Iron Age
More general subjects:
Between Near East and Eurasian Nomads
Representation of Local Elites in the Lori Berd Necropolis during the First Half of the First Millennium bc
The site of Lori Berd located in northern Armenia is home to an extraordinary necropolis that once housed the dead of the local elite during a period that spanned from 2200 to 400 BC. Influenced both by Urartian conquests from the south and by invasions from the Eurasian nomadic tribes from the north the people of this region buried their dead with prestigious artefacts complex customs and a particular reverence shown during the later stages of the Early and Middle Iron Ages (1000–550 BC). This volume offers a detailed account of the archaeological significance of the site providing detailed accounts of thirty-one tombs the majority of which have never before been comprehensively published and seeking to set Lori Berd in its broader historical and material context. Through this approach the book offers a comprehensive exploration of the Iron Age in the South Caucasus unravelling the interconnected themes of wealth power and cultural expressions.
Hoards from the European Bronze and Iron Ages
Current Research and New Perspectives
Hoards are among the most enigmatic of archaeological finds. The term ‘hoard’ itself has been applied to different assemblages across space and time from the Stone Age into the modern era with an inventory that typically includes artefacts made of valuable raw materials to which significant symbolic meanings can also be assigned. Archaeologists have been trying to understand this phenomenon for much of the last century sometimes emphasizing the universal nature of hoards but more typically focusing on specific regions chronologies and finds. They have for the most part used results derived from typolo-chronological methods. Contemporary archaeology has however developed a broad spectrum of paradigms and methods and hoardresearch in the twenty-first century draws on an increasingly wide range of approaches.This volume presents examples of research that make use of these multi-faceted approaches through a focus on European hoards of metal objects dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages. The contributors to this volume make use of diverse methods among them archaeometallurgical analyses studies of use- and production-wear destruction patterns and landscape archaeology but together their common denominator is the search for a methodological toolkit that will allow researchers to better understand the phenomenon of hoard-deposition more broadly.