resource gradients which naturally stimulated conditions for trade and exchange relationships. Because of its strategic position, coastal east Africa acted as a conduit which enjoyed benefits from outbound and inbound commercial traffic. Whilst a lot of emphasis was traditionally placed on understanding the effect of Indian Ocean connections on coastal communities on the one hand, and hinterland communities on the other, little empirical research has focused on the links between individual coastal regions and their hinterlands. The implicit archaeological undercurrent is that the hinterland was always on standby to accept whatever the coast bestowed upon it—making every item of exotic origin a status icon in the interior. The popularity of commodities such as glass beads, cowrie shells and copper alloy objects, whose colours were compatible with preexisting cultural logics, when compared with the lack of popularity of imported ceramics, exposes that hinterland communities exercised a great deal of agency when accepting or rejecting inbound values and objects. Such selection processes account for why imported ceramics were popular on the coast but failed to appeal to interior populations, where local pottery was deeply wrapped up in transformation, theology and gender relations. This paper explores the archaeology of these processes and their consequences, from ad 700 to ca. 1700. It shows that whilst imports were incorporated into the hinterland value system, a great deal of continuity and change in selectivity forced the Indian Ocean world to stick to local tastes.

Contextualising caste: Co-option, circumvention and contestation as exemplified in the Jātakas

The article attempts to provide an understanding of caste by exploring non-Brahmanical texts that may have circulated widely, in this case exemplified by the shorter Pali Jātaka stories that were written down by the mid-first millennium AD. The narratives appear to point to the coexistence of multiple, not necessarily harmonious, understandings of caste. The narratives often invoke other identities, which do not fit in within the varṇa–jāti framework. The contexts within which these occur would suggest that these were part of the commonly available vocabulary of both narrators and audience. The narratives also explicitly question Brahmanical pretensions. Overall, then, we can suggest that while the Brahmanical prescriptive texts envisaged a caste order that was all-encompassing and all-pervasive, there were also alternative perceptions available in early India.

A multi-spectroscopic approach to the characterization of early glaze opacifiers: Studies on an Achaemenid glazed brick found at Susa, south-western Iran (mid-first millennium BC)

This paper presents the results of micro-Raman spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and scanning electron microscopy–energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM–EDS) studies performed on an Achaemenid glazed brick found at Susa (mid-first millennium BC). The results showed that calcium antimonate (CaSb2O6) and lead antimonate (Pb2Sb2O7) were used as white and yellow opacifiers in the white and orange glazes respectively. Moreover, the mixture of calcium antimonate and lead antimonate were used as opacifier in the green glaze. In addition, green, turquoise, blue, and orange colors were achieved by the dissolution of copper, cobalt, and iron-bearing materials in an alkali glaze. A black glazed line, whose color was obtained by copper and iron oxides, was used to separate the colored glazes. The present paper strongly suggests invasive micro-Raman spectroscopy for the identification of the opacifiers used in the early vitreous materials.

Prehistoric iron production technologies in the Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula: metallography and slag inclusion analyses of iron artefacts from Khao Sam Kaeo and Phu Khao Thong

This article presents a preliminary attempt to characterise Upper Thai-Malay Peninsula prehistoric iron technologies based on assemblages from two recently excavated coastal sites: Khao Sam Kaeo and Phu Khao Thong. These are the earliest known sites involved in the early trans-Asian exchange that connected the eastern Indian Ocean to the South China Sea from the mid-first millennium bc. It is from this period that iron assemblages start appearing at both continental and insular Southeast Asian sites. Three models have been offered confronting an indigenous vs. Chinese or South Asian impetus for the introduction of iron metallurgy in Southeast Asia. These models are discussed in the light of the metallographic and compositional analyses of iron and slag assemblages from these two sites using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence and slag inclusion analysis techniques, together with other production materials from these and other contemporaneous Southeast Asian sites.

Filling Gaps in the Protohistory of the Eastern Maghreb: The Althiburos Archaeological Project (El Kef, Tunisia)

Little is known about the Eastern Maghreb in the second and first millennia BC, except for the very last centuries when classical sources provide some information about the Numidian kingdoms. The survey and excavation of Althiburos and its surroundings have provided valuable data related to the first millennium BC. Occupation of the site dates back to the ninth or tenth century cal BC and continues into Roman times. Archaeobiological data — particularly the evidence of grape, a crop that only provides a return after several years, but thereafter produces fruit for a considerable period — suggest that the population was sedentary from the beginning, and that it probably grew throughout occupation. Iron slag is also present from the eight or tenth century cal BC. The construction of a Punic-type cistern and an impressive defensive wall indicate that the site developed into a city-like settlement by the mid-first millennium BC. While relations with Carthage may have played an important role in this process, we suggest that population growth was the main cause for sedentariness and, later, for the development of cities and the Numidian states. Other important aspects of the project include the typology and dating of pottery, the discovery of small pre-Roman habitation sites, and the dating of a small dolmen and one of the funerary mounds in the city’s surroundings.

Dendroarchaeology of the mid-first millennium AD in Constantinople

The 1st millennium AD was a time of great transition in Europe and the Mediterranean. At the heart of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) was a pivotal trade hub for the Aegean region. Establishing a precise and accurate dating framework for the development of this remarkable city and a chronological reference for this critical time period for the Mediterranean region is of great importance to a wide range of scholars. Here we present a new 213 year tree-ring record from 89 oak samples placed in time by dendrochronology and supported by radiocarbon analysis and historical documentation. It represents the middle of the first millennium AD in Constantinople. The tree-ring series are derived from pilings recovered from the extraordinary excavations of the so-called “Theodosian harbor” at Yenikapı, Istanbul, along with timbers from other sites and buildings around the city, including one of the most famous sites on the Istanbul sky-line—Hagia Sophia. They provide potential for new insight into a time period in which earthquakes, the Justinianic plague, and even a possible tsunami struck the city, and during which dramatic changes in climate have been recorded in other paleoenvironmental proxies. The chronology is the first published tree-ring series from the Aegean region to cover the ‘event’ years of AD 536–7 and 542 which are characterized by anomalous growth in other tree-ring series from around the world, but interestingly these event years are not evident in this tree-ring sequence.

IS IT TRUE THAT THIS PLACE USED TO BE AN INDIAN VILLAGE? CERAMIC ANALYSIS AND PRELIMINARY CHRONOLOGY OF BOA ESPERANÇA ARCHEOLOGICAL SITE LOCATED IN AMANÃ SDR, MID-SOLIMÕES RIVER, STATE OF AMAZONAS, BRAZIL.

This article presents the preliminary results of ceramics samples collected in site Boa Esperanca, located in Amana Sustainable Development Reserve, Amazonas. Archaeological research has been conducted since 2006 and has yielded a large amount of data that is being used to construct community management plans for local archaeological heritage. Twenty-nine archaeological sites were identified along the survey stage. These sites are composed of Amazonian dark earths (ADE), potsherds, urns and few lithic remains. The Boa Esperanca site was chosen as the first site of investigation. Mapping and excavations revealed differences in shape and size among the occupation strata. In order to characterize the artifacts and infer the chronology of occupation, 24% of all ceramic sherds collected through excavation were analyzed, revealing several changes in vessel manufacturing processes in addition to formal and decorative differences. Near-surface deposits are correlated within the Amazonian Polychrome Traditions while the underlying ones show ceramics belonging to the Incised Rim Tradition ceramics. Along with radiocarbon dates, the data allow for an outlining of a preliminary cultural chronology that begins in mid-first millennium B. C. Moreover, these data relate the region to wider processes of cultural change that occurred in the first millennium A.D. in Central Amazonia

Celtic Military Equipment from the Territory of Ukraine: Towards a New Warrior Identity in the Pre-Roman Eastern Europe

The lands of present day Ukraine are stretched across the distinct periphery of the ‘Celtic world’. From the midfirst millennium BC the cultural background of this part of Eastern Europe was defined mainly by the Scythian culture of North Pontic steppes as well as by Hellenistic influences from the Greek colonies of the Black sea littoral zone and the kingdom of Bospor in the Crimea. However, starting from the early third century BC, the influence of the Central European La Tène culture extended to a much degree. This process was traditionally viewed as a result of either Celtic invasion (Machinskij 1974) or indirect trade contacts with the La Tène zone of Central Europe (Maksymov 1999). Currently both ‘migration-focused’ and ‘autochthon-based’ approaches seem to be out of date. In recent studies, the Latènisation of Southern and Eastern Europe is interpreted as a culture-restructuring process affecting indigenous communities similar in many aspects to the Hellenisation of the Mediterranean region (see Džino 2007). The adaptation of La Tène cultural aesthetics and technical achievements, as well as Celtic linguistic elements caused the emergence of new ways of expressing identity. However, in some cases the traditional colonization paradigm still cannot be totally rejected. The aim of this paper is to show the finds of Celtic and related military equipment from the territory of Ukraine in the broad context of ‘Latènisation’ of Eastern Europe in the third–first centuries BC period.

Climate and causation in the Swedish Iron Age: learning from the present to understand the past

The paper reassesses the role of climate as a factor shaping changes in settlement and landscape in the Swedish Iron Age (500 BC–AD 1050). Two reasons motivate this re-evaluation. First, high-resolution data based on climate proxies from the natural sciences are now increasingly available. Second, the climate-related social sciences have yielded conceptual and theoretical developments regarding vulnerability and adaptability in the present and recent past, creating new ways to analyse the effects of climatic vs. societal factors on societies in the more distant past. Recent research in this field is evaluated and the explicitly climate deterministic standpoint of many recent natural science texts is criticized. Learning from recent approaches to climate change in the social sciences is crucial for understanding society–climate relationships in the past. The paper concludes that we are not yet in a position to fully evaluate the role of the new evidence of abrupt climate change in 850 BC, at the beginning of the Iron Age. Regarding the crisis in the mid-first millennium AD, however, new climate data indicate that a dust veil in AD 536–537 might have aggravated the economic and societal crisis known from previous research.

The classical and Hellenistic economy and the “Paleo-Balkan” hinterland a case study of the iron age “Hellenized settlements”

Dozens of similar fortified settlements exhibiting a familiarity with some Greek building techniques and traditions existed in some parts of the Balkans during the Iron Age, especially from the fifth to third century BC. The settlements are documented in a vast continental area stretching from modern-day Albania, the FYR Macedonia and south central Serbia to Bulgaria. Archaeological interpretations mostly accept that economic factors and trade with late Classical and early Hellenistic Greece were instrumental in their emergence, and the phenomenon is interpreted as Greek ?influence? and local ?imitation? of Mediterranean culture. Presenting the most influential interpretations of the Classical and Hellenistic economy and some perspectives in economic anthropology, this paper examines the traditional (mostly formalistic) culture-historical understanding of the Balkan ?Hellenized settlements? of the mid-first millennium BC and Mediterranean interrelations. It also looks at the construction and role of status identity as a crucial social factor in shaping the Iron Age communities in the hinterland, and defines possible trade and exchange activities as only one aspect of the identity of a burgeoning elite.

The Power of a Poet

This article emphasises that ideas related to political power in ancient India need to be analysed through a close and nuanced reading of texts in their entirety, in a manner that is sensitive to their genre as well as to the demands of historical inquiry. The specific focus is on Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṁśa, a brilliant and highly influential poetic narrative of the legendary kings of the Ikṣvāku lineage. Apart from its fine literary qualities, the mahākāvya is political poetry of the highest order, and this article discusses its holistic, authoritative and aesthetically refined vision of ideal kingship and sovereignty, also examining how Kālidāsa addressed key issues and problems associated with kingship, empire and war. A comparison with the perspectives of political treatises, epic and praśasti reveals elements of congruence as well as divergence. For instance, the poetic transformation of political discourse was marked by a distinctively rich emotional landscape. Although the Raghuvaṁśa valorises Kṣatriya martial ideals, it emphasises victory, not conquest; further, renunciation is central to its model of kingship. The ideas reflected in texts such as this formed an important part of the processes of the emergence and consolidation of mature monarchical states and empires in the Indian subcontinent in the mid-first millennium.

What does early Christianity look like? Mortuary archaeology and conversion in Late Iron Age Scotland

The study of the inhumation cemeteries of Late Iron Age Scotland tends to revolve around the vexed question of whether or not they provide evidence for Christianity. As a result, our approach has been to look for ‘Christian’ practices (lack of grave goods, west-east orientation) that are expectations based on analogy with the more standardised Christianity of the later medieval period. As these burial practices originate in a Late Iron Age context, recent theoretical approaches from the study of late prehistory also need to be applied. It is the emergence of cemeteries that is new in the mid-first millennium AD, and this distinction is still under-theorised. Recent theoretical models seek to understand the significance of place, and how these cemeteries are actively involved in creating that place rather than using a predefined ‘sacred’ place. By tracing their role in shaping and being shaped by their landscapes, before, during and after their use for burial, we can begin to speak more clearly about how we can use mortuary archaeology to study the changes of c. AD 400–600. It is argued that the ambiguity of these sites lies not with the burials themselves, but in our expectations of Christianity and paganism in the Late Iron Age.

A Theatre of Imagery: the Rock Carving of Döltorp, Skee Parish, Bohuslän, Sweden

AbstractThe parish of Skee, in western Bohuslän, has a wide variety of ancient monuments, among which is a small rock at Döltorp that displays a range of Bronze Age and Early Iron Age rock carvings. The new recording presented here identifies a number of hitherto unrecognized images and details. Some of the carvings are now considered to be of the late second millennium bc, while the bulk of the images are of mid-first millennium bc date. They include a particularly large decorated boat, with its crew finely detailed, as well as a number of carvings of warriors, discs, horses, spirals and smaller boats. The site lies in a landscape well inland from the Bronze Age shoreline, and its selection for carving was probably related to the existence of an earlier cairn high on a ridge to the west of the rock-carving site, perhaps linked to it by additional stones. Other sites in the immediate lowland region suggest that we should not view such sites as static creations; rather, we should consider them to have had long and episodic lives, maintaining and augmenting a societal awareness over many generations.

Chapter 6: Archaeological Excavations

During September and October 1996, we completed the first archaeological excavations done in the Aitape area on the Sepik coast. The ceramic finds from our excavations on hillcrests at Aitape (which are an uplifted Pliocene/Miocene coral reef formation) suggest that human occupation in this part of the coast dates back at least to the mid-first millennium AD when Sumalo Ware (Chapters 7 and 14) was being locally made. Additionally, our excavations on Tumleo Island recovered sufficient ceramic evidence in stratigraphic position to reconstruct a fairly definitive pottery sequence for this part of New Guinea covering the last 1,500–2,000 years.

On the Existence of National Identity Before 'Imagined Communities': The Example of the Assyrians of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Persia

Studies on nationalism and the emergence of modern ethnic identities rarely examine sources dating from the period between 0 CE (A.D.) and 1453 CE, or the period between the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the mid-first millennium BCE and the Age of Discovery in the mid-second millennium CE. Testing generally accepted theories of national and ethnic distinctiveness against these sources reveals that a similar case exists for the existence of an Assyrian identity and nation as for a Greek, Kurdish, Jewish, or Persian identity or nation. Assyrian populations, religions, and political formations survived in present-day Iraq, Iran, and Turkey from 0 CE well into the 1800s CE. Commentators on modern nationalism in relation to Assyrian identity have assumed, with little evidence, that the non-Arab, non-Jewish peoples of the East lacked the agency or the intellect to maintain a consistent identity or national movement, and that these peoples relied in their ignorance and indolence on the theories of Western missionaries and colonial officials. In the 1980s, a new generation of scholars emerged who posited that nations and peoples emerged in conjunction with modern capitalistic cultural forms and secular nationalistic liberalism. The new theory of imagined communities represented a departure from a long tradition of historical and cultural work which assumed nations and peoples as subjects of analysis without critically examining the linguistic, cultural, or religious foundation of these groups of individuals or families. This new theory, however, has the risk of degenerating into a vulgar instrumentalism, which speculates that identity entrepreneurs can manufacture ethnic, racial, or religious identity for their own purposes and little objective foundation. Thus, more recent research points out the flaws in grounding national and ethnic distinctions in modern nationalism by compiling evidence that nations and peoples perceived themselves and were perceived as such by other collectivities, long before the rise of European humanism or the Enlightenment. This study attempts to show that the longevity and diversity of national and ethnic distinctions undermine a one-size-fits-all explanation of such distinctions in the manner of Benedict Anderson’s “Imagined Communities.” The evidence from the Assyrian case suggests that the undifferentiated hordes of Asia did not coalesce and order themselves in modern times and under Western influence into nations created and sustained by advanced technology. This “Imagined Communities” narrative suffers from hindsight bias and an exaggerated Eurocentrism. It also insults and infantilizes the peoples and nations of premodern eras and non-Western regions by assuming they lacked the intelligence with which modern Europeans constructed national cultures, laws, literatures, schools, and economies. Historians have long since disproved such ideas. By examining translations of and academic commentary on Aramaic, Greek, Roman, and Persian literature and inscriptions, among other sources, this Essay demonstrates that the British Empire invented neither the modern Assyrians as a people, nor the territory of modern Assyria that was considered for statehood by the League of Nations after World War I. Rather, the identification of present-day northern Iraq, northwestern Persia, and southeastern Turkey as “Assyria” draws support from the Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian usage of the second and third millennia BCE, and the Greek, Roman, Persian, and Aramaic usage in the first millennium CE. Finally, the contribution of ancient Assyria to the cultures, languages, and religions of the non-Muslim populations of contemporary Iran, Iraq, and Turkey may no longer be doubted, especially when it comes to the Assyrian Christians, Mandaeans, and Yezidis. This ancient contribution is present in these peoples' daily vocabularies, place-names, and indigenous beliefs. [Please e-mail the author for the complete draft.]

The mid-Holocene climatic transition in the Mediterranean: Causes and consequences

In the Mediterranean there is often no clear time gap separating an early-Holocene period of nature-dominated environmental change from a human-dominated late-Holocene one. This mid-Holocene ‘mélange’ has been the subject of debates that have often been polarised between support for climatic causation and those favouring anthropogenic explanations for changes in vegetation, river flooding, wildfire regimes, etc. One way to shed light on the causes of mid-Holocene landscape changes is to focus on natural archives, such as lake and cave isotopes, the records of which can be unambiguously attributed to climatic forcing. These primary climate proxies can then be compared and contrasted with secondary or response variables, such as pollen and microcharcoal data, which can be the product of either climate changes or human activity or both, ideally using a multiproxy approach. In addition, synthesised primary palaeoclimate data can be compared with regional-scale climate modelling simulations. Both model output and proxy data suggest an east—west division in Mediterranean climate history. They indicate that the eastern Mediterranean experienced an increase in winter-season precipitation during the early Holocene, followed by an oscillatory decline after ~6 ka BP. In western parts of the Mediterranean, early-Holocene changes in precipitation were smaller in magnitude and less coherent spatially, and maximum increases occurred during the mid Holocene, around 6—3 ka BP, before declining to present-day values. Coincident with and partly stimulated by these climatic changes, complex societies developed across the Mediterranean, particularly in eastern parts of the basin during the Bronze Age. In consequence, by the mid-first millennium BC, human-induced land cover conversion, a drier and more variable climate, and changed fire regimes combined to establish typical sclerophyllous vegetation and landscapes in the circum-Mediterranean region.

Neolithic domesticity and other prehistoric anomalies: excavations at Laigh Newton, East Ayrshire

A series of archaeological evaluations and excavations at Laigh Newton in East Ayrshire revealed evidence for intermittent occupation of this valley terrace between the Mesolithic and the Late Iron Age. The plough-truncated archaeology included the remains of a rectangular building and associated features of the mid-late fourth millennium BC, a more ephemeral structure and related pits of the mid third millennium BC, a charcoal-burning pit of the mid-first millennium AD and two other rectilinear structures of indeterminate date.

An Urewe burial in Rwanda: exchange, health, wealth and violence c. AD 400

The ‘Urewe culture’ dominates the archaeology of Great Lakes Africa from approximately 500 BC to AD 800. However, whilst much is known about the production and distribution of Urewe ceramics and iron metallurgy, social and symbolic information regarding Urewe users is scarce. Within this context the discovery of an Urewe burial preserving pathological conditions, the products of iron production technology and a long distance exchange artefact, radiocarbon dated to the mid-first millennium AD, is highly significant. This article presents the first human remains analysis of two individuals associated with the ‘Urewe culture’ and the first archaeometallurgical analysis of the products of iron technology during this period. The discussion of these results allows us to explore socially important aspects of Urewe users’ lives, including health, wealth and violence.

Prehistoric copper production and technological reproduction in the Khao Wong Prachan Valley of Central Thailand

This paper concerns the identification and explanation of change in prehistoric extractive metallurgical behaviour in the Iron Age Khao Wong Prachan Valley of central Thailand. This metallurgical complex is amongst the largest in Eurasia and constitutes Southeast Asia's only documented pre-modern copper-smelting evidence. The two Iron Age smelting sites investigated, Non Pa Wai (NPW) and Nil Kham Haeng (NKH), provide a sequence of metallurgical consumption and production evidence from c. 500 BCE to c. 500 CE. The enormous quantity of industrial waste at these sites suggests they were probably major copper supply nodes within ancient Southeast Asian metal exchange networks. Seventy-six excavated samples of mineral, technical ceramic and slag from NPW and NKH were analysed in hand specimen, microstructurally by reflected-light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy and chemically by polarising energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The analytical data were used to generate detailed technological reconstructions of copper-smelting behaviour at the two sites, which were refined by a programme of field experimentation. Results indicate an approximately 1,000-year trend of Valley copper smelters' improving technical proficiency from what may be an experimental phase of production in the mid-first millennium BCE. This amelioration in production was accompanied by a substantial increase in the human effort of copper extraction. This shift in local ‘metallurgical ethos’ is interpreted as a response to rising regional demand for copper in late prehistory.

Lamb, Mutton, and Goat in the Babylonian Temple Economy

AbstractIn the mid-first millennium B.C.E., the Eanna temple of Uruk distributed the meat of sheep and goats to its associates and dependents. The meat of post-sacrificial lambs went to the Eanna’s prebend holding elite, while others received the meat of goats and older sheep without ceremony and on the hoof. Many assume this latter distribution worked to supply the Eanna’s lowest classes with substandard meat. I argue, instead, that there was nothing inherently substandard about this meat; moreover, there is little evidence that it was intended for the Eanna’s lowest classes. This paper then explores the distribution of meat to the Eanna’s sub-elite, especially in place of temple rations and payments of silver.