Showing papers in "Antiquity in 1976"

Copper mining and metallurgy in the Vinča group

Abstract: The earliest finds of copper objects in the Vinča group were made as early as the first half of this century, during the excavation of the eponymous site of Vinča-Belo Brdo, near Belgrade. Amongst other objects, a small group of oval beads was found at a depth of 6-6m, in a habitation level representing the beginning of the Vinča-Plocnik, or late, phase of this group (Vasić 1936, 43).

The beginning of iron in India

Abstract: Between 1795 and 1974 early Indian iron may be said to have had three separate phases of research. The first phase lasted from 1795 to about the middle of the 19th century. There were two types of writings in this period. The first type represented the metallurgical experiments on pre-industrial Indian steel called wootz, the term which is derived from the Canarese term ukku meaning steel, having been introduced into the English language by Pearson in 1795 (Yule and Burnell, 1903).

The end of the Greek Bronze Age

Abstract: Many scholars have examined the changes that occurred in Greek life around the twelfth century BC. After a period of great prosperity during Late Helladic III B, there followed an era of war, uncertainty, and cultural disintegration that was part of a general upheaval extending from Italy to the Near East. In Greece the disruption was especially pronounced, and many areas were left relatively unpopulated. The ensuing ‘Dark Age’ witnessed the birth of a profoundly different society.

Studies on the Period of Cinna and Sulla

Abstract: Sept questions a la politique interieure de Rome en 88-87 avant J.-C. sont etudiees ici : la chronologie des elections tribunitiennes et les ambitions des candidats ; le rapport de ces elections avec celles des consuls, et le role de Sertorius ; les elections consulaires ; la personnalite de Cinna et celle d'Octave ; le contenu des paragraphes 4-6 du chapitre 10 de la Vie de Sylla de Plutarque ; le serment prononce par les consuls ; les poursuites qui aboutirent a la proscription de Sylla.

Romano-British pathology.

Abstract: have survived on a mould fragment. As for loose ends, they are by no means unknown in Celtic interlace. They occur on the Domnach Airchid, to take an obvious example. At the Mote of Mark, I suspect the technique of producing the moulds may have resulted in the need for loose endsI believe them to have been fabricated using a series of stamps, a technique I am told which is found in the approximately contemporary moulds from Helgo, Sweden. Therefore on this point E feel my first hypothesis must stand. Mr GrahamCampbell challenges me to find objects in the Celtic areas similar to those presumed cast at the Mote of Mark. But of course we have pitifully few pieces of ornamental metalwork that can be ascribed to the sixth or seventh century from Celtic areas. The challenge can be returned-where are the Anglian objects cast from similar moulds 2 It is worth pointing out that a third possibility exists for the identification of the occupants of the site. They could have been Irish or partly Irish. In favour of this, one mould for an H2/3 brooch from the Mote of Mark has its counterpart in an actual brooch from Ulster, while the thistle-headed pin mould can only be exactly matched at Lough Faughan crannog, again in Ulster. The green and white cable bead is an Irish type (though it occurs elsewhere), and the other finds compare closely with those from Irish sites of the period. Although the precise rampart type has no Irish parallels known to me, fortified rocks are not unknown in Early Christian Ireland, and Irish colonists certainly favoured them-witness Dunadd.

Prehistory in Northeastern Arabia

Abstract: In 1968 Geoffrey Bibby, then carrying out an archaeological survey in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was shown a collection of flint implements and ‘about two hundred potsherds, of a thin, greenish-yellow ware decorated with geometric patterns in dark-brown paint’ (1970, 376). They had been found by an American school teacher, Grace Burkholder, who, together with other amateur archaeologists from the headquarters of the Arabian American Oil Company at Dhahran, had scoured the nearby desert in pursuit of archaeological remains. Bibby with considerable astonishment recognized the pottery as identical with the Mesopotamian al ‘Ubaid.

Quanterness, radiocarbon and the Orkney cairns

Abstract: The chambered cairns of Orkney are among the most sophisticated architectural products of prehistoric Europe. Maes Howe, since the chamber was re-entered a century ago (Petrie, 1861) has excited the admiration of all who have visited it. In Stuart Piggott’s words (1954, 244): ‘The assured competence and mastery over the building material shown at Maes Howe mark it out as a monument comparable in prehistoric Britain only to Stonehenge in its individual handling of an architectural problem. In both a contemporary existing conception—that of a chambered tomb or that of a stone circle—has been used to produce a superlative monument that by its originality of execution is lifted out of its class into a unique position.’ Quanterness has proved to be one of the best preserved of the Orcadian monuments, with four of the six side chambers still standing, very much as they were built some five thousand years ago. Much of the importance of the excavation comes from the detailed examination of the deposits within the chamber which have offered an unusual insight into neolithic burial practice, and these are fully discussed in the forthcoming final publication (Renfrew et al., in press).

Mesoamerican civilization and the idea of transcendence

Abstract: How do ideas, or ideologies, articulate with other cultural systems? This is a complex question, and archaeologists, in their study of the rise and growth of civilizations, have been hesitant to address it. There are obvious reasons for this hesitancy. Even in those instances where the archaeological record is text-aided it is difficult, and it is still more so where contemporaneous documentary materials are lacking or equivocal, as in Precolumbian America. Then, too, it is my impression that while many archaeologists are willing to grant ideology a role in cultural development they tend to look upon it as causally ‘secondary’. Subsistence, demography, technology, and ecology—perhaps because they are more directly susceptible to archaeological methods and inferences than are idea systems—are more apt to be seen as the seats of ‘prime cause’.

Les lampes antiques en terre cuite

Abstract: Espece IV: les lampes-medaillon a reservoir circulaire. Comme celles de l'espece V, ces lampes sont appelees lampes-medaillon parce que la partie mediane couvrant ces lampes est encadree, comme s'il s'agissait d'un medaillon, d'un ou plusieurs cercles et d'une bordure. Evolution typologique de ces lampes-medaillon a reservoir circulaire determinee surtout par la production en Italie. Types et variantes de cette espece repandus, en meme temps que la civilisation romaine, a travers l'ensemble du monde antique de l'epoque. Lampes d'Italie (1-2-3 ainsi que les types 4-5-6) type 9 "nord africain" ou "mediterraneens"| les 10-12 a 17 sont apparues hors d'Italie, lieu d'origine: Alexandrie?.

The structure of Anglo-Saxon graves

Abstract: The relative weighting of the elements of the honours degree is about 50 per cent to examinations, 25 per cent to the essays and 25 per cent to the dissertation. This weighting towards the dissertation has been reflected in the recent acceptance of several for publication as articles. Extensive experience of excavation is required; students must complete a minimum of 16 weeks, and have been known to complete 30 weeks. M I C H A E L A V E R Y and THOMAS MCNEILL

Héraclite critique des poètes et des savants

Abstract: Les fragments 105 et 56 D.-K. enoncent une condamnation globale et sans appel de la « sagesse » d'Homere, ravalee au niveau des superstitions et de l'ignorance des autres hommes tandis que Β 42, en associant Homere et Archiloque dans la meme reprobation denonce l'influence nefaste des poetes en matiere d'education. Hesiode, presente dans les fragments 57 et 106 (qui ne remontent pas au meme original) comme un faux instructeur, aussi aveugle que ceux qu'il pretend instruire, est associe dans Β 40 aux « polymathes », dont la « science » est aussi illusoire que la sagesse traditionnelle a laquelle elle pretend se substituer. La critique qu'Heraclite adresse a la pensee de ses predecesseurs et contemporains se revele ainsi plus radicale que celle de Xenophane.

Excavation of a zimbabwe in Mozambique

Abstract: Manekweni is the ruin of a large enclosure of dry-stone walling in southern Mozambique, 50 km from the coast. It was the subject of three weeks’ excavation in June and July 1975, by a team led by me, assisted by Tim Gates, financed by the British Institute in Eastern Africa and under the auspices of the University of LourenGo Marques. The architectural style, building techniques, contents and date of the ruin show it to be contemporary with Great Zimbabwe (Garlake, 1973) and culturally very closely related, yet it lies in the coastal lowlands, 500 km from Great Zimbabwe, and there is no other ruin significantly nearer than this. This makes it a site of some importance, for the Great Zimbabwe culture has been thought of as limited to the granite plateau of Rhodesia and its immediate neighbourhood. The ruin is of limestone which, in this particular area, lies just beneath the surface of the soil. The enclosure wall, 1.50 m high and 1-50 m wide, is faced with close-fitting, selected and matched blocks, laid with enough care to achieve short, undulating lengths of coursing. The stone in the centre of the wall is more loosely piled. This building technique is characteristic of the Great Zimbabwe culture and must have been developed on the plateau, for it is designed to take advantage of the way granite splits naturally into parallel-sided blocks. It is much less suited to limestone. If one applies the stylistic criteria developed by Whitty in 1958 (Robinson et al., 1961) to categorize the walls at Great Zimbabwe, the Manekweni walls would be considered to belong to the earliest wall style at Great Zimbabwe (Summers’s Phase 111, at present dated to the thirteenth century). But this means little in a limestone building. More significantly, the turrets, buttresses and platforms that are freExcavation of a Zimbabwe in Mozambique

Air reconnaissance: recent results, 40

Abstract: vii, 55, ‘In cases where the liver is full of water and bursts into the epiploon, the belly fills with fluid and the patient dies.’ In medieval and later times it was common in Scandinavia where Thomas Bartholin (1654) observed ‘waterclear’ egg-like structures in slaughtered pigs in Copenhagen. And it was reported as a disease of humans in the first official autopsy conducted in Iceland in 1761. The palaeopathological record of any kind of tapeworm is almost restricted to the identification of their ova in coprolites, latrine deposits and a few rare preserved bodies. These sources have yielded evidence of Tamia solium and Diphyllobothrium latum in German terp material before AD 500 (Jansen and Over, 1962); probably also the fish tapeworm Bothriocephalus Zatus in the Kanvinden bog burial (Szidat, 1944) and many other helminth eggs of other genera. But often the examination of these fragile, microscopic objects leaves much doubt about the diagnosis, as in the case of some human coprolites from Chicama Valley, Peru, dated to the 2nd or 3rd millennium BC which possibly harboured Diphyllobothrium (Callen and Cameron, 1960). The indubitable recognition of ancient hydatid cysts is virtually limited to the case of a seventeen-year old medieval girl from

The Gundestrup version of Táin Bó Cuailnge

Abstract: While most observers now agree that the Gundestrup cauldron originated on the Continent within a Celtic context and dates to the period 100-50 BC (Klindt-Jensen, 1960, 50; Powell, 1971, 205; Allen, 1971, 20, 23) its fantastic motifs have, despite Hatt’s (1965) imaginative rendering, remained enigmatic to most commentators. ‘The Gundestrup artists were influenced by strangely archaic, Oriental imagery and mode of composition’ (Klindt-Jensen, 1959, 167), which is a pronounced element of this unusual piece whatever its exact geographical origin.

The Piltdown problem reconsidered

Abstract: Originally there were two main points of controversy about Piltdown. Did the Piltdown cranium and the Piltdown jaw-bone (mandible) represent one creature, ‘Eoanthropus’ as Smith Woodward inferred; or did they belong to two creatures, the cranium that of a man and the jaw-bone that of an ape, as David Waterston, Gerrit Miller and A. T. Marston believed? The second point of controversy concerned the antiquity of the specimens.

The Station Stones at Stonehenge

Abstract: Etude montrant que la diagonale du rectangle forme par les quatre pierres situees a l'exterieur du cercle de Stonehenge ne peut pas etre orientee dans la direction des positions extremes de la lune.

On the Arrangement of the Homeric Hymns

Abstract: La meme de la collection des Hymnes homeriques offre plusieurs indices qui la font apparaitre comme anterieure a la periode alexandrine. Le nombre de douze hymnes consacres aux divinites olympiennes, celui de six hymnes reserves a des demi-dieux et la place qu'occupent les deux Hymnes a Hestia sont a mettre en rapport avec la mentalite religieuse de la periode archaique. L'auteur attire encore l'attention sur le statut de Dionysos, en qui il reconnait un intermediaire privilegie entre les autres dieux et les hommes.

Altin-depe and the Bull Cult

Abstract: On the resumption of excavation in the autumn of 1972, a funerary complex belonging to a community of priests was discovered among a group of religious buildings in the early urban Bronze Age centre of Altin-depe in South Turkmenia. All the material found there dates from the early stages of Namazga V, or, using the accepted chronology, from the end of the third millennium BC (Masson, 1973, 481). It had previously been established that the chief building of this religious group was a stepped, tower-like edifice which had clearly been built in the style of the Mesopotamian ziggurats and had been rebuilt three times in the course of its existence (Masson and Sarianidi, 1972, 117–18). The funerary complex excavated in 1972 corresponds chronologically to the first, relatively small, ziggurat and was situated southeast of it.

Sous le signe d'Arion

Abstract: Quiconque a peu ou prou frequente la litterature grecque sait que la figure a demi-mythique d'Arion est evoquee par certaines theories relatives aux origines de la tragedie l. D'autre part, l'illustre poete connut une aventure extraordinaire, que nombre d'auteurs repeterent a l'envi. Aussi la personne du Lesbien, placee aux confins de la legende et de l'histoire, parait-elle singulierement manquer de coherence. Sans doute sa mesaventure a-t-elle fait l'objet d'explications variees ; c'est au moins ce qu'atteste la bibliographie utilisee dans un ouvrage que Karl Klement a consacre jadis a l'elucidation de la legende2. Toutefois, il semble que le poete ait davantage interesse les chercheurs par le role que lui prete la Souda aux origines du drame tragique et du dithyrambe.

A Neolithic hurdle from the Somerset Levels

Abstract: the photograph conveys an impression of the kind of information now slowly coming to hand, and much more may surely be expected in areas at present blank. Inevitably progress will be slow. The number of hours during which just the right conditions prevail for observation of these minor structures is very limited, and some years there is no opportunity at all. The second photograph, PL. V I I ~ , covering part of a level gravel terrace south of the West Water, a tributary of the North Esk, in Angus, shows a remarkable palisaded enclosure. A single row of pits as for timber uprights forms a short end, nearest the camera, and there are two long sides extending to the pipe trench in the distance. Other photographs, taken from the opposite direction, show the post-pits at the farther end as soil marks, where soil had been scraped up beside the pipe track. The enclosure may be estimated at 23 to 30 m in width by 200 to 240 m in length. Separate short lines of post-pits may be distinguished to the right of the near end of the enclosure, and a number of larger spots where the crop is taller than average appear half way along the left-hand side of the enclosure. The period (? Dark Age) and significance of all these structures can only be revealed by excavation: they relate to no modern farming practices. Towards the lefthand edge of the photograph, a number of broad lines which curve towards the lower margin represent a long-abandoned system of agriculture that involved ridges and furrows, at first sight not dissimilar in appearance to the ridge and furrow of English medieval ‘open fields’. At Stracathro, the ridges are now levelled, but similar marks of former ploughing are not uncommon in Angus and Perthshire: indeed there are several small areas of moorland south of Kirriemuir (e.g. around NO 358498) where hump-backed ridges are plainly visible. The construction in Britain of underground pipe-lines is nothing new. Pipes for NorthSea oil and gas, seldom less than 36 inches (0.9 m) in diameter, represent a threat to antiquities on quite a new scale. As the gash across PL. vIIb shows, modern methods of laying such large pipes in welded lengths involve stripping topsoil, and often subsoil, over a width of nearly 30 m with consequent disturbance of any archaeological features that lie there. The point is worth making, for it might hardly have been supposed that the extent of the destruction caused in this way would match that of a dual carriage-way road. J. K. ST JOSEPH

Les lampes antiques en terre cuite (suite)

Abstract: L'auteur poursuit et acheve l'inventaire typologique des specimens de lampes, dont il a livre la premiere partie dans le fascicule precedent. Les objets etudies proviennent, en ordre principal, d'Italie, de Grece et du Proche-Orient. Les plus anciens datent du debut de l'epoque romaine imperiale, les plus recents permettent de descendre dans le temps jusqu'au Moyen Age, et meme plus bas.