Bronze Age Death, Ritual and Metalwork Flashcards
1
Q
Round barrow cemeteries
A
- Early and Middle Bronze Age
- DIfferent forms of barrow inc. pond, round, ring
- Located along ridge lines, referencing natural features and earlier monuments
- Form lines, groupings and cemeteries e,g, Barrow Hills in Oxfordshire -lineages?
2
Q
Late Neolithic Monuments
A
- Still in use into the EBA e.g. henges such as Stonehenge and Arbow Low - these became the focus for round barrows
- The Broadmayne round barrow complex near Dorchester in Dorset was orientated to an earlier Neolithic bank barrow.
3
Q
The Stonehenge visual field
A
-GIS-based analyses of the barrow groups around Stonehenge by Anne Woodward & colleagues suggest that the barrows were carefully sited on ridgelines so that the largest number possible would be visible from Stonehenge itself.
-The Stonehenge Cursus barrow group clearly
referenced the line of the Neolithic cursus. GIS & viewshed analyses have been used to show the views of barrows from Stonehenge &
between each other
4
Q
Famous barrow groups
A
-Normanton Down (including Bush Barrow), Oakley Down,
5
Q
Bush Barrow
A
- Wilsford G5 bowl barrow of the Normanton Down barrow group, in view of Stonehenge
- High status - one of the burials which led to the idea of a Wessex Culture
- Included a stone macehead, gold studded dagger handle, gold lozenges
- One of a series of apparently high status barrow burials in the vicinity of Stonehenge that led to the idea of a ‘Wessex Culture’ – one or more powerful early to middle Bronze Age lineages that seem to have enjoyed considerable wealth and influence.
6
Q
Upton Lovell, Wiltshire
A
- Round barrow, dated to 1900-1700 BC
- Adult male w/ cloak sewn with 36 bone points and a bone point necklace, gold artefacts and metalworking tools - goldsmith or shaman?
7
Q
Cremation burials
A
- EBA >MBA, inhumation burials within round barrows or cists are replaced with cremation burials, placed in Food Vessels or Collared Urns
- Bodies burnt on a pyre, often with animal remains -inefficient wood/fuel wise, but forms a spectacle
- Ethnographic examples from India/Indonesia - cremation funerary rites consist of many distinct stages
8
Q
Cranborne Chase
A
- Wyke Down - barrow cemetery references natural mounds and hollows - did Bronze Age people believe these features to be ancestral mounds?
- Evidence for mummification practices
9
Q
Cists and cairns
A
- Upland/SW/N Britain, funerary structures consisted of stone-lined cists, either in flat graves or within cairns
- Cremation burials often placed within urns in more formal cairns, but more often juts as a few handful of bone in some clearance cairns
10
Q
Stone Monuments
A
- MBA- use of small stone circles, stone settings, cists and cairns in upland Britain e.g. Gower peninsula in Wales, Big Moor in Derbyshire or Brats Moss in Cumbria
11
Q
Ringlemere, Kent
A
- Late Neolithic Henge that was the focus for deposits including Grooved Ware vessels
- Series of pits were the focus of deposits including complete Beaker Vessels
- Barrow mound thrown up inside the henge, and gold cup deposited in the mound
- Other ‘fancy’ cups known e.g. gold from Rillaton and Ringlemere, amber from Hover and 2 shape cups from Farway in Dorset
- Cups had continental affiliations, along with incense burners and incense cups, and had a very limited distribution in Britain
12
Q
Late Neolithic Wedge Tombs
A
- Mainly in W/S Ireland
- 500-550 survive
- Entrances face SW
- Finds = barbed and tanged arrowheads, beakers and coarseware pottery
- 2500-2000 BC
13
Q
Necklaces
A
- Jet spacer necklaces and jet buttons had a limited distribution, mostly in Scotland and N England
- Faience beads also uncommon
14
Q
Irish cremation
A
- Predominant rite between 2400 and 800 BC
- Also present in BA ring ditches and round barrows with cremation burials as a primary burial
- EBA cremation burials in cists
- Small number of Irish BA cremation burials interred in Urns or Food Vessels
- Small number of Irish BA inhumations recorded
15
Q
Irish Stone Circles
A
- Often associated with other monuments e.g. cairns, stone rows and 2 stone circles at Beaghmore, Co. Tyrone
- Stone circles feature of some Irish henge sites
- Ireland also had pit and/ or timber circles, where pits contained EBA pottery
16
Q
Seahenge
A
- Timber structures at Holme-next-the-Sea, Norfolk
- Lie North of a series of prehistoric monuments, including a group of round barrows
- Low circle of eroded wooden posts, surrounding a large central wooden tree stump which seems to have been inverted
- Hole bored in the tree stump for dragging and parts of the rope survived, made of braided honeysuckle
- Cut marks of bronze axes used to trim the timbers survived
- Dendro and 14C suggests central stump felled 2050 BC and outer posts 2049 BC
- Small, cramped natural of the space within the circle, almost certainly for a burial
- West of the circle - possible timber trackway and East - possiblly another timber circle
- Tradition of tree-based practices?
17
Q
End of ritual practices?
A
- By Middle Bronze Age, large ritual complexes seem to have been falling out of use & ritual practices and deposits increasingly associated with houses, settlements and fields
- By the Later Bronze Age, formal burials (cremations or inhumations) have become rare
- Huma bodies increasingly deposited in pits, ditches and middens, often as disarticulated/semi-articulated remains
18
Q
Collared Urns
A
- Ireland and Britain - many EBA-MBA cremation burials took place in Food Vessels and especially Collared Urns, often inverted and sometimes containing so-called ‘pygmy cups’ or incense vessels
- Collared Urns also fund in some settlement contexts
19
Q
Deverel-Rimbury
A
- Appeared 2000-1200 BC in Southern England, some heavily decorated, on domestic sites and in cremation burials
- Elsewhere, plainer, simpler urns and jars in use
- LBA pottery from 1200-800 BC coarser, relatively plain urns and jards
- Still gaps in pottery chronologies for the lBA-EIA transition outside southern England
20
Q
Great Orme
A
- Site in North Wales
- Malachite ore extracted by extensive series of large shafts and smaller adits
- So extensively worked and re-worked in later periods that some archaeologists did not believe copper extraction could have taken place on such a scale there in prehistory until reliable 14C dates of c.1400-1000 BC obtained
21
Q
Metalworking
A
- Ethnographic examples and experimental archaeology has suggested smelting methods for small-scale prehistoric metal working
- One or two piece moulds of carved stone used to mould bronze artefacs such as axes and sickles
- Bronze alloyed with tin, lead and arsenic
- Lost wax process often used for manufacture of clay moulds
22
Q
Spread of Metallurgy
A
- Some initial copper working occured during Beaker period and may have occurred with movement of people and/or ideads in the Chalcolithic (2400-2200 BC)
- Metal mixed and traded from hand to hand over many centuries and many km away from where it was mined - hard to source later bronze
- Originated in Northern Europe/Asia? Baltic,
23
Q
Smithing
A
- Full time specialists
- Work on a seasonal basis?
24
Q
Gift exchange
A
- Bronze not simply a commodity;
- Social value (in marking out gender, age & status differences) more important than economic value;
- Bronze objects circulated as gifts not commodities;
- Competitive gift-giving as a means of acquiring status;
- Prestige goods economy not a market economy
25
Exchange networks
-There may have been emerging semi-formal links
between elites of Atlantic Europe, with gift giving of
metalwork, amber, etc as part of these.
Other potential explanations for movement of objects &
materials include:
• Warfare & raiding;
• Commodity trade – objects as goods;
• Intermarriage, & exogamous female burials
26
Irish gold hoards
-Some Irish gold objects seem to have been items of personal ornamentation such
as dress fasteners/clasps,
bracelets, torcs & pins.
-Many of these have been relatively isolated finds, some in bogs but also in dryland locations.
-Some may have been finders hoards, originally intended to
be reclaimed.
27
Coggalbeg Hoard
- From Co. Roscommon
- First recorded association of lunula and gold discs
- Important implications for the dating of discs and lunulae as discs were seen as representing the earliest Beaker period sheet gold with lunulae believed to date somewhat later
- This hoard, however, suggests that there was a period of overlap between the two styles of early goldwork from 2300-1800 BC
28
Gold Working Techniques
-Earlier Bronze Age objects such as bracelets/armlets,
lunulae and gold discs were made from hammering
and shaping sheet gold.
-Around 1200 BC new gold
working techniques were developed by twisting bars or strips of gold, after which time a wide variety of torcs were made
29
River deposits
- Thames - rapiers, swords, spearheads, an axe head and bronze shields recovered with variations in deposition over time
- LBA Irish bogs and river contain swords, spears, shields, including elaborate 'non functional' forms
30
Wet vs Dry burials
- EBA hoards - single weapons and weapon hoards in wet locations
- Dryland hoards dominated by axes, tools such as awls and personal items of ornamentation
- Complete weapons in wet locations and fragments of weapons in dry locations
31
Dryland Hoards
- Metalwork hoards sometimes found in pits and other dryland contexts
- Often contain bronze axes, palstaves, tools and other items, sometimes of gold
- Some are scrap or finders hoards but others may have been placed deposits
32
Flag Fen
- Peterborough - long running excavations of both wet and dryland sites from the late 1960s-1980s
- Bronze Age field systems, including a large trackway running eastwards towards Fen edge
- Appears to be associated with a timber causeway running approximately 1km across what was once swamp and open water, towards an artificial platform or island created by timber piling
- Finds include animal bone, pottery and metalwork including spears, swords and flesh hooks
- Due to waterlogging, many wooden objects survived, e.g. a hammer, axe haft and cart wheel
- Deliberate, symbolic or ritual depositions?
