Current Approaches to Tells in the Prehistoric Old World: A cross-cultural comparison from Early Neolithic to the Iron AgeAntonio Blanco-González, Tobias L. Kienlin Deeply stratified settlements are a distinctive site type featuring prominently in diverse later prehistoric landscapes of the Old World. Their massive materiality has attracted the curiosity of lay people and archaeologists alike. Nowadays a wide variety of archaeological projects are tracking the lifestyles and social practices that led to the building-up of such superimposed artificial hills. However, prehistoric tell-dwelling communities are too often approached from narrow local perspectives or discussed within strict time- and culture-specific debates. There is a great potential to learn from such ubiquitous archaeological manifestations as the physical outcome of cross-cutting dynamics and comparable underlying forces irrespective of time and space. This volume tackles tells and tell-like sites as a transversal phenomenon whose commonalities and divergences are poorly understood yet may benefit from cross-cultural comparison. Thus, the book intends to assemble a representative range of ongoing theory – and science –based fieldwork projects targeting this kind of sites. With the aim of encompassing a variety of social and material dynamics, the volume’s scope is diachronic – from the Earliest Neolithic up to the Iron Age–, and covers a very large region, from Iberia in Western Europe to Syria in the Middle East. The core of the volume comprises a selection of the most remarkable contributions to the session with a similar title celebrated in the European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting held at Barcelona in 2018. In addition, the book includes invited chapters to round out underrepresented areas and periods in the EAA session with relevant research programmes in the Old World. To accomplish such a cross-cultural course, the book takes a case-based approach, with contributions disparate both in their theoretical foundations – from household archaeology, social agency and formation theory – and their research strategies – including geophysical survey, microarchaeology and high-resolution excavation and dating. |
Contents
Rediscovering the Neolithic Landscapes of Western | |
Material Culture and Architectural | |
The Case Study of KakucsTurján | |
Exploring the Bronze Age Tells and Telllike Settlements | |
Talking Trash Reconstructing Activities Discard | |
Settlements of the First Farmers | |
A View from | |
Human Activities on a Late Neolithic Telllike Settlement | |
The Practice of Everyday Life on a European Bronze | |
Social Life on Bronze Age Tells Outline of a Practice | |
Architecture Power and Everyday Life in the Iron Age | |
Then Now to Come A Commentary | |
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Common terms and phrases
5th millennium BC activities approach Arbeca archaeological architecture Bronze Age Tell building Çadır Cambridge Carpathian Basin Çatalhöyük central ceramic Chalcolithic Chapman characterised chronological Cluj-Napoca communities complex construction context Čuka Dâmbu deposits ditches Early Bronze Age Early Neolithic eastern Els Vilars enclosure Europe excavation flat sites floor fragments Giddens Gogâltan Habelt Hittite houses Höyük human Hungarian Hungarian Plain Hungary interpretation investigations Iron Age Junyent Kakucs-Turján Kienlin Krahtopoulou Kristiansen Kulcsár landscape Late Neolithic layers located López Magoula material culture Middle Bronze Age millennium BC mound multi-layered Naumov Neolithic Greece Neolithic settlement Neolithic tells occupation Öcsöd Öcsöd-Kováshalom organisation Oxbow Books Oxford Pelagonia phase Plateia pottery practices prehistoric Prodromos Raczky radiocarbon radiocarbon dates region Schatzki sequence Sesklo sherds social Souvatzi space spatial stratigraphic structure Százhalombatta tablets Tell Halula Tell Sabi Abyad tell settlements tell-like settlement Thessaly Tisza Toboliu trench Vicze Vrbjanska Čuka wall western