L. Papazoglou-Manioudaki, A.Νafplioti, J.H. Musgrave & A.J.N.W. PragAnnual of the British School at Athens 105 (2010): 157-224.
This article is the third in a series inspired by the rediscovery in 2003 of two skeletons excavated in 1877 in Shaft Grave VI in Circle A at Mycenae by Panayiotis Stamatakis. Having studied those two individuals and reconstructed their faces, and having conducted a study of strontium isotope analyses on all the individuals from Grave Circle A, we now move on to a reconsideration of the circumstances in which Shaft Graves III, IV and V were excavated by Schliemann and Stamatakis, and place the human remains in the context of the other finds from the graves (no human remains from Graves I and II can be located at present).
David E. WilsonAnnual of the British School at Athens 105 (2010): 97-155.
This article presents a selection of early Prepalatial pottery and a clay sealing found in tests made by Nikolaos Platon between 1955 and 1957 during a programme of conservation and restoration work in the palace. The pottery not only adds to the ceramic characterization of the Early Minoan I – Early Minoan IIB phases at Knossos, but also provides new information about the extent and scale of use of the early Prepalatial settlement.
A. Pentedeka, E. Kiriatzi, L. Spencer & A. BevanAnnual of the British School at Athens 105 (2010): 1-81.
An intensive archaeological survey covering the entire extent of the island of Antikythera has recently revealed a sequence of prehistoric activity spanning the later Neolithic to Late Bronze Age, with cultural affiliations that variously link its prehistoric communities with their neighbours to the north, south and east.
Soultana-Maria Valamoti & Glynis JonesAnnual of the British School at Athens 105 (2010): 83-96.
Lallemantia, an exotic oil plant, recently identified at Bronze Age sites in the Macedonia region of northern Greece, has a natural distribution lying outside Europe, in regions ranging from Iran to Anatolia, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. The possible routes through which Lallemantia arrived in northern Greece are considered in relation to evidence for Bronze Age trade in metals, in particular tin.
This paper investigates aspects of community identity in the Aegean Islands and Crete through examination of their domestic environments, between c. 1200–900 BC, a period when Cycladic, Eastern Aegean islands and Crete were en-gaged in different social developments.
Sturt W. Manning, Carole McCartney, Bernd Kromer & Sarah T. Stewart Antiquity 84 (September 2010): 693–706.
Intensive survey and initial excavations have succeeded in pushing back the Neolithic human occupation of Cyprus to the earlier ninth millennium cal BC. Contemporary with PPNA in the Levant, and with signs of belonging to the same intellectual community, these were not marginalised foragers, but participants in the developing Neolithic project, which was therefore effectively networked over the sea.
When did upper Palaeolithic cave art come to be thought of as religious? The author shows an origin rooted in the intellectual movements of the later nineteenth century, and in particular in the personage and thought of Salomon Reinach.
P. Biagi & E. StarniniAntiquity 84 (September 2010): webpage.
During a study trip in the Lower Danube Valley in the summer of 2009, we crossed the western part of the Moesian Platform, along a route partly following the Iskar River Valley, which brought us to the Danube throughout Pleven and Nikopol. Here, along the road that runs parallel to the Zass’idere torrent, close to its confluence with the Danube at the southern outskirts of Nikopol, we noticed that the cutting of the earth road along the slopes of Ali Kach Baba hill had exposed a white chalk formation (Upper Cretaceous) with several embedded seams of flint nodules.
The body in the Neolithic was used as adequate symbolic medium which on the one hand strengthened the crucial features of individuals, while on the other was capable to explicate the essential function of particular objects and constructions. As result to this also the concept of imagery hybridism was deployed which incorporate human body within more complex segments of visual culture and symbolic communication.
This paper reviews the radiocarbon, stratigraphic and pottery evidence from five early pottery sites in SW Turkey. A comparison of the results with data from Ulucak in West Turkey indicates no significant time lag between these areas. The onset of Neolithic sites early in the 7th millennium calBC makes it difficult to link their emergence to the collapse theories applied to SE Anatolian societies at the end of the PPNB period. The chronology proposed is not compatible with allegedly contemporary developments in SE Europe.
In the Neolithic of Northern Greece the disposal of the deceased is strongly related to the community of the living, and in most cases to the built environment. Burials often occur in close proximity to, or underneath ‘domestic’ structures. The constant association of dead ancestors with the living social environment may indicate a particular desire by Neolithic people to negotiate their past by incorporating it into their own present.
This paper is an attempt to elucidate a rather understudied aspect of Neolithic imagery from Thessaly, Greece, objects representing phalli, and at the same time to consider the possibility that gender was not a prominent structuring principle in the past, allowing for the fact that phalli did not elicit a pervasive binary categorization of bodies, but instead were invoked in specific circumstances with particular objectives.
C. Knappett, D. Pirrie, M.R. Power, I. Nikolakopoulou, J. Hilditch & G.K. RollinsonJournal of Archaeological Science 38.2 (February 2011): 219-232.
A wide range of existing mineralogical and geochemical methodologies such as optical microscopy, X-ray diffraction, manual scanning electron microscopy, ICP-MS and INAA have been utilised in the analysis of ancient ceramics, in attempts to elucidate patterns of regional trade and interaction. However, advances in automated scanning electron microscopy with linked energy dispersive spectrometers (SEM-EDS) have created the potential to offer a seamless combination of textural and mineralogical data based on the acquisition of energy dispersive spectra that has so far been unattainable with existing techniques.
Eleftheria Paliou, David Wheatley & Graeme EarlJournal of Archaeological Science 38.2 (February 2011): 375-386.
In recent years various methods of visibility analysis have been applied to investigate human engagement, experience and socialisation within historic and prehistoric ‘natural’ and built environments. On many occasions these approaches appear to be either extremely limited or wholly inadequate for the interpretation of complex built structures and building interiors because they do not fully model the three-dimensional geometry of such spaces.
Michela SpataroJournal of Archaeological Science 38.2 (February 2011): 255-269.
This paper deals with the importance of chemical analyses in characterising prehistoric pottery fabrics. Two three-year projects focussed on the minero-petrographic and SEM/EDS analyses of the oldest pottery from south-east Europe (ca. 6000 cal BC).
