Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA
<p><em>Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology</em> is the only journal currently published that deals with the entire multicultural world of Mediterranean archaeology. The journal publishes material that deals with, amongst others, the social, politicoeconomic and ideological aspects of local or regional production and development, and of social interaction and change in the Mediterranean. <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/about">Read more.</a></p>
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
en
Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology
0952-7648
<p>© Equinox Publishing Ltd.</p> <p>For information regarding our Open Access policy, <a title="Open access policy." href="Full%20details of our conditions related to copyright can be found by clicking here.">click here</a>.</p>
-
A Re-Examination of Earthquakes in Mediterranean Archaeology in Light of Historical Sources
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/28565
<p>Interest in earthquakes in Mediterranean archaeology has distinct disciplinary origins. Since the inception of archaeoseismology—earthquake archaeology—in the 1980s, approaches to earthquake factors have been characterized by reliance on ancient historical sources. However, although texts have supported the identification of earthquake disasters in material destruction, documentary records extend far beyond particular events and experiences of disaster; diverse cultural perceptions of earthquakes as expressed in ancient textual sources also offer an alternative interpretation for Mediterranean archaeology. This study reviews the material-geological record of Helike in Greece—the victim of an infamous major earthquake in 373 BC—in order to assess the impact of seismic activity on the site from the third millennium BC to the fifth century AD. Evidence for such an impact includes archaeoseismic types of destruction, anti-seismic construction in architecture and stratigraphically associated soil micromorphological evidence of seismically triggered soft sediment deformation structures (SSDS). A reassessment of ancient accounts of the 373 BC event to explore Graeco-Roman cultural perceptions of earthquakes provides a new interpretive frame for the material-geological record of Helike. This alternative interpretation repositions earthquakes, traditionally perceived as ‘natural’ disasters implicated in ‘collapse’ and ‘catastrophe’, as social phenomena. The case of Helike demonstrates the value of documentary records for reframing the complex social and political dimensions of recurrent earthquakes and persistent geological hazards.</p>
Articles
archaeoseismology
earthquakes
human–environment relationships
geoarchaeology
Greece
longue durée
soil micromorphology
Archaeology
History
Archaeoseismology
Archaeology
History
Amanda M. Gaggioli
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-03-15
2024-03-15
10.1558/jma.28565
-
Exploring Mediterranean Connections and Iron Age Entanglements
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/27855
<p>Despite the conventional association with sophisticated metallurgical technologies, the Iron Age has long fallen between the two academic poles of prehistoric and classical archaeology. The more recent invention of a self-consciously ambivalent terminology of ‘proto-historic’ and ‘proto-urban’ features represents an attempt by mostly European archaeologists to give the Iron Age socioeconomic substance in its own right, while at the same time also underscoring the ambiguity of the period. Moreover, as the Iron Age has since become synonymous with notions of state formation and urbanization, its deep evolutionist roots have only become more evident.</p>
Discussion and Debate
Iron Age Entanglements
Discussion and debate
Discussion and debate
Naoíse Mac Sweeney
Jaime Vives-Ferrándiz Sánchez
Antonis Kotsonas
Paula Waiman-Barak
James F Osborne
Carolina López-Ruiz
Tamar Hodos
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-15
2024-01-15
10.1558/jma.27855
-
A Necessary Debate
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/27149
<p>The rigor and vitality of a discipline, indeed the ability to make socially meaningful contributions, is founded not solely on the accumulation of observational data but also on principled and reasoned debate concerning theory and method. For that reason, I wish to thank the editorial team at <em>JMA </em>for inviting me to respond to the paper by de Haas, Leppard, Waagen and Wilkinson. To the degree that the authors have missed or misconstrued several of my arguments is no doubt due in part to my own failings in presenting them. Significantly, however, it is also the result of differing intellectual commitments. I address this key, latter point first, and then respond to some of what I consider more minor points.</p>
Discussion and Debate
discussion and debate
artifact data
field survey
Archaeology
Archaeology
Nathan Meyer
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-10-26
2023-10-26
138
142
10.1558/jma.27149
-
Myopic Misunderstandings?
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/27148
<p>This paper engages with Nathan Meyer’s (2022) paper ‘Finding Sites in Mediterranean Survey’. Building upon longstanding critiques of Mediterranean survey practices, Meyer argues for a re-direction of survey practices. We feel that several of his core arguments reflect an unbalanced view on the role of site and off-site data in Mediterranean surveys, conflating intensive and siteless surveys. Moreover, while these critiques seem to us unnecessarily negative regarding the analytical potential of off-site data, they also reflect an overconfident attitude towards the use of site data for comparative purposes.</p>
Discussion and Debate
discussion and debate
survey practices
off-site data
Archaeology
Archaeology
Tymon de Haas
Thomas P. Leppard
Jitte Waagen
Toby Wilkinson
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-10-26
2023-10-26
127
137
10.1558/jma.27148
-
Diverging Paths
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/27147
<p>During the Early Bronze Age (EBA), a relatively small number of European societies developed into highly centralised and hierarchical political entities. In contrast to the intensive research focused on these groups, little attention has been paid to their relationship with neighbouring populations, which had a much more egalitarian structure. In the southeast quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, over a century of research on the EBA (ca. 2200 –1550 BC) communities has failed to identify distinctive traits leading to the definition of archaeological entities beyond the El Argar group, which according to many authors reached the form of an early state organisation around 1750 BC. This study aims to go beyond previous culturalist approaches and to focus on how communities with very different social organisations interacted in this macro-region as well as in a border region between El Argar and La Mancha. To that effect, we analyse primarily settlement size as an expression of the demographic and economic strength of a community, and ‘enrockment’ (<em>enrocamiento</em>), a concept that defines the degree of protection and spatial distancing of a settlement from its surrounding land and neighbouring communities. This large-scale comparative approach reveals the distinctiveness of highly dispersed and well-protected communities settling in the belt immediately north of El Argar and shows how this cost-intensive strategy changes with increasing distance from El Argar, when flat land and often larger settlements become dominant. The combination of settlement patterns and economic organisation also highlights the marked differences between El Argar and all the other communities living in the Iberian Peninsula.</p>
Articles
Big Data
Early Bronze Age Iberia
settlement archaeology
spatial analysis
Archaeology
Archaeology
Adrià Moreno Gil
Marcello Peres
Roberto Risch
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-10-26
2023-10-26
102
126
10.1558/jma.27147
-
Statistical Approaches to Small Site Diversity
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/26678
<p>Over the past fifty years, intensive Mediterranean archaeological surveys have yielded abundant and diachronic archaeological data. Although field methods have been continually debated and refined, the interpretation of survey results has focused primarily on site numbers and site size, with particular interest in reconstructing settlement hierarchies and in tracking episodes of nucleation and dispersal across the landscape. Artifact assemblages are largely used to date sites, while less attention has been devoted to assemblage diversity and site function. This study demonstrates the potential of legacy survey data to frame and answer new research questions via an analysis of 250 small rural sites of the first millennium BC recovered by intensive surveys on Crete from the 1970s through the early 2000s. I show that diachronic patterns of rural settlement in Crete depart strongly from those observed in mainland Greece and also differ between regions. I also reveal pronounced variation in the assemblages present at small sites across the island within Cretan regions and periods. This suggests that we cannot simply interpret all small sites as homogeneous farmsteads. Finally, I discuss the challenges and potential of using diversity measures as an exploratory tool for analyzing legacy survey data. Methods outlined here could be productively applied in other Mediterranean regions.</p>
Articles
Crete
diversity measures
legacy data
Mediterranean survey
Archaeology
Archaeology
Grace Erny
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-10-26
2023-10-26
71
101
10.1558/jma.26678
-
From the Ground Up
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/26676
<p>This paper explores the potential of GIS-based analyses of legacy survey data to inform discussions of settlement patterning, demographic change and the social organisation of agricultural production in the ancient Mediterranean. Legacy survey data represent an important body of evidence for understanding the development of past settlement systems, while their digitisation presents opportunities for novel quantitative and spatial analyses. By combining data from three contiguous intensive surveys from the Mirabello area of eastern Crete, this study investigates trajectories of demographic change and subsistence practice in the Early Iron Age (EIA) and Archaic periods (ca. 1200–550 bc), utilising GIS-based modelling of minimal agricultural catchments, and considering the relationships between communities over multiple geographic scales. This analysis highlights a transition away from clusters of small, demographically interdependent hamlets and villages in the earlier part of the EIA, toward the consolidation of nucleated population centres by the Archaic. The investigation of these developments contributes to our understanding of the scale, territorial control and management of agricultural hinterlands in the formative stages of the Greek poleis. The methods employed have wider relevance for the study of agricultural systems in the ancient Mediterranean, and highlight the important ongoing contributions of legacy survey data to theorising ancient subsistence economies.</p>
Articles
agriculture
archaeological survey
Crete
Early Iron Age
GIS
site catchments
Archaeology
Archaeology
Dominic Pollard
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-10-26
2023-10-26
42
70
10.1558/jma.26676
-
Building Social Distances in Neopalatial Crete
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/26675
<p>This study compares the accessibility of the Minoan Neopalatial (ca. 1750–1490 bc) Palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Zakros and Galatas in central and eastern Crete. The study seeks to interpret the sites’ social meaning based on analytical observations of their spatial organisation, using cost-surface analysis functions available in Geographical Information System (GIS) software. The article focuses in particular on assessing the distinct accessibility patterns provided by the different, supposedly main entrances to the sites; on the effect of ‘lengthening access’ and its social implications in the Minoan built environment; and on the gendered use of space in the hall systems of the Palaces.</p>
Articles
access analysis
GIS
Minoan Crete
palaces
spatial analyses
Archaeology
Archaeology
Jonas Rapakko
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-10-26
2023-10-26
3
41
10.1558/jma.26675
-
Finding Sites in Mediterranean Survey
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/25520
<p>As survey methods around the Mediterranean matured from extensive to more intensive modes of discovery, a form of ‘siteless’ survey emerged, characterized by high-intensity field walking with a correlated trend towards reduced areal coverage. The resulting practice evoked external criticism: ‘Mediterranean myopia’ precluded true regional-scale investigation. Our discipline can benefit from a reckoning with this criticism, together with a frank acknowledgement of the methodological challenges inherent in field survey and the resulting difficulty in comparing artifact-level data from different surveys. This paper recounts some of the main methodological difficulties and the degree to which these have or have not been fully addressed by Mediterranean survey practitioners. I argue that siteless survey methods produce data that - although necessary for analysis within a project - do not provide correct external deliverables. I also argue that the notion ‘site’ (i.e., places made by and interpretable as human activity) continues to be of fundamental importance to archaeology. The paper concludes that our methods can benefit from an integrated approach combining extensive and intensive methods, characterized by predictive modeling, quality assurance programs and carefully calibrated intensity, with site definition and discovery at its core.</p>
Articles
Field survey
Mediterranean survey
predictive modeling
regional studies
Mediterranean archaeology
Archaeology
Nathan Meyer
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-02-08
2023-02-08
143
168
10.1558/jma.25520
-
Industry and Inheritance at Hellenistic Morgantina
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/25522
<p>Recent excavations of a modestly appointed house at the site of Morgantina in east-central Sicily recovered 175 loom weights or fragments thereof. In this study, we combine a detailed contextual analysis with new methodologies developed by the Center for Textile Research in Copenhagen in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of textile production in this house, the House of the Two Mills. Using these methods, we are able to identify the specific weights within the larger assemblage that most probably formed a single set, used together for weaving at this location. Moreover, the results of this analysis indicate that the loom weights that constituted this set would not have been produced and acquired all at once, but must have been accumulated by the household slowly over time. We propose that the most probable mechanism by which this slow process of accumulation played out would have been through household members passing down these textile tools as heirlooms across generations. We argue that in the process these weights would have been viewed by their users as having a value beyond their mere utilitarian function, instead becoming materializations of memory and the affective bonds formed in the intergenerational transfer of craft traditions. We conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the study of heirloom objects in archaeology and how a contextual understanding of broader Greek social institutions and practices can aid us in parsing peculiarities of the archaeological record.</p>
Articles
heirlooms
Hellenistic Sicily
loom weights
Morgantina
textile production
Textile Production
Archaeology
Kevin Ennis
Max T. B. Peers
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-02-08
2023-02-08
198
225
10.1558/jma.25522
-
Editorial
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23766
Editorial
Editorial
Archaeology
Archaeology
A Bernard Knapp
John F Cherry
Peter van Dommelen
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
3
4
10.1558/jma.23766
-
The Archaeology of Pastoralism in the Central Pyrenees
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23767
<p>This study investigates changes in human occupation and pastoralism in a zone of the central Pyrenees (Spain) from their first occurrences to the present day, based on an analysis of archaeological structures recorded at sites in the study area. Huts, enclosures, rock-shelters and other architectural remains were analysed and compared in order to develop a typological classification, and morphological similarities and differences between sites in terms of size and number of structures were also noted. The study proposes a sociohistorical interpretation of the differences in the archaeological record within a long-term chronological framework, in this way building a historical sequence of livestock practices and human occupation in the Pyrenees.</p>
Articles
archaeology of pastoralism
architectural structures
ethnoarchaeology mountain areas
Pyrenees
seasonal pastoral sites
Archaeology
Archaeology
David Garcia Casas
Ermengol Gassiot Ballbè
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
5
31
10.1558/jma.23767
-
Potters at the World’s End? Pottery Production and Resilience in Formentera (Balearic Islands, Spain) during the Bronze Age
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23768
<p>Human communities that inhabit small islands often express some kind of fragility and ‘islandness’ that requires the development of certain strategies to minimize the risks involved in occupying hazardous environments. In this paper, we interpret the technological choices developed by Bronze Age potters’ communities from the small island of Formentera (Balearic Islands, Spain) by studying certain features of pottery pastes and some typological aspects of the vessels. Our aim is to explore the way certain technological choices played a key role in the construction of group social memory, the strengthening of community cohesion and the establishment of bonds with other groups from the same island and from other nearby and larger islands of the archipelago. The technological practices observed in pottery production allowed a greater capacity for resilience in the human communities from Formentera, which in turn permitted the stable and long-term occupation of the territory.</p>
Articles
archipelagos
pottery technology
resilience
small islands
social memory
technological traditions
Archaeology
Archaeology
Daniel J Albero Santacreu
Manuel Calvo Trias
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
32
55
10.1558/jma.23768
-
A Nilometer from Graeco-Roman Thmouis
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23769
<p>In 2010, a construction project for a new water pumping station on the west side of Tell Timai (Egyptian Delta) encountered a limestone structure. This discovery triggered a salvage excavation that exposed a rare example of a well-preserved Delta nilometer. The architectural features of the nilometer reveal some specific and even unique adaptations consonant with the hydrological situation of the Graeco-Roman city of Thmouis. Unlike other examples of nilometers, an aqueduct runs from the north, spilling into the stairwell leading down into the stilling well. A dam stone in the aqueduct appears to have regulated the release of water. The nilometer was also articulated with an adjacent hill by a staircase. Folk tradition memorialised the stair and nilometer location in local fertility and healing rituals performed during Nile flood-related festivals; this tradition preserved the sacred space long after the nilometer and its associated architecture were buried and forgotten. The multifaceted role of the Thmouis nilometer in the cultural and economic life of the city and nome carries wider implications for the political organisation of the nome and the dynamic between syncretic forces and imperial appropriation in Graeco-Roman Egypt. Here we review the shape, function, archaeological context, ideological significance and hydrography of the nilometer and consider the implications of the nilometer for the history of the Mendesian nome and its sacred relationship with the Nile River.</p>
Articles
Delta
Isis
Mendes
Nile
Nilometer
Tell Timai
Thmouis
Religious Studies
Religious Studies
Jay E Silverstein
Robert J Littman
Stacey Anne Bagdi
Elsayed F Eltalhawy
Hamdy Ahmed Mashaly
Emad Hassan Mohamed
Mohamed Gabr
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
56
84
10.1558/jma.23769
-
The Words that Archaeologists Choose
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23770
<p>Writing is the means by which archaeological knowledge is produced, shared and negotiated, which is why, as part of a wider reflexive archaeology, writing within the discipline has come under scrutiny. When writing, archaeologists make choices about what words to use to express their ideas about the past (even if these choices are sometimes subconscious). This study examines such choices via the application of methods from two linguistic subdisciplines, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, to a case study of Maltese archaeological texts and terms for a specific yet problematic type of Maltese artifact (axe-amulets/pendants). Using these methods, we connect political and theoretical shifts to changes in English-language use and terminology across three periods of Maltese archaeological history, demonstrating how authors choose words that reflect the broader assumptions and understandings that inform their work. In sum, this paper contributes to an increasingly critically aware understanding of the history of colonial and postcolonial archaeology in Malta and other Mediterranean islands and encourages writers to have a heightened awareness of the taken-for-granted but fundamental part that language plays in their poetics and politics.</p>
Articles
archaeology
artifacts
corpus linguistics
discourse analysis
language
prehistoric Malta
text
words
Archaeology
Archaeology
Allison Burkette
Robin Skeates
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
85
107
10.1558/jma.23770
-
Mediterranean Bioarchaeology, Meta-Analysis and Migration
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23771
<p>.</p>
Discussion and Debate
Mediterranean Bioarchaeology
Meta-Analysis
Migration
Mediterranean
Bioarchaeology
Accurate Meta-Analyses
Archaeology
Archaeology
Megan A Perry
Kristina Killgrove
Lesley A Gregoricka
Tracy L Prowse
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
108
132
10.1558/jma.23771
-
Issues in Meta-Analysis of Strontium Isotope Data
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/23772
<p>.</p>
Discussion and Debate (Responses)
Meta-Analysis
Strontium Isotope Data
Strontium
Data
Isotope
Archaeology
Archaeology
Thomas P Leppard
Carmen Esposito
Massimiliano Esposito
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-09-07
2022-09-07
120
132
10.1558/jma.23772
-
Miniature Crowd Frescoes from Knossos
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/25521
<p>This study discusses prevailing interpretations of the miniature frescoes from Knossos as depictions of some sort of ritual or ceremony, located topographically in Knossos’s Central and West Courts. It revises the question of the narrativity of Minoan frescoes, based on the interpretive approach developed by Alpers in her exploration of seventeenth-century Dutch art and ‘visual culture’. Applying Alpers’s insights for Minoan frescoes allows for an original interpretation based on a formal analysis of their non-narrative devices of representation, namely (1) vertical perspective, (2) map-like composition and (3) suppressed focalisation. The study demonstrates that once their representational strategy is recognised as non-narrative, it is no longer possible to interpret the subject theme of the Knossian miniatures by applying the frequently used narrative analytical category of ritual as a transformative ‘event’. Instead, the operation of these devices focuses our attention on the performative dimension of viewing as a testament to the knowledge of the land and society and the specific way in which the Knossian miniature frescoes absorb their viewer into this performance.</p>
Articles
Svetlana Alpers
map-like composition
Minoan miniature frescoes
ritual theory
suppressed focalisation
vertical perspective
Archaeology
Archaeology
Art History
Lucie Valentinová
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-02-08
2023-02-08
168
197
10.1558/jma.25521
-
Funerary Ritual, Bodily Performance, and Memory
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/25523
<p>Standing archaeological definitions of mortuary space identify it as the location of burials and interments, limiting our capacity to understand broader ‘deathscapes’ within the ancient city. Building upon anthropological and sociological theories of the concept of deathscapes (as opposed to ‘burialscapes’), this paper offers an expanded category of archaeological mortuary space that includes not only interment locations but also mobile and temporary spaces of funerary ritual, performance, and commemoration. Proposed key amendments to the archaeological reconstruction of mortuary landscapes within current models of ancient Greek urban environments are a reconsideration of various temporal scales (including short-lived processes and archaeologically invisible acts), bodily performance, and patterns in remembering and forgetting through funerary behavior. This revised view of mortuary space is applied to select case studies (Athens, Argos, Corinth) in order to take our existing paradigms from the conceived city (i.e., space of planning, logic, cosmological order) to the lived city (i.e., humanistic city of paradoxical, relative, and embodied ontologies).</p>
Articles
Burials
Greek urbanism
mortuary space
ritual performance
spatial analysis
Mourtuary Archaeology
Archaeology
Çiçek Taşçıoğlu Beeby
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-02-08
2023-02-08
226
252
10.1558/jma.25523
-
Analysing Social Change through Domestic and Public Spaces
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/25524
<p>This paper presents a study of Iron Age (IA) societies through the analysis of architecture and built space. The approach is focused on a small area in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and constructs a small-scale narrative that seeks to identify different social dynamics concerning the onset, development and decline of the fortified habitat (between the ninth and first centuries BC). Three main spheres of human habitation are assessed: the environment of the household, the construction of collective and non-domestic buildings and the development of settlement planning. The main characteristics of these spheres are discussed and summarised, and they are understood as part of the same dynamic that reflects how the IA communities of northwest Iberia were structured. The main objective of the paper is to employ this methodology to study social dynamics at different scales and thus build a multi-scale historical and archaeological narrative about the development of heterogeneous processes in IA societies.</p>
Articles
Built space
household archaeology
Iron Age Europe
northwest Iberia
social complexity
Architecture
Spatial Analysis
Archaeology
Samuel Nión-Álvarez
Copyright (c) 2023 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2023-02-08
2023-02-08
253
278
10.1558/jma.25524
-
Anatomy of a Destruction
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/22950
<p>Destruction levels, a recurring feature in ancient Near Eastern tell sites, are too often treated as isolated events. Recent scholarship on the formation processes of the archaeological record stresses the need to understand site destructions as part of long-term processes, rather than as isolated and unique events. This paper offers a model for studying destruction based on the concepts of the materialization of ritual and royal ideology. The identification of crisis architecture and termination rituals is used to shed new light on the activities taking place at the site prior to its final destruction and abandonment. This model is applied to the destruction of Canaanite Hazor at the end of the Late Bronze Age, and provides an alternative view of this event as a result of social, political, cultural and ideological circumstances rather than as an isolated event, stressing the role of internal socio-economic and ideological factors rather than external agents.</p>
Articles
Crisis architecture, termination rituals, Israel, Hazor, Late Bronze Age, Canaan
Archaeology
Archaeology
Sharon Zuckerman
Copyright (c) 2007 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2007-06-30
2007-06-30
3
32
10.1558/jmea.2007.v20i1.3
-
Same Language, Different Diet
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/21977
<p>This study uses faunal and epigraphic evidence from the valley of Cabrera de Mar in present-day Catalonia (Spain) as proxies for understanding complex processes and dynamics of cultural change between the late Iron Age and early Roman times. The faunal remains indicate significant dietary change, although the epigraphic evidence implies that language—in contrast—changed at a slower pace, as shown by the use of indigenous onomastics and the continued use of the Iberian script, coin legends included. To ensure an interdisciplinary analysis, the study also discusses change as perceptible in architectural remains, ceramics and funerary practices. Our study shows that cultural change can take place at different levels and according to different rhythms, not only on regional and settlement planes but also at neighbourhood and household scales. Finally, our results highlight the value of archaeology as a tool for studying and understanding colonial encounters.</p>
Articles
cultural change, diet, epigraphy, Hispania, Iberian Peninsula, language, zooarchaeology
CC1-960 Archaeology
Archaeology
Alejandro G. Sinner
Ariadna Nieto-Espinet
Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-01-20
2022-01-20
193
224
10.1558/jma.21977
-
Squatters’ Rights
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/21978
<p>Although ‘squatters’ have been identified in excavated contexts globally, it is unclear what this term actually means. In most archaeological publications, it seems to refer to the occupants of abandoned or destroyed buildings, especially those of the elite. ‘Squatting’, however, carries additional negative connotations which have been under-interrogated in the field. In this study, I explore the treatment of squatters in Anglophone archaeological writing, drawing upon two chronologically and geographically distinct examples: the Aegean Bronze Age and Late Roman North Africa. I argue that, in general, ‘squatters’ are identified uncritically and used as an index of cultural decline, with little consideration of the squatters—or reoccupants—themselves. Because ‘legitimacy’ of occupation is difficult to ascertain in archaeological contexts, I argue that this term is of little use in describing ancient reoccupation levels, particularly where they are distinguished only by their relative poverty. I suggest instead that an agency-centered assessment of impoverished architectural contexts is required.</p>
Articles
Cyrene, housing autonomy, Knossos, Late Antiquity, Late Bronze Age, reoccupation
Rebecca Worsham
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-01-20
2022-01-20
141
164
10.1558/jma.21978
-
Lifting the Lid
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/21979
<p>In this paper we investigate local foodways and ritual consumption in Iron Age Sicily through a study of cooking pots, integrating contextual, archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and chemical data. We focus on material from the central cult site of the settlement of Monte Iato, located in the hinterland of western Sicily, in order to explore the interaction between food, people, bio-/artefacts and environments as a process of formulating and reformulating social relationships and local power dynamics within specific social spaces and settings. We reveal different foodways and consumption practices within the same cult site, characterized on the one hand by long-standing traditions, with more or less constant and unchanging dishes, and on the other by the integration of external stimuli. We discuss the emergence of foreign- (Greek/Phoenician-) style cooking pots and ingredients as markers of an haute cuisine, developed with the aim of social differentiation.</p>
Articles
cooking pots, foodways, Iron Age Sicily, local identities, Monte Iato, ritual consumption
CC1-960 Archaeology
Archaeology
Birgit Öhlinger
Stephen Ludwig
Gerhard Forstenpointner
Ursula Thanheiser
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-01-20
2022-01-20
165
192
10.1558/jma.21979
-
Rural Settlement in Iron Age Cessetania (Northeastern Iberian Peninsula)
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/21980
<p>Recent research has demonstrated the importance of rural settlement in the Iberian culture, although there are still few rural sites explored in depth. ‘Rural settlement’ is the term we use to designate the small habitation sites or agricultural structures that became common from the Middle Iberian Period (450–200 bc) onward; such sites constituted the basis of a hierarchical settlement system characteristic of societies developing towards archaic states. These settlements consist of one or two buildings together with silos and/or artisanal features. The main difficulty in studying such sites is their poor preservation. They are usually located on flat areas suitable for cultivation, and research has traditionally prioritised the study of larger sites. In this study, we revise the data from previous investigations in the territory of ancient Iberian Cessetania and present the results of recent research, paying particular attention to the Rabassats site. We compare these rural settlements to those in other nearby territories in the Iberian area as well as in the wider Mediterranean context. Detailed analyses of the remains of rural sites show a greater complexity than is often assumed and suggest that a variety of small settlements, from an economic and probably also from a social point of view, should be included under the generic heading of ‘fourth order’.</p>
Articles
farm, Iberian culture, Iberian Peninsula, Iron Age, rural settlement
CC1-960 Archaeology
archaeology
Maria Carme Belarte
Joan Canela
Jordi Morer
Oriol Cuscó
Marc Ocaña
Itxaso Euba
Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-01-20
2022-01-20
225
251
10.1558/jma.21980
-
Prehistoric Farming Settlements in Western Anatolia
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/21981
<p>Recovery of archaeobotanical assemblages from Late Chalcolithic Bakla Tepe and Liman Tepe in western Anatolia has provided the opportunity for in-depth analysis of agricultural strategies and the organisation of farming-related activity at the two sites. We find that Late Chalcolithic farmers utilised five major crop taxa, potentially including two mixed crops. The two sites also provide the first evidence for Spanish vetchling and winged vetchling cultivation in prehistoric Anatolia and the earliest evidence for this practice to date anywhere. We suggest that the settlements were organised into small, co-residential households that processed and stored their own crops, but we also propose that potentially communal extra-household storage and high levels of social monitoring may attest to supra-household cooperation. The later agricultural history of the vetchling species and the prevalence of extra-household storage at sites in coastal western Anatolia and the eastern Aegean islands add to evidence for a cultural koine between these regions in the fourth and third millennia bc. We also suggest that the large size of extra-household storage structures and the narrow range of crops cultivated at some Late Chalcolithic sites are consistent with the emergence of more extensive farming systems than those of earlier periods. Evidence for the use of extensive agricultural production to amass arable wealth by the citadel elites of later Early Bronze Age western Anatolia suggests that the agro-ecological foundations for emergent wealth inequality within the region were laid during the Late Chalcolithic. Testing this hypothesis through direct evidence for the nature of Late Chalcolithic farming systems is a key aim of ongoing research.</p>
Articles
agriculture, archaeobotany, Late Chalcolithic, Lathyrus (Spanish vetchling), western Anatolia
CC1-960 Archaeology
Archaeology
Tom Maltas
Vasif Şahoğlu
Hayat Erkanal†
Rıza Tuncel
Copyright (c) 2022 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2022-01-20
2022-01-20
252
277
10.1558/jma.21981
-
Evidence of Absence or Absence of Evidence?
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/19471
<p>The last hunter-gatherers of the central and western Mediterranean are associated with the Castelnovian technocomplex, which developed during the seventh millennium BC and is characterized mainly by its lithic industries, which reflect important changes that occurred during the Late Mesolithic: debitage from this time is oriented towards blade production by pressure-flaking and the manufacture of special tools, such as trapezes (made by the microburin technique) and notched blades. Although rare, Castelnovian sites have been identified in the wider Adriatic region of south-central Italy, Albania, Montenegro and the Italian and Slovenian Karst. However, it seems that the Croatian coast and its hinterland in the eastern Adriatic lack any traces. No sites were found in Dalmatia and only a few questionable surface finds come from Istria. This study explores whether this absence is due to historical factors, such as depopulation during the Late Mesolithic or the region being outside the Castelnovian expansion route, or whether it is because of a combination of taphonomic causes (such as loss of sites by marine transgression) and lack of previous research. The paper also focuses on the hypothesis that the presence of the last hunter-gatherers can be detected indirectly through the persistence of Castelnovian elements in the oldest Neolithic Impressed Ware assemblages of the eastern Adriatic. I further propose that Castelnovian traits are observable in the Impressed Ware assemblages of Istria. This Mesolithic tradition consists of the use of local flint, blade production by indirect percussion and ‘simpler’ forms of pressure flaking in lithic production, while marine resources remain an important food resource.</p>
Articles
Adriatic
Castelnovian
Impressed Ware
lithic technology
Mesolithic
Neolithization
CC1-960 Archaeology
Archaeology
Sonja Kačar
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-02-25
2021-02-25
160
184
10.1558/jma.19471
-
A Haunted Landscape and Its Drained Souls
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/19473
<p>Although the ultimate aim of the dominant heritage discourse and practice is to preserve culture in a way that contributes to peace and human prosperity, its paradoxical outcome has been to erase the variety of ways that people can relate to the past and to normalize ethnic and religious conflicts as well as globally deepening inequalities of class, race and gender. In this context, searching for civilization in the past has become an increasingly irrational activity, specifically in geopolitically important zones such as the Middle East and Turkey, where millions of immigrants, along with numerous minorities and economically impoverished populations, are currently denied access to the living standards of modern civilization. This paper aims to highlight these paradoxes inherent in the dominant heritage discourse and practice through the example of a recent heritage awareness-raising and capacity-building project, Safeguarding Archaeological Assets of Turkey (SARAT). Furthermore, based on two ethnographic case studies of treasure hunting from Turkey and Greece, it is also argued that the past is embodied in our questions of who we are and in our difficulties of belonging in today’s social landscape. Heritage, therefore, will continue to be in conflict and danger, unless people come to understand that they relate to the past in a variety of ways as regards the very core of the thick history of world politics.</p>
Articles
archaeology
conflict
heritage
Middle East
Turkey
war
CC1-960 Archaeology
Archaeology
Çiğdem Atakuman
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-02-25
2021-02-25
242
267
10.1558/jma.19473
-
Biriai
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/20589
<p>The materiality of forced migration and resettlement have understandably moved to the forefront of archaeological research recently, although data from prehistoric refugia remain limited. One potentially informative example is the west Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where remains of the later third millennium BC document discontinuities associated with the appearance of Bell Beaker elements in local cultural modalities. Employing an augmented version of Aaron Burke’s ethnographically based approach, this study examines the Sardinian record, first toward identifying the contexts and factors that may have induced forced migration, such as agonistic relations with Beaker-bearing entities, then toward identifying likely refugia. Diagnostic correlates are derived in terms of the material consequences of adaptations to anthropologically documented risks encountered by refugees (e.g. landlessness, homelessness, marginalization). On these criteria, the eastern Sardinian settlement of Sa Sedda de Biriai in Oliena is identified and investigated as a possible refuge settlement of the Monte Claro culture. Evidence is marshalled with the aim of discovering temporal, spatial and material patterns consistent with Burke’s model in an augmented form, emphasizing non-local source venues, homelands or pre-flight affiliations, pre-flight or transitional objects, post-flight/refuge integrative expressions, security-adapted house architecture, residential enclaves or districts and removals of iconic pre-flight cult spaces. The social identity of the bearers of Beaker material culture on Sardinia is discussed briefly.</p>
Articles
archaeology of refugees
Bell Beaker
forced migration
Mediterranean prehistory
refugee settlement
Sardinian prehistory
Archaeology
Archaeology
Gary Webster
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-07-22
2021-07-22
3
27
10.1558/jma.43200
-
Contextualizing an Iron Age IIA Hoard of Astragali from Tel Abel Beth Maacah, Israel
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JMA/article/view/20597
<p>Astragali, the knuckle or ankle bones of mammals, have been collected, used and modified by humans in different parts of the world for millennia. Large hoards dating from Iron Age IIA (tenth–ninth centuries BC) are attested at a number of sites in the southern Levant, and a recently discovered hoard of 406 astragali at Tel Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel presents an opportunity to investigate this phenomenon, shedding light on the function of these bones and why they bore special status and meaning that crossed cultural and temporal boundaries. In this study, the zooarchaeological analysis of the astragali provides the basis for an extensive discussion of the hoard’s formation process and function that explores ethnographic literature, archaeological data and ancient Near Eastern and classical documentary sources. The findings of this study demonstrate that while the individual bones had many different functions, once deposited together the astragali took on a new meaning, possibly related to divinatory practices.</p>
Articles
astragali
Tel Abel Beth Maacah
Iron Age IIA
hoards
Levant
Archaeology
Archaeology
Matthew Susnow
Nimrod Marom
Ariel Shatil
Nava Panitz-Cohen
Robert Mullins
Naama Yahalom-Mack
Copyright (c) 2021 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2021-07-22
2021-07-22
59
83
10.1558/jma.43202