Anthony Harding

Amber in the Mycenaean World

Amber has long been recognized as an important indicator of Mycenaean foreign contacts. Though much has been written, no thorough survey of the topic has yet been undertaken. The chief purpose of this article is to present a corpus, as complete as the authors can make it, of the known Mycenaean amber finds, together with those from adjacent areas. Since the nineteenth century amber objects in Italy and Greece have generally been considered by scholarly opinion to have been imported from the Baltic, and a number of finds, including Schliemanns from the Shaft Graves, were subjected to rudimentary chemical analyses to ‘prove’ this, the criterion being the presence of succinic acid. Navarro in 1925 traced the route the amber was supposed to have taken by charting the distribution of finds in central Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Cornesti-Iarcuri - a Bronze Age town in the Romanian Banat?

A massive Late Bronze Age fortified settlement in Central Europe has been the subject of a new and exemplary investigation by excavation and site survey. This prehistoric enclosure, nearly 6km across, had a complex development, dense occupation and signs of destruction by fire. It can hardly be other than a capital city playing a role in the determinant struggles of its day — weighty and far reaching events of the European continent now being chronicled by archaeology.

World Systems, Cores, and Peripheries in Prehistoric Europe

The paper reviews the rise and utility of World Systems Theory in archaeology, with particular reference to Europe and the Bronze Age. After a consideration of its origins in the 1970s and 1980s, the main aspects of the theory are discussed. The evidence that shows that the Bronze Age world was highly interconnected is presented, and the implications of a World Systems view of the period considered. In an attempt to work towards a new narrative of the European Bronze Age, a brief discussion of network methods is introduced, since these offer an alternative, ‘bottom-up’, approach to the period which, it is argued, is more appropriate to the data than the World Systems approach.

The Bronze Age

The term “Bronze Age” represents that segment of time that succeeded the New Stone Age (Neolithic) and the Copper Age (a term that is used variably across Europe to indicate the time when copper metallurgy first became widespread). Although the name implies that it was the alloying of copper with tin and other minerals that was important, in fact there are many other aspects that were equally or more significant as defining characteristics of the period. Lying as it does between the period of dominance of small-scale farming societies and the rise of major state-type societies, the Bronze Age is usually considered to represent a crucial developmental phase in European prehistory. During this phase, literacy spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean area, where large-scale palace-based societies were present. Though it is only developments in Greece (of the various East Mediterranean civilisations) that affect us directly in this chapter, nevertheless the proximity of many European Bronze Age communities to these major socioeconomic units was arguably a major factor in the world of Bronze Age Europe in general. Opinions differ about the extent or importance of links between Greece and the “barbarian” world, but all are agreed that matters such as the movement of prestige goods and metals around the Mediterranean could not have failed to affect societies living on its northern and western shores, and arguably in their hinterlands.

Morgawr: an experimental Bronze Age-type sewn-plank craft based on the Ferriby boats

This paper reports on the construction of a full-scale Bronze Age-type sewn-plank boat based on the Ferriby boats. The boat, which was named Morgawr, was constructed in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth, England, during 2012 and the first months of 2013, as part of a larger exhibition in the museum. This paper provides the background and context of the project, describes the process of building the craft, and reflects in particular on differences between Morgawr and the ‘hypothetical reconstruction of a complete sewn-plank boat’ published in 1990 by Ted Wright and John Coates which formed the basis for this project.

Facts and fantasies from the Bronze AgeKristian Kristiansen & Thomas B. Larsson. The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations . xiv+450 pages, 170 illustrations. 2005. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 0-521-84363-4 hardback & 0-521-60466-4 paperback £24.99.

Karlene Jones-Bley & D.G. Zdanovich (ed.). Complex Societies of Central Eurasia from the 3rd to the 1st Millennium BC: Regional Specifics in Light of Global Models (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monographs 45 & 46). 2 volumes. xxxviii & xiv+634 pages, many illustrations, tables. 2002. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man/Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chelyabinsk State University; 0-941694-83-6 (vol. 1) & 0-941694-86-0 (vol. 2) paperback

Mycenaeans in Bavaria? Amber and gold from the Bronze Age site of Bernstorf

52 each.

Interactions and -isations in the Aegean and beyond

In August 1998 the German archaeological world was stunned when two amateur archaeologists found decorated gold-sheet ornaments on a hill in Bavaria north of Munich, near a farm named Bernstorf, in the commune of Kranzberg. A Bronze Age fortified enclosure was known there, local amateurs having excavated it earlier in the 1990s; later, permission was granted for gravel extraction, trees were cleared and it was in this disturbed area that the gold appeared. The authorities were quickly alerted. Both the Staatssammlung in Munich (Bavarian State Archaeological Museum) and the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (BLfD, Bavarian State Office for Monument Care) took part in inspections and, subsequently, excavations. More gold, including a ‘diadem’, appeared and, in late September 1998, perforated lumps of amber. Then in November 2000, on the edge of an area under excavation by the BLfD, came the sensational discovery of two incised pieces of amber hailed as Mycenaean.

Castelliere on the Karst: the Bronze Age hillfort of Monkodonja

Connectivity in the ancient world has become a subject of such consuming interest in recent years that new publications on various aspects of the issue, pertaining to some area or period, appear with great regularity. Just in later European prehistory we have Continental connections: exploring cross-channel relationships (Anderson-Whymark et al. 2015), Exchange networks and local transformations (Alberti & Sabatini 2013) and Enclosed space—open society (Jaeger et al. 2012), to name but a few. One can hardly believe otherwise than that every part of the later prehistoric world was intimately involved, not only with its immediate neighbours but also with other areas near and far. Allied to this is the matter of colonialism and ‘post-colonial’ archaeology, with questions of hybridity, importation, local imitation and acculturation or adaptation; all these are things that loom large in these volumes and many others (e.g. Stockhammer 2012). The question of ‘-isations’, such as ‘Romanisation’, has been a concern of archaeologists for many years; here it is ‘-isations’ of the prehistoric Aegean world that are the focus of attention.

Oxhide ingots in the European North

BERNHARD HÄNSEL, KRISTINA MIHOVILIĆ & BIBA TERŽAN. Monkodonja. Istraživanje protourbanog naselja brončanog doba Istre, Knjiga 1: Iskopovanje i nalazi građevina/Forschungen zu einer protourbanen Siedlung der Bronzezeit Istriens, Teil 1: Die Grabung und der Baubefund (Monografije i katalozi 25/Monographien und Kataloge 25). 2015. 589 pages, 336 colour and b&w illustrations, 7 fold-out plans. Pula: Arheološki muzej Istre/Archäologisches Museum Istriens; 978-953-6153-92-3 hardback 350 kuna (approx. £37 & €47).