The Balkans in Later Prehistory
The Balkans in Later Prehistory

Author: Lolita Nikolova

Publisher: British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13:

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This book provides a periodization and chronology, as well as a synthesis, of the cultural development of the Balkans in the Fourth and Third Millennia BC, based mainly on recent research. The conclusions are based on the systematization of recent data on stratigraphy, ceramic styles, carbon dates and the archaeomagnetic record, as well as on settlement patterns, palaeobotanical and osteological evidence, metallurgy, ideology and burial rites. The stratigraphic sequence and typological data are of primary importance, and the ceramic evidence, including clay figurines, is analyzed as a chronological record of culture sequence, as well as of culture interactions. The goal of the investigation of the settlement patterns is functional analysis, with the aim of recognizing models of different micro-regional settlement structures within the context of the evolution, devolution and changes of the settlement systems in the Balkans during the Fourth and Third Millennia BC.

Balkan Prehistory
Balkan Prehistory

Author: Douglass W. Bailey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1134607083

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Bailey's volume fills the gap that existed for an archaeology of the Balkans and will be required reading for anyone studying the Neolithic, Copper and early Bronze Ages of Eastern Europe.

Social Dimensions of Food in the Prehistoric Balkans
Social Dimensions of Food in the Prehistoric Balkans

Author: Mariya Ivanova

Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781789250800

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Ever since the definition of the Neolithic Revolution by Vere Gordon Childe, archaeologists have been aware of the crucial importance of food for the understanding of prehistoric developments. Numerous studies have classified and described cooking ware, hearths and ovens, have studied food residues and more recently also stable isotopes in skeletal material. However, we have not yet succeeded in integrating traditional, functional perspectives on nutrition and semiotic approaches (e.g. dietary practices as an identity marker) with current research in the fields of Food Studies and Material Culture Studies. This volume brings together leading specialists in archaeobotany, economic zooarchaeology, and palaeoanthropology to discuss practices of food production and consumption in their social dimensions from the Mesolithic to the Early Iron Age in the Balkans, a region with intermediary position between and the Aegean Sea on one side and Central Europe and the Eurasian steppe regions on the other. The prehistoric inhabitants of the Balkans were repeatedly confronted with foreign knowledge and practices of food production and consumption which they integrated and thereby transformed into their life. In a series of transdisciplinary studies, the contributors shed new light on the various social dimensions of food in a synchronous as well as diachronic perspective. Contributors present a series of case studies focused on themes of social interaction, communal food preparation and consumption, the role of feasting, and the importance and management of salt production.

Balkan Dialogues
Balkan Dialogues

Author: Maja Gori

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 131737746X

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Spatial variation and patterning in the distribution of artefacts are topics of fundamental significance in Balkan archaeology. For decades, archaeologists have classified spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete “cultures”, which have been conventionally treated as bound entities and equated with past social or ethnic groups. This timely volume fulfils the need for an up-to-date and theoretically informed dialogue on group identity in Balkan prehistory. Thirteen case studies covering the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age and written by archaeologists conducting fieldwork in the region, as well as by ethnologists with a research focus on material culture and identity, provide a robust foundation for exploring these issues. Bringing together the latest research, with a particular intentional focus on the central and western Balkans, this collection offers original perspectives on Balkan prehistory with relevance to the neighbouring regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and Anatolia. Balkan Dialogues challenges long-established interpretations in the field and provides a new, contextualised reading of the archaeological record of this region.

The Human Face of Radiocarbon
The Human Face of Radiocarbon

Author: Collectif

Publisher: MOM Éditions

Published: 2018-12-18

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 2356681884

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This volume presents the results of a multidisciplinary research program (“Balkans 4000”) financed by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and coordinated by the editor between 2007 and 2011, when she was a member of the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée (Laboratory of Archaeology and Archaeometry). 192 new radiocarbon dates have been produced in the laboratories of Lyon, Saclay and Demokritos, from 34 archaeological sites, spanning the years from the end of the 6th to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. They shed light on the evolution of human settlement during the late stages of the Neolithic period in Greece and Bulgaria, and more specifically on the transition from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age during the “obscure” 4th millennium BC. Thirty-one scholars, archaeologists as well as radiocarbon scientists, are signing the contributions.

The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia
The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia

Author: Miljana Radivojević

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2021-12-23

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 1803270438

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The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia is a landmark study in the evolution of early metallurgy in the Balkans. It demonstrates that far from being a rare and elite practice, the earliest metallurgy in the world was a common and communal craft activity.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia
The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia

Author: Sharon R. Steadman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-09-15

Total Pages: 1193

ISBN-13: 0195376145

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This title provides comprehensive overviews on archaeological philological, linguistic, and historical issues at the forefront of Anatolian scholarship in the 21st century.

The Balkans in World History
The Balkans in World History

Author: Andrew Baruch Wachtel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-11-05

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0199882738

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In the historical and literary imagination, the Balkans loom large as a somewhat frightening and ill-defined space, often seen negatively as a region of small and spiteful peoples, racked by racial and ethnic hatred, always ready to burst into violent conflict. The Balkans in World History re-defines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, historical, and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent if complex whole. Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of the world's greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multi-layered local civilization. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey, and of Roman Catholic Europe met, clashed and sometimes combined. The history of the Balkans is thus a history of creative borrowing by local people of the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region. Encompassing Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, and European Turkey, the Balkans have absorbed many voices and traditions, resulting in one of the most complex and interesting regions on earth.

Detecting and Explaining Technological Innovation in Prehistory
Detecting and Explaining Technological Innovation in Prehistory

Author: Michela Spataro

Publisher:

Published: 2019-12-19

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9789088908248

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Technology refers to any set of standardised procedures for transforming raw materials into finished products. Innovation consists of any change in technology which has tangible and lasting effect on human practices, whether or not it provides utilitarian advantages. Prehistoric societies were never static, but the tempo of innovation occasionally increased to the point that we can refer to transformation taking place. Prehistorians must therefore identify factors promoting or hindering innovation.This volume stems from an international workshop, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 1266 'Scales of Transformation' at Kiel University in November 2017. The meeting challenged its participants to detect and explain technological change in the past and its role in transformation processes, using archaeological and ethnographic case studies. The papers draw mainly on examples from prehistoric Europe, but case-studies from Iran, the Indus Valley, and contemporary central America are also included. The authors adopt several perspectives, including cultural-historical, economic, environmental, demographic, functional, and agent-based approaches.These case studies often rely on interdisciplinary research, whereby field archaeology, archaeometric analysis, experimental archaeology and ethnographic research are used together to observe and explain innovations and changes in the artisan's repertoire. The results demonstrate that interdisciplinary research is becoming essential to understanding transformation phenomena in prehistoric archaeology, superseding typo-chronological description and comparison.This book is a scholarly publication aimed at academic researchers, particularly archaeologists and archaeological scientists working on ceramics, osseous and metal artifacts.