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8 books match the query 'Bronze Age'

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Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity

An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanite

Ann E. Killebrew

SBL Press, 2005

Ancient Israel did not emerge within a vacuum but rather came to exist alongside various peoples, including Canaanites, Egyptians, and Philistines. Indeed, Israel’s very proximity to these groups has made it difficult—until now—to distinguish the archaeological traces of early Israel and other contemporary groups. Through an analysis of the results from recent excavations in light of relevant historical and later biblical texts, this book proposes that it is possible to identify these peoples and trace culturally or ethnically defined boundaries in the archaeological record. Features of late second-millennium B.C.E. culture are critically examined in their historical and biblical contexts in order to define the complex social boundaries of the early Iron Age and reconstruct the diverse material world of these four peoples. Of particular value to scholars, archaeologists, and historians, this volume will also be a standard reference and resource for students and other readers interested in the emergence of early Israel.

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Diplomacy by Design

Luxury Arts and an "International Style" in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE

Marian H. Feldman

University of Chicago Press, 2006

Art and international relations during the Late Bronze Age formed a symbiosis as expanded travel and written communications fostered unprecedented cultural exchange across the Mediterranean. Diplomacy in these new political and imperial relationships was often maintained through the exchange of lavish art objects and luxury goods. The items bestowed during this time shared a repertoire of imagery that modern scholars call the first International Style in the history of art.

Marian Feldman's Diplomacy by Design examines the profound connection between art produced during this period and its social context, revealing inanimate objects as catalysts—or even participants—in human dynamics. Feldman's fascinating study shows the ways in which the exchange of these works of art actively mediated and strengthened political relations, intercultural interactions, and economic negotiations. Previous studies of this international style have focused almost exclusively on stylistic attribution at the expense of social contextualization. Written by a specialist in ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology who has excavated and traveled extensively in this area of the world, Diplomacy by Design provides a much broader consideration of the symbolic power of material culture and its centrality in the construction of human relations.

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Euphrates River Valley Settlement

The Carchemish Sector in the Third Millennium BC

E. Peltenburg

Council for British Research in the Levant, 2007

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Greece in the Bronze Age

Emily Townsend Vermeule

University of Chicago Press, 1964

From the arrival of the first men in Greece to the fall of the Mycenaean palace-town in the thirteenth century B.C., this work captures the essential qualities of each period of pre-classical civilization: the slow development of the Neolithic culture, the rich and original Early Bronze Age, the fruitful yet tragic encounter between Minoans and Mycenaean Empire. The legacy of Mycenaean religion and art is reviewed, including material found in excavated palaces and their stored wealth of frescoes, carved ivories, silver and gold jewelry, vases, and bronze weapons. The author deals with the invasions of Greece, the growth of a Greek language and some of the problems of Linear B, and the impact of Crete and the East upon the mainstream of Greek development.

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Live Stock and Dead Things

The Archaeology of Zoopolitics between Domestication and Modernity

Hannah Chazin

University of Chicago Press, 2024

Reconceptualizes human-animal relationships and their political significance in ancient and modern societies.

In Live Stock and Dead Things, Hannah Chazin combines zooarchaeology and anthropology to challenge familiar narratives about the role of nonhuman animals in the rise of modern societies. Conventional views of this process tend to see a mostly linear development from hunter-gatherer societies, to horticultural and pastoral ones, to large-scale agricultural ones, and then industrial ones. Along the way, traditional accounts argue that owning livestock as property, along with land and other valuable commodities, introduced social inequality and stratification. Against this, Chazin raises a provocative question: What if domestication wasn’t the origin of instrumentalizing nonhuman animals after all?

Chazin argues that these conventional narratives are inherited from conjectural histories and ignore the archaeological data. In her view, the category of “domestication” flattens the more complex dimensions of humans’ relationship to herd animals. In the book’s first half, Chazin offers a new understanding of the political possibilities of pastoralism, one that recognizes the powerful role herd animals have played in shaping human notions of power and authority. In the second half, she takes readers into her archaeological fieldwork in the South Caucasus, which sheds further light on herd animals’ transformative effect on the economy, social life, and ritual. Appealing to anthropologists and archaeologists alike, this daring book offers a reconceptualization of human-animal relationships and their political significance.

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Plant Foods of Greece

A Culinary Journey to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages

Soultana Maria Valamoti

University of Alabama Press, 2023

2024 INAUGURAL MARY BEAUDRY BOOK AWARD FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF FOOD

A synthesis of culinary practices of prehistoric Greece based on plant food ingredients

In Plant Foods of Greece, Greek archaeologist Soultana Maria Valamoti takes readers on a culinary journey, reconstructing the plant foods and culinary practices of Neolithic and Bronze Age Greece. For more than thirty years, she has been analyzing a large body of archaeobotanical data that was retrieved from nearly twenty sites in mainland Greece and the Greek islands, with an additional analysis of other sites as referenced by published colleagues. Plant foods were the main ingredients of daily meals in prehistoric Greece and most likely of special dishes prepared for feasts and rituals.

Valamoti’s approach allows an exploration of culinary variability through time. The thousands of charred seeds identified from occupation debris correspond to minuscule time capsules. She is able to document changes from the cooking of the first farmers to the sophisticated cuisines of the elites who inhabited palaces in the first cities of Europe in the south of Greece during the Late Bronze Age. Along the way, she explains the complex processes for the addition of new ingredients (such as millet and olives), condiments, sweet tastes, and complex recipes. Valamoti also addresses regional variability and diversity as well as detailing experimentation and research using occasional input from ancient written sources.

Comprehensive and synthetic coverage encompasses bread/cereals, pulses, oils, fruit and nuts, fermented brews, healing foods, cooking, and identity. In addition, Valamoti offers insight into engaging in public archaeology and provides recipes that incorporate ancient plant ingredients and connect prehistory to the present in a critical way. A definitive source for a range of food scientists and scholars, it will also appeal to foodies.

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