Tell Halif gives us an example of the pillared house from the Iron Age II period. Based on this house, what we can address is whether there is a typical set of activities undertaken in this house. Do the “de facto” assemblages of artifacts reflect a typical everyday use of space or a different use of space because of military activity associated with the siege and destruction of the settlement? It can be demonstrated from Tell Halif’s archaeological data that, once the specific activities are identified, their organization also can be identified. These remains are compared with other Iron Age houses from the same site and other sites in the Negev and the southern Shephelah. The purpose of this research is to examine and add to our understanding of the Iron Age household and how it is reflected in the patterning of artifacts in the buildings occupied by the household.

The map of Iron Age Anatolia (ca. 1200-550 BCE, Turkey) is dotted by territorial kingdoms that rose and were subsumed into larger political entities throughout its history. Current archaeological narratives commonly place Lydia into this scene quite late in the Iron Age with the rise of its Mermnad elite in the seventh century BCE. Their power is well attested by the rapid expansion of their influence in Anatolia, as well as by their ambitious buildings programs that monumentalized their capital city Sardis. Among these programs, monumental urban terrace platforms hold a unique position, for they regularized the rugged topography of a naturally elevated district at the heart of Sardis, converting it into a visibly dominant promontory to house the Lydian palace. Until recently there were no precedents for these enormous man-made investments, hence the narrative of the Mermnad elite’s late and fast emergence and the reconstruction of Sardis as an agglomeration of small sites before their time. The fresh discovery of a long sequence of large-scale constructions (2000-700 BCE) in the city’s elite precinct now casts doubt on this narrative. In this dissertation, I study these early monumental constructions along with the later terraces to investigate the course of Lydian elite placemaking and their wider implications for Lydia’s place in Iron Age Anatolia. This research is multi-scalar, expanding out from a detailed study of architecture, to the place of terraces within the socio-spatial fabric of diachronic settlements at Sardis, and finally to wider regional Anatolian context. I begin with the examination of the corpus of urban terrace constructions in Sardis and their architectural design principles and dating evidence. Next, I compare the terraces to constructions from domestic neighborhoods as well as other Mermnad elite structures. Their scalar facets—large size, costly materials, and large labor requirements—mark them as monumental in each building episode. I consider symbolic and experiential facets using a variety of theoretical frameworks—memory, social submission, performance, and domination—to demonstrate how these terraces shaped their socio-spatial environments through ongoing claims of an old central precinct. This was achieved by introducing architectural novelties as well as more formality and regularity, employing transformative labor as a means of public spectacle and creating built representations of spatial control and domination. At the same time, I show the extent to which these practices foreshadow Mermnad elite placemaking ideologies. Thus, this research marks Lydian constructions in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE as productions of a previously unregistered early Lydian elite. I conclude by contextualizing early Lydian placemaking practices within Anatolia’s broader socio-political spheres. This study reveals terracing to demarcate elite space as a Lydian mode of placemaking and that in timing and ideology it followed the culture-political trajectories of Anatolia—by peer-polity competition—more so than those of the Aegean. As a result, I acknowledge the deeper history of the ruling elite in Lydia, one that reverses the narrative of a sudden, late, and rapid development fostered by the Mermnads. This study, thus, makes a place for Lydia in the Iron Age maps of Anatolia two centuries earlier than has been previously believed.

No

Roundhouses are ubiquitous in prehistoric Britain, yet previous studies of these iconic features have tended to overlook their human occupants, focusing instead on their external morphology and structural engineering. Those studies which have attempted to move beyond functionalist frameworks, have often applied overarching and broad-scale cosmological models which, though re-orientating study towards social considerations, have likewise failed to shed light on the interaction between roundhouse and their inhabitants, particularly at a household level. This research reanalyses the Late Iron Age settlement at Broxmouth, East Lothian, using new theoretical approaches and advances in AMS dating to ask new questions of a 30 year old data-set. Biographical and materiality approaches, which draw heavily on relational analogy with the ethnographic record, have allowed for detailed reconstruction of the life-history of each structure, and important moments within these histories. Roundhouse replacement appears to have taken place on a roughly generational basis, as a means by which households renegotiated their social identities within the community. Structured deposition, and the materiality of the roundhouse fabric itself, appears to have played an important role in the communication of identity, where the retention of previous structural fabric, the deposition of curated items, and the referencing of former internal features, created physical and symbolic links with the past, and with the ancestors. As such, this study demonstrates that roundhouses were far more than mere dwellings, and were integral to the ways in which past societies rationalised the world around them. / AHRC funding the affiliated Collaborative Doctoral Awards / The full text was made available at the end of the extended embargo, 31st March 2020.

Khirbet Summeily is an early Iron Age II site located northwest of Tell el-Hesi in Southern Israel. Excavations sponsored by the Cobb Institute of Archaeology have revealed a large structure with a potential ritual space dated to the Iron Age IIA (ca. 1000-980/850 B.C.E.). Recent interpretations suggest the site was integrated into a regional economic and political system and functioned as a potential administrative outpost based on the material culture and architecture recovered from the Iron Age IIA layers. This thesis presents the carbon, oxygen, and strontium isotopic analyses of intra-tooth samples from ovicaprine and cattle remains to test herd management strategies in connection to administrative and cultic provisioning activities. The animal remains are used as proxies to identify political and economic ties through herd management patterns. These results will test the hypothesis that Khirbet Summeily was an administrative outpost integrated into a larger political and/or economic network.

No description available.

This thesis investigates breastfeeding and weaning patterns in an Iron Age (7th – 4th century BCE) sample of subadults (n=12) and adults (n=9) buried at the sites of Botromagno, Parco San Stefano and Padreterno in southern Italy. Stable isotope analysis of both human tooth dentine and bone collagen for each subadult, and tooth dentine for adults, was undertaken to create early-life feeding histories. The dentine serial sections were used to determine the onset and completion of weaning for each individual, as well as distinguish general trends in early feeding practices at these Iron Age sites. Results indicate that the average onset of weaning in subadults occurred at 8 ± 3.4 months and weaning was completed by 4 years of age at the latest for all individuals; however, the patterns of breastfeeding and weaning were variable in this sample. This study also explores variation in early childhood diet between survivors and non-survivors (i.e., < 4 years of age). Non-survivors were weaned more rapidly than survivors – possibly contributing to their earlier death – and some non-survivors demonstrated elevated δ15N values that may have been a result of physiological stress. It is, however, difficult to distinguish signals of breastfeeding versus stress in young children who were still likely consuming breast milk. Finally, differences in isotope data between dentine serial sampling and bulk-bone sampling of rib and femoral collagen from the same individuals were investigated. The results show that the combined use of dentine and bone data contribute to more nuanced interpretations of weaning. Further, rib samples represent diet closer to the time of death than femoral samples, as faster bone turnover rate in ribs allow for the incorporation of more recent dietary changes. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

No / The Chalcolithic tell of Ghabristan in northwest Iran is now buried by alluvium and a magnetometer survey of the tell and its surroundings was undertaken to reveal any features under this cover. After the abandonment of the tell in the late third millennium BC it was used as an Iron Age cemetery by inhabitants of the neighbouring tell of Sagzabad. The magnetometer data show a related irregularly shaped channel that is also considered to be of Iron Age date.Its shallow burial depth, compared with the thick sedimentary layers underneath, indicates a considerable slowdown of alluviation rates in the second millennium BC, possibly related to environmental changes. The survey also found evidence for undisturbed buried building remains, most likely associated with copper workshops.

No / Excavations were carried out on the tidal islet settlement of Eilean Maleit, previously excavated by Erskine Beveridge in the early part of this century, to test the hypothesis that the site represented a wheelhouse built into an earlier Atlantic roundhouse or broch. It is clear from the re-excavation that the wheelhouse was indeed set into an earlier massive-walled dry stone structure, probably an Atlantic roundhouse but almost certainly not a classic broch tower. The denuded condition of this early structure when the wheelhouse was built suggests that a significant period of time may have elapsed between the occupation of the two structures. Publication of this work is sponsored by Historic Scotland.

No / The agricultural ¿revolution¿ in Iron Age Orkney is the subject of Julie Bond¿s paper. Focusing on Pool in Sanday, she outlines the perceived changes in animal husbandry and cultivation over the lifetime of the settlement ¿ changes she describes as ¿innovations and intensification in the agricultural economy of Orkney before the arrival of the Vikings.¿ The apparent success of these Iron Age farming settlements may well be, she adds, the reason they may have been early targets for Scandinavian settlers.