Nick J. Overton & Yannis HamilakisArchaeological Dialogues 20:2 (2013):111-136.
Recent, non-anthropocentric explorations of the interaction between human and non-human animals have resulted in many groundbreaking studies. In this ‘animalturn’, zooarchaeology, which deals with and has access to the material traces of animals that existed alongside humans over the last 2.5 million years, could occupy a privileged and influential position.
This article focuses on several overlooked assemblages of the Bronze Age artefacts from Troy brought to light by H. Schliemann and W. Dörpfeld. It briefly presents the complicated history and partition of duplicate artefacts from the Berlin collection and their donation to many European institutions after Schliemann’s death.
Dimitris Tambakopoulos & Yannis Maniatisin Anna Gutiérrez Garcia-M., Pilar Lapuente Mercadal & Isabel Rodà de Llanza (eds) 2012. Interdisciplinary Studies on Ancient Stone. Proceedings of the IX Association for the Study of Marblesand Other Stones in Antiquity (ASMOSIA) Conference (Tarragona 2009). [Documenta 23], Tarragona: Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica, 287-299.
The use of marble in prehistory and in particular in the Early Bronze Age is clearly evident in the Greek Cycladic islands where the famous Cycladic figurines appeared and spread all over the Aegean. However, the absence of quarrying traces in that period and the abundance of marble outcrops in most of the Cycladic islands makes the creation of reference databases very difficult and hence the determination of provenance of prehistoric artefacts quite demanding.
Simon Jusseret & Manuel SintubinSeismological Research Letters 83:4 (July/August 2012): 736-742.
Since its discovery in the beginning of the twentieth century by British archaeologist Arthur Evans, the Bronze Age (Minoan) civilization of Crete (Greece, ca. 3000–1200 B.C.) received considerable scholarly, scientific, and popular attention.
Jennifer M. Webbin Frankel, D., Webb, J.M. & Lawrence S. (eds), Archaeology in Environment and Technology: Intersections and Transformations (New York, 2013): 135-148.
Two major archaeologically recognisable cultural entities are visible in mid-third millennium BC Cyprus: an indigenous Late Chalcolithic dependent on hoe-based agriculture and a migrant Philia Early Bronze Age with a radically different social and technological system, including the cattle/plough complex.
Steven E. Falconer & Patricia L. Fallin Frankel, D., Webb, J.M. & Lawrence S. (eds), Archaeology in Environment and Technology: Intersections and Transformations (New York, 2013): 123-134.
The development of early civilisations in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East is particularly noteworthy for the variety of paths whereby agrarian societies became increasingly differentiated, often invoking the periodic amalgamation and abandonment of urban communities.
Christos Doumasin Alexopoulos, G. & Fouseki, K. (eds), Managing Archaeological Sites [Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 15:1 (2013)]: 109-120.
This article deals with the archaeological site of Akrotiri on the Cycladic island of Thera (Santorini), Greece, and demonstrates, in particular, how the construction of a new protective shelter has provided an opportunity for enhancing the present and future conservation and management of the site in accordance with, among other values, the aspirations of the local community.
Excavators have put forward opposing interpretations of the architectural sequence at the Early Bronze Age site of Troy. C.W. Blegen suggested that freestanding 'megaron' houses determined the visual pattern of the earliest settlement, while M.O. Korfmann compared Troy I to the circular layout of the Early Bronze Age site at Demircihüyük (the ‘Anatolian settlement plan’).
Hector Catling, who died on 15 February 2013 aged 88, was one of the great archaeologists of his generation. He made major contributions to our understanding of the past of Greece and Cyprus.
Giorgos VavouranakisCultural History 2.2 (2013): 213-231.
Landscape has been defined as ‘a usefully ambiguous concept’, being both the medium and the outcome of the dynamic relation between people and their environs. Human agency shapes the landscape and imbues it with meaning.
Ann BrysbaertOxford Journal of Archaeology 32:3 (August 2013): 233-256.
This paper reviews the environmental circumstances of the ostrich and its eggs, in order to provide a geographical overview of past human usage and modification of ostrich eggshells in the Aegean and, more specifically, at Tiryns, while placing this craft in its contemporary context in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean basin.
Aren M. Maeir, Louise A. Hitchcock & Liora Kolska HorwitzOxford Journal of Archaeology 32:1 (February 2013): 1-38.
Recent discussion of the formation and alteration of Philistine identity in the Levantine Iron Age continues to reference primarily pottery styles and dietary practices. Such traditional narratives propose that the Philistines comprised one group of the ‘Sea Peoples’ and that the cultural boundary markers that distinguished their society in the Iron Age I (twelfth–eleventh century BC) diminished in importance and disappeared suddenly in the early Iron Age IIA (tenth century BC), with the ascendancy of the Judahite kingdom.
Malcolm WienerAmerican Journal of Archaeology 117.4 (October 2013): Online Forum.
The upheavals and transformations in Greece and the Cyclades during the late third millennium B.C.E. must be considered in the light of related events throughout the eastern Mediterranean, as well as in regions farther east and west.
Ourania KoukaAmerican Journal of Archaeology 117.4 (October 2013): Online Forum.
Gaps are not desirable in archaeology, whether they refer to cultural gaps or to gaps in research. When Rutter defined a "gap" between the Early Cycladic IIB and Middle Cycladic I/Middle Helladic I assemblages, it was evident that there existed a real gap in archaeological research of the prehistoric landscapes and islandscapes of the northern and eastern Aegean and of western Anatolia, to the south of Troy.
