Organised by: Dr Katherine (Karen) Wright, Ms Roseleen Bain (Institute of Archaeology, University College London),
and Dr Gassia Artin (Archéorient-Maison de l'Orient-University of Lyon 2)
ki.wright@btopenworld.com
Location: Room 209 (2nd floor) of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL.
Time: Friday 16th April
| Time | Name | Paper Title |
|---|---|---|
| 09:20 | Wright | Introduction |
| 09.30 | Bar-Yosef Mayer | Between Superstition and Science: Beads of Foragers, Farmers, and Pastoralists in the Levant |
| 09:55 | Wright | Personal ornaments and the emergence of craft specialization in the Near East |
| 10:20 | Bains | The Social Significance of Stone Bead Technology in Central Anatolia during the Neolithic Period |
| 10:45 | COFFEE | COFFEE |
| 11:15 | Alarashi | The "butterfly" stone beads of Tell Abu Hureyra (Syria, Late PPNB): technological, typological and use wear analysis |
| 11.40 | Golani | Cowrie Shells and their Imitations as Ornamental Amulets |
| 12.05 | Silvain | A technological study of ornaments from the first half of the 5th millennium B.C. in southern Levant: Tel Tsaf stone beads and pendants |
| 12.30 | Artin | Ornaments of the Chalcolithic Necropolis of Byblos |
| 12.55 | LUNCH | LUNCH |
| 14.05 | Horn | Dress Items in Badarian and Early Naqada graves in Middle Egypt |
| 14.30 | Good | The Princess of Sarazm: An Elite Burial in Early Chalcolithic Central Asia |
| 14.55 | Hamrick | Producing Value: Bangles in the Indus |
| 15.20 | Patrier | Seals with Granulation Caps in the First Half of the 2nd Millennium BC: New Data |
| 15.45 | COFFEE | COFFEE |
| 16.15 | Wygnańska | Personal Ornaments from MBA graves from Mesopotamia |
| 16.40 | Eremin | Beads and personal ornaments at Nuzi |
| 17:05 | Nikita | Glass-jewellery workshops in Mycenaean Greece: identification, structure and operation |
| 17.30 | Ingram | Faience and Glass Beads from the Late Bronze Age Shipwreck at Uluburun |
Since the publication of Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop's pioneering study of Ancient Western Asiatic Jewellery in 1971, there have been few syntheses of the emergence and development of beads and personal ornaments in the ancient Near East, although wider overviews of beads exist (eg, Lois Sherr Dubin's masterful The History of Beads, 1987). For the Near East itself, most studies have been conducted for specific sites, regions, periods, or problems. However, recent developments in archaeological thought suggest that personal ornamentation of the human body is a central means by which individuals are educated in their own cultures. Ornaments also serve as a crucial arena for negotiation of social identities (age, gender, status, group affiliation) and the establishment of social networks, via exchange. Whilst early studies emphasized styles and typology in a culture-historical framework, recent research has made major advances in our understanding of the origins, development, technologies, exchange and social significance of personal ornaments in the Near East. The purpose of this workshop is to draw together this research and to explore the potential of personal ornaments for understanding technological change, social organization and the development of the Near Eastern complex societies. Examples of themes which we anticipate would be addressed would include:
- The beginnings and development of bone and shell bead technologies and their evolutionary significance;
- The early development of stone bead technologies, from prehistory to the Early Bronze Age, and questions of craft specialization;
- The origins and development of metal jewellery;
- The emergence, use and exchange of ornaments of faience and glass;
- Diversity in ornament assemblages in later complex societies in the Near East: technologies, styles, exchange and social identities;
- Understanding contexts of manufacture (eg, workshops) and contexts of use (eg, burials) in exploring ancient ornaments;
- Symbolic aspects of ornaments and materials.
Workshop Abstracts
The "butterfly" stone beads of Tell Abu Hureyra (Syria, Late PPNB): technological, typological and use wear analysis
Miss Hala Alarashi (Archéorient-Maison de l'Orient-University of Lyon 2, France)
Stone bead manufacturing is known at least since the Natoufian period in the Levant. At the beginning of the PPNA period (ca. 10th millennium BC), the occurrence of stone beads increases considerably. Within the first agropastoral societies, and especially during the Late PPNB, many innovations appear in the stone bead making in terms of types, material, dimensions and colors, although in relation with traditions inherited from earlier periods. Some of these innovations imply a high degree of technological skills. One of them is the thinness of the so-called “butterfly beads” which are large flatten beads with a biconvex cross section. Technological improvements observed in shaping, perforating and polishing are particularly related to this category of artifacts, as well as to the use of new stone materials (e.g. agate, cornelian). These high quality beads are often found associated to human burials in the Northern Levant. This paper presents the preliminary results of the typological and technological study of the flatten stone beads from Late PPNB Tell Abu Hureyra. In addition, wear analysis and study of the archaeological contexts will give some important information about the place of these artifacts within the Neolithic communities.
Ornaments of the Chalcolithic Necropolis of Byblos
Dr Gassia Artin (Archéorient-Maison de l'Orient - University of Lyon 2, Lyon, France
and Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK)
The Chalcolithic Period of the Levant is an important and complex phase in the evolution of prehistoric societies. Certain "prehistoric" traditions such as the production and use of lithic tools continued to be developped while new technical achievements were made in stone-tool production and metallurgy. Excavated by Maurice Dunand between 1925-1973, Byblos represents a key site for the study of the Chalcolithic period in the central and northern Levant regions. Besides being the largest and most thoroughly excavated site (almost 70 % of the site has been excavated), the Byblos settlement features a variety of architectural monuments - such as dwellings, silos and paved roads - and an exceptionally rich and varied corpus of burials and grave goods (2097 graves in total including 2059 jar burials). According to the available and unpublished data, a total of 3652 objects were collected. Grave goods are extremely varied - comprising ceramic, metal, stone artefacts, art objects and ornaments. In this presentation, I will focus on the analyses of some unpublished documentary material concerning personal ornaments within a funerary context. These ornaments, recovered from 255 burials, consist of amulets, necklaces, bracelets, beads, and pendants made of different materials such as silver, limestone cornelian/carnelian, bone, ivory, shell, and obsidian. These types of objects were found throughout the site and represent about 35% of the total number of grave goods.
The Social Significance of Stone Bead Technology in Central Anatolia during the Neolithic Period
Ms Roseleen Bains (Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, United Kingdom)
This paper aims to examine the social significance of stone beads and stone bead production at the two sites of Aşıklıhöyük and Çatalhöyük, central Turkey, from a technological perspective. It focuses on the transition and changes in bead technology during the span of the sites' occupation and what these changes mean or suggest in regards to a broader social context; specifically, in regards to social concepts of social and individual identity, trade, adornment and the body, and craft specialization.
tcrn006@ucl.ac.uk or roseleen.bains@ucl.ac.uk
Between Superstition and Science: Beads of Foragers, Farmers, and Pastoralists in the Levant
Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer (The Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies and Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa, Israel)
Beads today are used as personal ornaments expressing beauty, self awareness, belief systems or superstitions. Their first occurrence in the Middle Palaeolithic is considered a trait of modern humans, and the mechanism of bead exploitation, debated within the framework of moderns' emergence, is all but resolved. The data points to the initial collection of naturally perforated shell beads, followed by shell and bone beads manufacturing as a common practice during the Upper Palaeolithic. The transition to agriculture in the Levant sees two major innovations: the technological advance of the disc bead, as well as the emergence of stone beads and pendants, and in particular, green stones. A large variety of minerals of green colors were sought from various sources that are hundreds of kilometers away from the sites in which the end-products were discovered. I proposed that green beads were directly related to the onset of agriculture: their green color represents the wish for green plants to yield successful crops. A significant diversification of raw materials and bead typology characterize the farmers of the Neolithic period. With the dispersal of pastoral societies in the Chalcolithic period bead quantities multiply, probably reflecting an expansion of exchange networks. New materials are encountered, and especially the innovation of one of the earliest synthetic materials: glazed enstatite, a precursor of faience. The manufacturing process, not yet fully reconstructed, resulted in thousands of tiny green beads, found in sites from the Indus valley to Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant. The manufacturing, collection, and wearing of beads through time seem to reflect various belief systems that are strongly tied to changing economic strategies.
Beads and personal ornaments at Nuzi
Dr Katherine Eremin (Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)
Prof. Patrick Degryse Centre for Archaeological Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Ms Susanna Kirk Conservation and Analytical Research, National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland
Dr Andrew Shortland Centre for Archaeological and Forensic Research, Cranfield University,
Shrivenham, Swindon, UK
Dr Marc Walton The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, California, USA
In the winter of 1925–26, a team from the University of Pennsylvania commenced excavations at Yorgan Tepe, an archaeological site in Iraq rumored to be the findspot of inscribed clay tablets that had recently been sold on the antiquities market. The site produced thousands of tablets, translation of which revealed that this was the ancient Hurrian city of Nuzi. Subsequent excavations were funded and lead by Harvard University and continued until 1931. The excavated finds consisted of an impressive assemblage of glass, ceramics, metals, stone and organic materials, mainly dating to the mid 14th century BC. The glass assemblage, numerically the largest from the 2nd millennium BC, includes many thousands of beads as well as small objects and core-formed vessels. About half the excavated materials came to the USA after a division of finds with the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and most are held by the Semitic Museum, Harvard University. The full assemblage has recently been examined in an international collaborative project, one aspect of which has involved detailed study of the technology, color and composition of the glass beads and a comparison with glass vessels from the site. The technology, preservation, and elemental and isotopic compositions can be used to clearly differentiate between late Bronze Age and later intrusive beads previously attributed to the late Bronze Age on the basis of their recorded field location and appearance. Analysis and study of the alteration processes allows us to reconstruct the original color schemes and materials of many heavily weathered beads which now differ significantly visually from the original materials/colors. This paper will present these new findings for the diverse bead assemblage from Nuzi and discuss these in the wider context of trade and production of late Bronze Age glass.
Cowrie Shells and their Imitations as Ornamental Amulets
Dr Amir Golani (Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem, Israel)
Shells of the genus Cypraea, commonly known as "Cowries", are commonly found in archaeological excavations throughout the Levant as early as the prehistoric periods. These shells are often found modified by the removal of their backs in order to facilitate their stringing. Certain species of these shells have historically been used as currency, yet in the past and present, were also used as jewelry as well as for other decorative and ceremonial purposes. The extensive distribution and chronological time span for the use of these shells is evidence of their immense popularity among many ancient and unrelated cultures. Their esteem probably stems from the suggestive form of the shell itself which is usually ascribed as a protective amulet used to guard against sterility, to increase fertility and to ward off the harmful effects of the "evil eye". While the shell itself may have been acquired by trade, the form of the shell was occasionally imitated in other materials as early as the Neolithic period. These include common stones and faience as well as precious metals such as silver and gold, suggesting that the form itself was of high symbolic value and held to be just as potent as the original shell.
The Princess of Sarazm: An Elite Burial in Early Chalcolithic Central Asia
Prof. Irene Good (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA) and
AbR. Razzokov (University of Pennsylvania)
Never before fully published, an elite fourth millennium BCE female burial at Sarazm raises many interesting questions. Is this incontrovertible evidence for a matriarchal society? How was she related to the two others in her grave? What does her access to lapis mean, and did it come from Afghanistan or Lake Baikal- or somewhere else? This paper addresses several topics, from adornment and raiment to gender and power in early faming communities on the Iranian Plateau; from the procurement of prestige materials (in this case, lapis lazuli, agate, carneilian and Xancus pyrum) to the limitations of sourcing studies. This paper will also discuss the significance of the microbeads found at Sarazm, their similarities and differences with those of the Indus civilization, and how this connection may relate to finding silk in later Sapalli culture. Finally, this paper offers a comparative review of lapis beads and a formal analysis of female wealthy burials in late fourth and early third millennium Indo-Iranian borderlands (principally from Shahr-i Sokhta) to bring this important burial into a broader context.
Producing Value: Bangles in the Indus
Patty Hamrick (New York University, New York, New York, USA)
The sites of the Indus civilization, located mostly in modern India and Pakistan, contain many types of personal ornamentation, but this class of artifact is particularly well-represented by bangles, of which over 100,000 have been excavated from the single urban site of Harappa. Bangles are defined as a type of closed circular bracelet; in the Indus they were made of terracotta, marine shell, faience, metals, and stoneware, and were manufactured in a variety of forms. This diversity of production, and the resulting range of value in the finished objects, in a single category allows for analysis of the social use of these ornaments, which may have played an important role in constructing and conveying information about social identities such as gender, age, ethnicity, occupation, and/or status. This paper will use a variety of sources of information, including reconstruction of production and evidence for administrative control, distribution of the bangles within the archaeological record, and representations of bangles in Indus art, to get at the role of these ornaments in the Indus civilization.
Dress items in Badarian and Early Naqada graves in Middle Egypt
Maarten Horn (Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands)
In the 1920-30's, Guy Brunton excavated a large number of predynastic cemetery sites in the Qau-Matmar region in Middle Egypt, of which many were assigned to the Badarian and early Naqadian cultural complexes. Though the contents of these graves were investigated and subsequently published by him, the items of dress found inside have received little attention in subsequent years. Defining dress as all modifications of and supplements to the body, this present study intends to explore the beads, shells and pendants worn by the deceased. As such, the synchronic differentiation in dress and dress use within and between different cemeteries in this region will initially be assessed in a contextual manner per individual cultural complex and stage therein. Patterns between dress, its use, and other burial goods and features of the grave will be investigated by the use of an Access database, interconnected with spatial maps in MapInfo. These patterns can give us a glimpse into how a particular identity or identities of the deceased might have been constructed by these items. In this respect, particular ways of dressing the dead according to for example age or sex will be most important in analyzing particular social constructions in a mortuary context. Similarities and differences of dress and dress use in diachronically dated graves and cemetery sites will be most interesting as the chronological interconnection between the Badarian and early Naqadian archaeological assemblages is still a rather hot topic.
Faience and Glass Beads from the Late Bronze Age Shipwreck at Uluburun
Ms Rebecca S. Ingram (Texas A&M University, Galveston, Texas, USA)
Beads functioned as an important trade commodity during the Late Bronze Age, as demonstrated by their abundance aboard the Uluburun shipwreck. This Late Bronze Age shipwreck, discovered off the Turkish coast at Uluburun in 1982, dates to approximately 1315 BC. Thousands of beads of vitreous material were found on the shipwreck, including approximately 75,000 faience beads and 9,500 glass beads. Bead form and style represented at Uluburun are relatively simple and are quite common at archaeological sites throughout the Late Bronze Age Levant. Many of the large glass beads also exhibit yellow and white spot or crumb decoration, or a combination of both. Many of the faience and glass bead types represent items of trade, as evidenced by a concreted lump of small glass beads transported inside a Canaanite jar.
Furthermore, there are both glass and faience examples of beads that, due to a manufacture deformity, may not be strung, again confirming that such beads were being traded. Some types of faience beads, in contrast, probably represent the personal belongings of the crew or passengers aboard the ship. Beads found in archaeological contexts are notoriously difficult to date due to their extended use throughout generations; for this reason, the Uluburun beads represent an important contribution to the archaeological record and bead studies in particular, for the mere fact that they may be dated by provenance alone to the late 14th century BC.
Glass-jewellery workshops in Mycenaean Greece: identification, structure and operation
Dr Kalliopi Nikita (University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK)
The paper will present the results from recent research in workshops for the manufacture of glass jewellery in Mycenaean Greece, ca. 1400-1200 BC. Following a brief overview of the problems in recognising jewellery workshops in the Late Bronze Age Aegean, the paper will deal with the identification of Mycenaean glass-jewellery workshops. Starting from the distinction between glass making and glass working the extant archaeological evidence for Mycenaean glass-jewellery workshops will be critically assessed, more specifically architecture, technical equipment, raw and waste materials and finished objects, in conjunction with epigraphic and literary sources. The discussion will focus on jewellery workshops of the Mycenaean Palace at Thebes in east central mainland Greece. Given the multiplicity of crafts employed in Mycenaean jewellery workshops scientific analysis of glass from palatial Thebes will be used as a means of identifying and further defining the degree of specialisation of glass-jewellery workshops. Glass analyses from Thebes will be considered in relation to further compositional analyses from contemporary Mycenaean sites as well as to published data for Egypt and Mesopotamia. Models for the structure and operation of the glass industry at palatial Thebes will be proposed with an ultimate aim to gain further insights into the organisation of the glass industry in Mycenaean Greece.
Kalliopi.Nikita@nottingham.ac.uk
Seals with Granulation Caps in the First Half of the 2nd Millennium BC: New Data
Miss Julie Patrier
(Université de Strasbourg, France & Université Ca'Foscari, Venezia, Italy and UMR 7044 [CNRS])
and
Dr Denis Lacambre Université Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille 3, France
One function of ancient near eastern cylinder seals is to be a marker of identity and thereby a social marker. The fact of adorning these cylinder seals with metal caps, moreover with granulation ornamentation, and wear them as jewelry reflects a true desire to show his social rank.
We propose here to deepen the study of these caps by combining archaeological and epigraphic attestations. Thus, various aspects of these granulation caps will be considered: first of all, some basic techniques of granulation production will be recalled, primarily in order to demonstrate the complexity of this technique of jewelry. We will also try to clarify stylistic changes; we will then attempt to refine the moment of their appearance in the early second millennium BC and to trace the history of these granulation caps, which only a few exemplars have reached us. We will propose a new hypothesis about their origin. Finally we will be able to confirm the high status of the owners of such seals in particular through the study of their legends (names and titles of owners). The use of granulation caps will then grow significantly and the appearance of imitations engraved directly on the body of the seal will reflect the desire to copy a "fashion" in vogue among the wealthy people.
patrierj@yahoo.fr
denis.lacambre@univ-lille3.fr
A technological study of ornaments from the first half of the 5th millennium B.C. in southern Levant: Tel Tsaf stone beads and pendants
Miss Marion Silvain (Université Nanterre Paris Ouest, Nanterre, Paris, France )
Tel Tsaf is an early 5th millennium B.C. settlement located in the Jordan valley (Israel). During excavations, 88 finished stone beads and 95 elements related to stone bead production were discovered in a domestic context. This corpus is remarkable given the high number of beads and their great variability either at the material or technological level. In order to understand this variability and characterise the production of tsafian stone beads, a technological analysis was conducted based on the concept of the chaînes opératoires. Geological analysis was led by Pr. Dubi Levite (Israel Geological Survey). Two types of materials were identified: raw materials, including hard stone (6,5 to 7,5 on the Mohs scale) and soft or semi-hard stone (less than 5 and 5 to 6,5) and chemically modified materials, analysis showing the presence of partially vitrified materials. Technological analysis, using the reference-base elaborated by V. Roux in Cambay, focused on the bead-finishing techniques. It enables us to highlight differences between the soft or semi-hard stone bead production and the hard stone bead production. The former were locally made, technically and morphologically homogeneous and possibly partially exported. The latter were made according to different chaines opératoires. A combined morpho-metric analysis suggests that such a variability responded to cultural rather than functional factors. We conclude that hard stone beads may have been imported from different cultural areas. We suggest also that they may have had a different status as compared to the locally made stone beads. The three chemically modified beads are the most ancient example of partial vitrification in this region. Considering their small number and the lack of traces of such a production it seems that those beads were also imported.
Personal ornaments and the emergence of craft specialization in the Near East
Dr Katherine I. (Karen) Wright (Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK
The social significance of beads and personal ornaments depends on close consideration of archaeological context. Two of the most common types of contexts in which personal ornaments occur are burials and manufacturing sites. In this paper I consider examples of each, via case studies from the prehistoric Near East. The results suggest that the Neolithic in the Near East was an industrial revolution closely tied to social and symbolic concerns, which set the stage for craft specialization. Indeed, the Neolithic data suggest that standard concepts of craft specialization and its relationship to early urbanization may have to be re-considered.
Personal Ornaments from MBA graves from Mesopotamia
Zuzanna Wygnańska (Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland)
Beliefs, social status, fashion and accessibility of raw materials – these were main factors that influenced the occurrence of different kinds of personal ornaments in MBA Mesopotamian graves. Observations concerning this category of personal equipment that accompanied the dead in their passage to the Netherworld, result from a broader analysis of burial customs in Mesopotamia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC (which was the subject of my PhD thesis). In my study I analyzed grave material from eleven sites, including Larsa, Uruk, Ur, and Sippar Amnanum in the South and Ashur, Mari, Baghouz, Kahat, Urkesh, Chagar Bazar and Tell Arbid in the North. To these detailed studies, some more general remarks on other MB Mesopotamian sites have been added. That allowed to sum up the observations concerning the appearance of various adornments in grave context during the MBA. The most interesting conclusions relate to the territorial distribution of this category of objects within Mesopotamia on the one hand and the diversity of assemblages within particular sites on the other. They also hint toward the identification of ancient universal symbols of social identities as well as understanding the symbolic meaning of certain objects.