‘The Chicken or the Egg?’ Interregional Contacts Viewed Through a Technological Lens at Late Bronze Age Tiryns, Greece

Ann Brysbaert Oxford Journal of Archaeology 32:3 (August 2013): 233-256.

Περίληψη (στα Αγγλικά)

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. This ostrich shell evidence from Tiryns is contextualized and analysed through the approach of the chaîne opératoire in order to understand the material in the framework of Tiryns’ Late Bronze Age craft activities, and within the Late Bronze Age Aegean network of contacts that brought this material to Tiryns in the first place.