Le Bronze moyen et l'origine du Bronze final en Europe occidentale (XVIIe-XIIIe siècle av. J.-C.)


Book Description

La 4e de couverture indique : Ces actes du colloque international 2014 de Strasbourg se présentent comme un bilan des connaissances sur les sociétés des XVIIe-XIIIe siècles avant notre ère, sur un vaste espace de l'Europe occidentale. Une actualisation des connaissances s'imposait pour intégrer les nombreuses découvertes réalisées en particulier dans le cadre de l'archéologie préventive. L'ouvrage privilégie tout d'abord les synthèses par régions ou entités spatiales qui ont semblé significatives dans la recherche des géographies culturelles du Bronze moyen. L'objectif est d'interroger successivement les champs de la culture matérielle, des pratiques funéraires, des formes de l'habitat, des modalités et des rythmes de l'occupation. L'origine du Bronze final a été abordée fort logiquement, dans la suite évolutive du Bronze moyen tant il s'avère évident que l'une procède de l'autre. Pour la France, les avancées portent principalement sur une meilleure connaissance des cultures atlantiques et de celles de la sphère méditerranéenne ; la confirmation est aussi faite de la place éminente des connexions avec le domaine nord-alpin. La question des mobilités humaines en relation avec celle des transferts culturels et techniques reste sous-jacente aux débats. On trouvera aussi des contributions sur la chronologie relative et absolue de cette période, la gestion et l'organisation de l'espace, les pratiques funéraires, l'organisation de la production métallique. Cet ouvrage prend place dans la série des colloques internationaux et des publications de synthèse consacrées à l'âge du Bronze tenus en France depuis 30 ans maintenant.




Funerary Practices in the Second Half of the Second Millennium BC in Continental Atlantic Europe


Book Description

This edited volume presents a selection of essays dedicated to funerary practices from Belgium to the north of Portugal. It aims at filling gaps in the documentation and helping to better understand the relationships between these Atlantic regions during the Bronze Age.




Processions: Studies of Bronze Age Ritual and Ceremony presented to Robert B. Koehl


Book Description

Robert Koehl has long considered processions to have played an integral role in Aegean Bronze Age societies. Papers concentrate mainly on evidence from Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland, with additional perspectives from abroad, these geographic divisions forming the basic outline of this volume.




Fragments of the Bronze Age


Book Description

The destruction and deposition of metalwork is a widely recognised phenomenon across Bronze Age Europe. Weapons were decommissioned and thrown into rivers; axes were fragmented and piled in hoards; and ornaments were crushed, contorted and placed in certain landscapes. Interpretation of this material is often considered in terms of whether such acts should be considered ritual offerings, or functional acts for storing, scrapping and recycling the metal. This book approaches this debate from a fresh perspective, by focusing on how the metalwork was destroyed and deposited as a means to understand the reasons behind the process. To achieve this, this study draws on experimental archaeology, as well as developing a framework for assessing what can be considered deliberate destruction. Understanding these processes not only helps us to recognise how destruction happened, but also gives us insights into the individuals involved in these practices. Through an examination of metalwork from south-west Britain, it is possible to observe the complexities involved at a localised level in the acts of destruction and deposition, as well as how they were linked to people and places. This case study is used to consider the social role of destruction and deposition more broadly in the Bronze Age, highlighting how it transformed over time and space.




The Evolution of Techniques


Book Description

A novel, interdisciplinary exploration of the relative contributions of rigidity and flexibility in the adoption, maintenance, and evolution of technical traditions. Techniques can either be used in rigid, stereotypical ways or in flexibly adaptive ways, or in some combination of the two. The Evolution of Techniques, edited by Mathieu Charbonneau, addresses the impacts of both flexibility and rigidity on how techniques are used, transformed, and reconstructed, at varying social and temporal scales. The multidisciplinary contributors demonstrate the important role of the varied learning contexts and social configurations involved in the transmission, use, and evolution of techniques. They explore the diversity of cognitive, behavioral, sociocultural, and ecological mechanisms that promote and constrain technical flexibility and rigidity, proposing a deeper picture of the enablers of, and obstacles to, technical transmission and change. In line with the extended evolutionary synthesis, the book proposes a more inclusive and materially grounded conception of technical evolution in terms of promiscuous, dynamic, and multidirectional causal processes. Offering new evidence and novel theoretical perspectives, the contributors deploy a diversity of methods, including ethnographies, field and laboratory experiments, cladistics and phylogenetic tree building, historiography, and philosophical analysis. Examples of the wide range of topics covered include field experiments with potters from five cultures, stability and change in Paleolithic toolmaking, why children lack flexibility when making tools, and cultural techniques in nonhuman animals. The volume’s three thematic sections are: · Timescales of technical rigidity and flexibility · Rigid copying to flexible reconstruction · Exogenous factors of technical rigidity and flexibility The volume closes with a discussion by philosopher Kim Sterelny. Contributors Rita Astuti, Adam Howell Boyette, Blandine Bril, Josep Call, Mathieu Charbonneau, Arianna Curioni, Nicola Cutting, Bert De Munck, György Gergely, Anne-Lise Goujon, Ildikó Király, Catherine Lara, Sébastien Manem, Luke McEllin, Helena Miton, Giulio Ongaro, Sarah Pope-Caldwell, Valentine Roux, Manon Schweinfurth, Dan Sperber, Kim Sterelny, Dietrich Stout, James W. A. Strachan, Sadie Tenpas




Post-Palaeolithic Filiform Rock Art in Western Europe


Book Description

This session focuses on Filiform rock art which appears as a spontaneous technique, more simple and immediate than pecking, good either for autonomous strands of expression, or for sketches and first drafts regarding works of painting or pecking.







Bronze Age Connections


Book Description

New and exciting discoveries on either side of the English Channel in recent years have begun to show that people living in the coastal zones of Belgium, southern Britain, northern France and the Netherlands shared a common material culture during the Bronze Age, between three and four thousand years ago. They used similar styles of pottery and metalwork, lived in the same kind of houses and buried their dead in the same kind of tombs, often quite different to those used by their neighbours further inland. The sea did not appear to be a barrier to these people but rather a highway, connecting communities in a unique cultural identity; the 'People of La Manche'. Symbolic of these maritime Bronze Age Connections is the iconic Dover Bronze Age boat, one of Europe's greatest prehistoric discoveries and testament to the skill and technical sophistication of our Bronze Age ancestors. This monograph presents papers from a conference held in Dover in 2006 organised by the Dover Bronze Age Boat Trust, which brought together scholars from many different countries to explore and celebrate these ancient seaborne contacts. Twelve wide-ranging chapters explore themes of travel, exchange, production, magic and ritual that throw new light on our understanding of the seafaring peoples of the second millennium BC.




Demography and Migration Population trajectories from the Neolithic to the Iron Age


Book Description

This volume presents combined proceedings of two complementary sessions of the XVIII UISPP World Congress (Paris, 2018). These sessions aimed to identify demographic variations during the Neolithic and Bronze Age and to question their causes while avoiding the potential taphonomic and chronological biases affecting the documentation.




Movement, Exchange and Identity in Europe in the 2nd and 1st Millennia BC


Book Description

This collection of papers by an international chort of contributors explores the nature of the maritime connections that appear to have existed in the Transmanche/English Channel Zone during later prehistory. Organised into three themes, ‘Movement and Identity in the Transmanche Zone’; ‘Travel and exchange’; ‘Identity and Landscape’, the papers seek to articulate notions of frontier, mobility and identity from the end of the 3rd to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, a time when the archaeological evidence suggests that the sea facilitated connections between peoples on both sides of the Channel rather than acting as a barrier as it is so often perceived today. Recent decades have since a massive increase in large-scale excavation programmes on either side of the Channel in advance of major infra-structure and urban development, resulting in the acqusition of huge, complex new datasets enabling new insights into later prehistoric life in this crucially important region. Papers consider the role of several key archaeologists in transforming our appreciation of the connectivity of the sea in prehistory; consider the extent to which the Channel zone developed into a closely unified cultural zone during later Bronze Age in terms of communities that serviced the movement of artefacts across the Channel with both sides sharing widely in the same artefacts and social practices; examine funerary practices and settlement evidence and consider the relationship between communities in social, cultural and ideological terms; and consider mechanisms for the transmission of ideas and how they may be reflected in the archaeological record. Brings together leading scholars from the UK and northern Europe in a thought-provoking and revealing new examination of the relationship between communities in the ‘Transmanche Zone’ in the Bronze and Iron Ages. The premise is that the English Channel was a conduit for connectivity and exchange of ideas, artefacts and social practices and rather than a barrier or frontier that had to be overcome before such connections could be fostered.