Session: #667

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
The archaeology of material culture, bodies and landscapes
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Title & Content

Title:
The eighth century BC – a turning point?
Content:
The eighth century BC represents a major step change in the European prehistory. For example, in the central Mediterranean, urban centres form in South Etruria and Greek colonisation of the West begins. There are also profound changes in the southeastern Alps and Carpathian Basin, where the Urnfield Cultural Complex is replaced by the Eastern Hallstatt Circle at the advent of the Iron Age. Long range communication networks are rearranged, the social structures of local communities are reinvented, burial mounds appear as universal landscape features and settlements are reorganized or abandoned for new locations in the same areas. Although communities in the Balkan area see a long continuity of development from the Late Bronze Age to the very end of the Iron Age, the 8th century BC shows marked changes in the material culture of burial contexts which probably reflect some sort of rearrangement of social structure.

This session seeks to identify the fundamental changes in society that had their roots at this time and led to the complex societies of the later first millennium BC and asks the question, what was going on? Why do these fundamental changes occur and is their temporal correlation an index of some wider cross-European phenomenon?
Keywords:
Iron Age, communication, society, complexity
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no

Organisers

Main organiser:
Professor Mark Pearce (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Professor Hrvoje Potrebica (Croatia) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Nottingham, Department of Classics and Archaeology
2. University of Zagreb, Department of Archaeology