Benjamin W. Roberts

Development of metallurgy in Eurasia

The authors reconsider the origins of metallurgy in the Old World and offer us a new model in which metallurgy began in c. eleventh/ninth millennium BC in Southwest Asia due to a desire to adorn the human body in life and death using colourful ores and naturally-occurring metals. In the early sixth millennium BC the techniques of smelting were developed to produce lead, copper, copper alloys and eventually silver. The authors come down firmly on the side of single invention, seeing the subsequent cultural transmission of the technology as led by groups of metalworkers following in the wake of exotic objects in metal.

Investigating Archaeological Cultures: Material Culture, Variability, and Transmission

The concept of an archaeological culture rarely features in any surveys of the literature of modern archaeology, especially in the Anglo-American world. When it does appear, “cultures” are treated as an anachronism – a remnant of an archaic and long-dismissed stage of the discipline. Kent Flannery’s Parable of the Golden Marshalltown provides an exemplary formulation of the unfashionable status of the archaeological culture, when the Old Timer archaeologist was sacked by his own department for his continued but apparently outdated belief in this concept (Flannery 1982). Both introductory textbooks (e.g. Johnson 1999; Hodder and Hutson 2003; Renfrew and Bahn 2008) and theoretical compilations (e.g. Preucel and Hodder 1996; Hodder 2001; Van Pool and Van Pool 2003; Funari et al. 2005; Meskell and Preucel 2006) communicate the same message: the concept of archaeological cultures is deeply flawed and, as a consequence, should no longer be applied or even discussed.

Investigating Archaeological Cultures

This work will be valuable to all archaeologists and cultural anthropologists, particularly those studying material culture.

Ancient Technology and Archaeological Cultures: Understanding the Earliest Metallurgy in Eurasia

This paper reviews the evidence for the earliest metal objects and metal production practices throughout Eurasia. It is argued that it is through the movement of people possessing metallurgical expertise that the new material and technology is initially transmitted. This creates underlying technological similarities, but it does not explain the different characteristics encountered in the earliest metal and metallurgy in Eurasia. The processes underlying the adoption of metal are shaped by distinct choices based on the pre-existing material worlds of the communities involved. These are frequently, although not always, bound up in the broader entities of archaeological cultures. In order to understand the earliest metallurgy, it is therefore necessary to understand the dynamics that created the temporal and spatial patterns in the archaeological record that came to be labelled archaeological cultures.

A Tale of Two Countries: Contrasting Archaeological Culture History in British and French Archaeology

Archaeological cultures were one of the fundamental concepts for twentieth century archaeology. Yet, as shown through a comparative historiography of British and French archaeologies, the development and reception of this concept differed significantly in both countries. The reasons for these differences are manifold but primarily are due to the focus on different prehistoric periods (Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages in Britain, Palaeolithic in France) and the role played by key intellectual personalities. This analysis offers new perspectives on the contemporary divergences between the French and British archaeological traditions, as well on the complexity of archaeological cultures.