Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Innsbruck, 1984/85. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [113]-115) and indexes.

Akademisk avhandling--Lund. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement, inserted. Includes index. Bibliography: p. [151]-157.

This thesis discusses the evidence for funerary practices afforded to children in the Earlier Bronze Age in Britain (circa 2500BC to 1400BC) focussing on three key case study areas: Scotland, Yorkshire and Wessex. A long-view of the Earlier Bronze Age has been adopted to enable broad patterns to be determined and discussed. The wider aim is to offer a fuller understanding of the perception and importance of children within Earlier Bronze Age society. Following the theoretical and methodological framework adopted throughout the study the evidence for the mortuary treatment of children and the grave furnishings provided for them is discussed with particular reference to how children’s graves compare to those of adults in the same chronological period. To accompany this study, a comprehensive catalogue of previously recorded children’s burials both by inhumation and after cremation has been compiled by the writer for the three case study areas. This includes data both from antiquarian sources and from modern excavation reports detailing aspects of grave location, positioning of the body and associated material culture in the form of grave goods. The corpus is then reviewed and discussed for each of the case study areas. The aim of each study is to analyse the significance of aspects of funerary practice and the role of grave goods in association with children of fifteen years of age or younger within regional burial traditions. This study indicates that children are under-represented in the burial record and suggests that formal burial was not open to all immature individuals. In each of the case study areas funerary rites afforded to children are generally consistent with those of adults but this study demonstrates that the inclusion of certain objects found in adult graves (such as bronze knife-daggers) were not considered appropriate for inclusion in the grave of a child. A number of exceptional and highly-furnished graves are present which indicate that it was possible for children to be perceived as significant members of Earlier Bronze Age society during life and in the Otherworld.

In this dissertation I investigate the idea of the home in archaeology, with specific reference to home-making practices in Sicily and Calabria over the course of the Bronze Age (ca. 2400-900 BC). This area possesses a wealth of settlement evidence, but the details of everyday domestic life have yet to be studied on their own merits. Drawing inspiration from phenomenology and human geography, I define the archaeological home as an existential relationship between people and place that is generated by the history it embodies and the material investments through which that history is manifested. Although traditional Bronze Age architecture is typically characterized as crude and expedient, analysis of settlement space on the island of Filicudi demonstrates that despite their small size and simple construction, buildings were maintained and reoccupied over the course of many centuries. Patterns of rebuilding stone walls and renewing earthen floors demonstrate a concern with maintaining continuity and perpetuating a localized architectural tradition. I interpret these behaviors as instrumental in generating and negotiating a distinct sense of identity, both individual and collective. Geoarchaeological study of occupation deposits at the recently excavated settlements of Filo Braccio, Taureana di Palmi, and Sant'Aniceto reveals that inhabitants employed a diverse array of substances in their floors, including clay, ash, crushed limestone, marl, occupation debris, and clean soil material. These choices exhibit a regard for the house floor as a platform for daily life, as does the treatment of these surfaces over time. Home-making also extends to waste disposal: deeply stratified deposits at Sant'Aniceto indicate that residents initially collected their household debris in a designated midden. At a certain point, this refuse was moved en masse in order to fill a single building at the site, constituting an episode of intentional structural closure. Traditions of architectural practice, attention to flooring materials, the treatment of household waste, and the orchestrated burial of buildings can all be seen as ways in which the lives of people and the biographies of their dwelt environments become intertwined. This ongoing relationship conveys a sense of home-making in the distant past, yet still resonates for us today.

No description available.

Earthen architecture is a widespread phenomenon, both in the present day and the past. It is one of the most impressive expressions of the human ability to create a unique built environment from modest natural resources. Archaeological research has shown that mud brick manufacturing techniques can inform on community practices in relation to architecture. New geoarchaeological and microarchaeological approaches provide information on the source of raw materials in conjunction with the mode of manufacture and construction. The aim of this study is to investigate Minoan earthen architecture using mud bricks as an integral part of material culture in order to reconstruct the technological process of mud brick manufacture and to provide fresh insights about architectural craft specialisation in Bronze Age Crete. In order to fulfil this goal, more than 10,000 mud bricks are studied both macroscopically, by investigating broad trends in manufacture and construction form, and microscopically, by considering the finer details of raw material procurement and building performance through XRF, XRD and thin section petrography. This research places the geoarchaeological analysis of mud brick architecture within a specific multidisciplinary theoretical framework that combines archaeological data, architectural analysis and ethnoarchaeology. The analyses clarify how raw materials were selected and used within and between buildings. They also shed light on broader temporal changes, such as increasing technological sophistication, the type of labour force, if centrally organised or household based, and its impact on architecture. Earthen building forms and materials are the result of assimilation between the natural and built environment. Therefore the exploitation of specific raw materials sheds light on community strategies of adaptation to natural resources and their transformation into material culture. Research results indicate that mud brick manufacture was a standardised activity during the Minoan period with evidence of craft specialisation in raw source material selection, production and construction.

The Cypriot Bronze Age (c.2300-1075 BCE) is a widely researched chronological period. However, with long-term material elaboration receiving most attention, detailed studies have revealed a remarkable, yet insufficiently integrated amount of data. Based on these, and since the 1960’s, researchers proposed settlement pattern models to describe increasingly complex politico-economic mechanisms. Despite continuous excavations and detailed material studies, these models have only been slightly modified over the past 50 years. This raises questions on how integrative and representative currently employed settlement pattern models are, and if new approaches may support different relationships. This study is a spatial attempt to answer these questions via a comparative research of diachronic local/regional trajectories in three valleys from the south central coast of Cyprus: the Kouris, the Vasilikos and the Maroni. It examines the association between the valleys’ surveyed and excavated data with current large-scale interpretations, focusing on human-landscape relations in open (landscape), constructed (architecture) and concealed (burials) spaces. Underscoring a pattern between natural and cognitive landscape with materially expressed identities, this study offers a novel conceptualisation of multiple scales of relations throughout the Bronze Age. Consequently, it underpins the significance of a deep understanding of local histories, prior to the formation and/or use of any generalised settlement pattern models to describe any chronological period. Finally, it supports integrative methodologies for material evidence associated with groups of people that are hardly visible in large-scale reconstructions of politico-economic relations.

This thesis contributes an original approach to the understanding of human-object relations at funerary and ceremonial sites during the period c.2200 BC - 1400 BC within Wales. A primary review of archaeological work within this region contextualises this thesis and challenges the notion that this area is materially-poor during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Drawing on existing excavation reports and archived material, a database of archaeological sites detailing context and material culture was created. Additionally a calibrated set of dates, was mapped against architectural, depositional and material practice. These data sets provided the opportunity to compare different Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age archaeological features in terms of the character and variety of associated objects and materials. Analysis of this data has illustrated key contrasts and similarities in the treatment of material culture across architecturally distinct ceremonial and funerary site types. This interpretation is framed by a discussion of materiality, arguing for a model which is located in past perspectives rather than a deconstruction of Western material values. Materiality is explored as a contextual, often learned understanding of the world, which is not restricted to the physical qualities of materials. Potential concepts of materiality were considered with particular attention given to the treatment of human remains in funerary and ceremonial contexts. The result of this thesis is an enhanced understanding of depositional practices and their role in the construction, use and perception of funerary and ceremonial sites within the Early Bronze Age of Wales.

Prehistoric figurines have long proven evocative objects, and those of Bronze Age Cyprus have captivated researchers for more than a century. Much of this attention, however, has focussed on appraising the aesthetic characteristics, particularly of human figurines and using them to ascribe names to Bronze Age Cypriot deities. Most studies ignore animal figurines and less visually appealing, fragmentary or schematic examples; socially-situated analyses have also been particularly rare. However, the potential of these enigmatic objects to illuminate the society which made and used them has not gone unnoticed by archaeologists and calls have been made for a comprehensive, contextual investigation. This thesis undertook to provide such a study, aiming not only to interpret the function and significance of the figurines themselves but to consider the implications of these interpretations for the nature of the Bronze Age Cypriot society. The project has collated a detailed database of all 1790 known figurines from this period, including representations of humans, animals and inanimate objects, depicted as independent figurines, figurative vessels and vessels decorated with miniature figurines. These are predominantly ceramic but those few stone and metal variations of established ceramic categories have also been included. This varied material has been organised into a transparent, comprehensive typology and subjected to rigorous iconographical and contextual analyses. The interpretations to which these analyses have led have been informed by a diverse theoretical basis drawn from art-history, philosophy and archaeology, and situated on a firm understanding of the socio-cultural context of Bronze Age Cyprus. Investigations into the symbolic connotations and practical use of each figurine type have proven fruitful. Significant new findings include the hitherto unrecognised importance of textile imagery in the Early-Middle Bronze Age, evidence for the ritual breakage of Plank Figurines and a complex interplay of homogenisation and variation within the Late Cypriot figurine record. Finally, diachronic transformations in the forms, meanings and usage of figurines have been carefully evaluated to consider their implications for the changing socio-cultural landscape of Cyprus throughout the Bronze Age. Alterations in the criteria chosen to display group identity, a combination of continuity and change in ritual practices and sustained, close contacts with a wide sphere of external communities are just some of the trends and issues which figurines have been able to elucidate. Principally, this study demonstrates that nuanced, systematic investigation of this rich body of figurines holds significant potential to inform interpretations not only of the figurines themselves but also of their dynamic and complex Bronze Age Cypriot context.

The purpose of this thesis is to review the English language material concerning the beginning of bronze technology in East Asia in order to evaluate the evidence for the birth of bronze metallurgy in East Asia. The method of investigation was first to study published and unpublished material on North, Central and South East Asia. This study included the history of research under the categories of method, theory, and chronology of archaeological investigations, and hypotheses on origins and routes of bronze technology in East Asia. The examination of bronze metallurgy followed. This comprised the ramifications of the occurrence of copper-working, the production and analysis of the alloy bronze, the method of production of bronze objects, the dating of bronze artifacts and the social context of bronze production. The next step in the study was to explore the Neolithic stages of culture in the diverse areas in order to examine the precursors of bronze-producing societies and to determine the earliest bronze assemblages. The earliest bronze assemblages were in turn investigated. The metal objects, both copper and bronze, in these assemblages were tabulated and compared chronologically. The categories of metal objects were used to illustrate the relative sociocultural integration of each bronze producing group. Evidence of casting of the metal in the assemblages was compared to ascertain the similarities, if any, among production procedures. Chemical analyses of the bronze in the assemblages were tabulated for comparison and examination of relationships. Finally, similar types of artifacts in the assemblages were tabulated for stylistic comparison. The general conclusions from these investigations are that the four assemblages of earliest bronze technology in East Asia are from Minusinsk in southern Siberia, Erh-li-t'ou in North China, Ta-p'o-na in southwest China and Non Nok Tha in northeastern Thailand. Of these assemblages, neither Minusinsk nor Ta-p'o-na demonstrated the beginning of bronze production. The archaeological evidence does not establish the beginning of bronze metallurgy as being shown at either Erh-li-t'ou or at Non Nok Tha but the possibility exists for either indigenous development from external stimulus or separate invention with no outside stimulus of any kind for either area. This study has demonstrated the existence of different technologies, different levels of social integration and different social contexts for bronze in all four early assemblages. Thus it has also demonstrated that the beginning of bronze production did not have to occur in urban or state environments. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate