Objects with Attitude: Biographical Facts and Fallacies in the Study of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Warrior Graves

Abstract

Aegean prehistory still has to deal with the legacy of ‘Homeric archaeology’. One of these legacies is the ‘warrior grave’, or practice of burying individuals (men?) with weapons which we find both in the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age in the Aegean. This article suggests that the differences between the ‘weapon burial rituals’ in these two periods can tell us much about the kind of social and cultural changes that took place across the Bronze Age/Iron Age ‘divide’ of c. 1100 BC. In neither period, however, can items deposited in ‘warrior graves’ be seen as straightforward biographical facts that tell us what the individual did and suffered in life. Rather, the pattern of grave goods should be seen as a metaphor for a particular kind of identity and ideal. It is only in the Early Iron Age that this identity begins to correspond to the concept of the ‘hero’ as described in the Iliad. One means towards our better understanding of this new identity is to follow up work in anthropology on the biography of objects. It is argued that the ‘life cycle’ of ‘entangled objects’, a cycle which ends in deposition in a grave, provides us with indispensable clues about the nature of new social identities in Early Iron Age Greece.

Martial arts and materiality: a combat archaeology perspective on Aegean swords of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuriesbc

“…The evolution, longevity and specific modes of effective use of these weapons show that martial training in the later Aegean Bronze Age was no trivial matter and required the dedication of substantial training time over many years. That these were the weapons of warriors of high social status (Hood 1971;Dickinson 1994;Whitley 2002) has clear importance therefore for how we take into account martial aspects to the experiential production of personhood among these powerful groups in society.…”

New insights on Late Bronze Age Cu-metallurgy from Coles de Samuel hoard (Central Portugal): A combined multi-analytical approach

“…Since the first studies on hoards, in the second half of the 19th century, this bipolar classification -utilitarian vs. ritual hoards -has given rise to many interpretative problems and prolonged debates and discussions among researchers, proving that this approach is too paradigmatic and schematic to explain an archaeological evidence as complex as prehistoric hoards are: in fact, it is nowadays generally accepted that a hoard can no longer be viewed in terms of utilitarian or votive deposition and new and stimulating alternative perspectives have been adopted (Fontijn, 2002;Gosden and Marshall, 1999;Kopytoff, 1986;Osborne, 2004;Whitley, 2002;York, 2002).…”

Unity and Diversity in the European Iron Age: Out of the Mists, Some Clarity?

“…There have been a number of publications that focus on exactly what constituted male identity in the Iron Age, through reinterpretations of who and what is represented in rock art (Bevan 2006) and grave offerings (Parcero Oubiña 1997;Potrebica 2001;Vaitkunskien_ e 1995;Vida de Navarro 1992;Whitley 2002a), in some cases including texts (Morris 1999). One may refer to work dealing with the same subject for the late Bronze Age as relevant to Iron Age studies (e.g., Thorpe 2004;Treherne 1995).…”