Another Great Transformation: Technical and Economic Change from the Chalcolithic to the Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant. (original) (raw)
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Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2021
The causes of the disappearance of Late Chalcolithic society (Ghassulian) in the early fourth millennium BC remain obscure. This study identifies the collapse as the consequence of a change in the approach to metallurgy from cosmological fundament (Late Chalcolithic) to a practical craft (EB1). This endogenous transition accounts for the cultural recession characterizing the transitional period (EB1A) and the discontinuity in ritual practices. The new practical approach in metallurgy is firstly observed in the southern margin of the Ghassulian culture, which produced copper for distribution in the Nile valley rather than the southern Levant. Nevertheless, the Ghassulian cultural markers visible in the newly emerging areas of copper working (southern coastal plain, Nile valley) denote the survival of the old cosmological traditions among metalworkers of the EB1 culture. Their religious expression unveils the extension of the Ghassulian beliefs attached to metallurgy and their metamorphosis into the esoteric fundaments of the Bronze Age religions.
An ongoing project for reconstructing the behavior of the geomagnetic field intensity during the last seven millennia has yielded several new dates for archaeometallurgical sites in the Southern Levant. These dates shed new light on the dawn of metallurgy in the region as well as on the quality of technological development and its relation to social and political structures. This paper introduces the methodology and concepts behind the archaeomagnetic project as well as the principles of the applied dating technique. In addition, the paper presents the archaeomagnetic results, discusses the alternative dating of several archaeometallurgical sites and explores the implication of these results on our understanding of the interaction between technology and society in the past. For the latter, the results particularly challenge the “Standard View of Technology” (Pfaffenberger, 1992), and suggest a complex, nonlinear evolution of copper industry in the Southern Levant.
The article’s aim is to foster an interdisciplinary debate regarding the direction that archaeometallurgical studies in the central Mediterranean region, from the late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (c4500-1650 BC), ought to take in the next decade. It is argued that early metallurgical studies in the area have followed an idiosyncratic course due to the sway held on the discipline by Idealism, an influential philosophical movement that greatly hindered the development of science-based archaeology until the late 20th century. The last fifteen years, however, have witnessed an unprecedented if rather tumultuous expansion of metallurgical research, and important advances have been made in the chronology and chaîne opératoire of early metal technology and artefacts. Yet it is the author’s contention that, in order to reap full benefits from the recent disciplinary growth, an explicit research agenda must be set. Above all, it is argued that the new agenda must be grounded in the cross-disciplinary examination of the materiality of metalwork, hitherto poorly explored in this region.
Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization
World Encyclopedia of Archaeology . Elsevier., 2008
This article was originally published in the Encyclopedia of Archaeology, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including use in instruction at your institution, posting on a secure network (not accessible to the public) within your institution, and providing a copy to your institution's administrator. All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing copies or access, or posting on open internet sites are prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elsevier's permissions site at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial Shalev Sariel, Southern Levant, Bronze Age Metal Production and Utilization. In: Encyclopedia of Archaeology, ed. by Deborah M. Pearsall.
Levant, 2014
The aim of this paper is to provide new data on metallurgical activity in Lebanon during the Early Bronze Age IV and the Middle Bronze Age by examining metal artefacts discovered at the sites of Tell Arqa, Mougharet el-Hourryieh, Yanouh and Khariji. Even though some particularities were observed at each site, the results show a common metallurgical tradition throughout the Levant manifested by the use of similar copper base alloy recipes and forming techniques. This work also provides the first data on the composition of silver and its alloys during the Middle Bronze Age in Lebanon.