Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Antonio Blanco-González ,  Tobias L. Kienlin
Publisher:   Oxbow Books
Imprint:   Oxbow Books
ISBN:  

9781789254860

ISBN 10:   1789254868
Pages:   224
Publication Date:   15 September 2020
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction: Learning from Prehistoric Tells by Antonio Blanco-González and Tobias L. Kienlin Chapter 2. Architectural Phases, Use-life Episodes and Taphonomic Processes in Tell Formation: An Approach to Neolithic Tell Halula (Syria) by Miquel M. Molist, Quim Sisa, Julia Wattez and Anna Gómez-Bach Chapter 3. Re-discovering the Neolithic Landscapes of Western Thessaly, Central Greece by Athanasia Krahtopoulou, Charles Frederick, Hector, A. Orengo, Anastasia Dimoula, Niki Saridaki, Stella Kyrillidou, Alexandra Livarda and Arnau Garcia-Molsosa Chapter 4. The Old Becomes New: Material Culture and Architectural Continuity on an Anatolian Höyük by Sharon R. Steadman & Jennifer C. Ross Chapter 5. Moving Bottom-up: The Case Study of Kakucs-Turján (Hungary) and its Implications for Studies of Multi-layered Bronze Age Settlements in the Carpathian Basin by Robert Staniuk, Mateusz Jaeger, Gabriella Kulcsár, Nicole Taylor, Jakub Niebieszczański and Johannes Müller Chapter 6. Exploring the Bronze Age Tells and Tell-like Settlements from the Eastern Carpathian Basin. Results of a Research Project by Florin Gogâltan, Alexandra Găvan, Marian A. Lie, Gruia Fazecaș, Cristina Cordoș and Tobias L. Kienlin Chapter 7. Talking Trash. Reconstructing Activities, Discard and Abandonment at Late Bronze Age Tell Sabi Abyad (Syria) by Victor Klinkenberg Chapter 8. Domesticаtion of Tells: Settlements of the First Farmers in Pelagonia (Macedonia) by Goce Naumov Chapter 9. Tells (and Flat Sites) as Social Agents: A View from Neolithic Greece by Stella Souvatzi Chapter 10. Human Activities on a Late Neolithic Tell-like Settlement Complex of the Hungarian Plain (Öcsöd-Kováshalom) by András Füzesi, Knut Rassmann, Eszter Bánffy and Pál Raczky Chapter 11. The Practice of Everyday Life on a European Bronze Age tell: Reflections from Százhalombatta-Földvár (Hungary) by Joanna Sofaer, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Magdolna Vicze Chapter 12. Social Life on Bronze Age Tells. Outline of a Practice-oriented Approach by Tobias L. Kienlin Chapter 13. Architecture, Power and Everyday Life in the Iron Age of North-eastern Iberia. Research from 1985 to 2019 on the Tell-like Fortress of Els Vilars (Arbeca, Lleida, Spain) by Joan B. López, Emili Junyent and Natàlia Alonso Chapter 14. Then, Now, to Come – A Commentary by John Chapman

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Author Information

Antonio Blanco-González is a Lecturer in Prehistory with the University of Salamanca (Spain), (PhD viva in 2009). He held post-doctoral positions at the Universities of Durham (UK) and Valladolid (Spain). His interests include social archaeology and later European prehistory and has published on these subjects in top-ranked journals. Tobias L. Kienlin is Professor at the Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte of the Universität zu Köln (Germany). His interests focus on the European Neolithic and Bronze Ages, settlement archaeology, prehistoric metalworking, archaeological theory, practice theory and materiality. He is the author of Bronze Age Tell Communities in Context. An Exploration into Culture, Society, and the Study of European Prehistory (Oxford: Archaeopress 2015) and has co-authored with K. P. Fischl and T. Pusztai: Borsod Region Bronze Age Settlement (BORBAS) (Bonn: Habelt 2018).

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