Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Prologue: between Scylla and Charybdis
1. A theoretical strategy for studying interaction
1.1 Limitations in present theoretical frameworks
1.2 From social typology to social complexity: the role of institutionalisation
1.3 Towards an intercontextual archaeology: material culture and social institutions
1.4 The meaning of imitation in material culture studies
1.5 Text and material culture: the Bronze Age as protohistory
1.6 Tracing, explaining and interpreting interaction
Tracing interaction: diffusion, acculturation and contextualisation
Explaining interaction: transmission, transformation and institutionalisation
Interpreting interaction: meaning, message and materialisation
1.7 Conclusion: theorising interaction and diffusion
2. Odysseus: a Bronze Age archetype
2.1 Mobility and immobility in prestate societies
2.2 Archaeological contexts and categories
2.3 Crossing cultural boundaries: the authority of distance
Cosmological origins in space and time
Some archaeological implications and applications
2.4 Geographical distance and access to origins: the sacredness of power
Cosmological centres and peripheries
Some archaeological implications and applications
2.5 Crafts and creation: the sacred power of esoteric knowledge
Skilled artisans and the smith
Acquisition and esoteric knowledge
Some archaeological implications and applications
2.6 Conclusion: the Bronze Age as epoch
3. Rulership in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age
3.1 Kingship and divinity in Mesopotamia and Egypt
Mesopotamia
Egypt
3.2 Hittite rulership
3.3 The theocratic leaders of Crete and Mycenae
Minoan Crete
Mainland Greece: the Mycenaeans
3.4 Trade and transmission in the Mediterranean world
The Near Eastern caravan trade
The east Mediterranean maritime trade
3.5 Conclusion: historical long-term trends
4. Europe in the Early Bronze Age: an archaeological background
4.1 The Early Bronze Age of the third millennium
4.2 The new Bronze Age chronologies
4.3 The temporal sequence of the later third and second millennia BC
The first phase, 2300-1900 BC
The second phase, 1900-1600 BC
The third phase, 1600/1500-1300 BC
Why the west?
4.4 The transmission of metallurgical know-how
Organisational properties
4.5 Conclusion: some historical long-term trends
5. Symbolic transmission and social transformation in Bronze Age Europe
5.1 The material culture of ruling elites: the Minoan connection (eighteenth to sixteenth centuries BC)
The lily and the ivy flower: tracing the meaning of a symbol
Goddesses, high-ranking women and female costumes
Rituals of drinking: cups for cheering
Life of the ruler: art, architecture and domestic rituals
Script and the loss of meaning: the limits of 'civilisation'
5.2 Horse breeders and charioteers: from the Carpathians to Sintashta, Mycenae and Hattusha
The Bronze Age environments of the steppe region
'The Country of Towns' : the formation of complex societies in the Trans-Urals and the steppe
Mycenae and its northern connections
5.3 The iconography of ruling elites: The Kivik burial and the origins of the Nordic Bronze Age
The interpretative challenge
The foreign connections of the Kivik and their dating
The local Nordic context and the dating of motifs
The interregional context: Kivik as a centre of learning
The international context: the transmission of royal iconography and the formation of chiefly elites
Traders, smiths and travelling chiefs: time travels in cosmological space
Historical summary
5.4 The Mycenaean connection: the expansion of warrior aristocracies (fifteenth-fourteenth centuries BC)
The archaeological evidence of warrior aristocracies: diffusion, acculturation and context
The social and cultural context of warrior aristocracies: transmission, transformation and institutionalisation
Appearance, body culture and ethos: materialisation, message and meaning
5.5 Life and death of the Bronze Age warrior
Mobile warriors or mobile weapons
Indo-European kinship systems and the exchange of 'foreign' warriors (foster sons and brothers)
The death of the warrior
Life of the warrior
5.6 Conclusion: the constitution of origins and the consolidation of hierarchy and cultural identity
6. The cosmological structure of Bronze Age society
6.1 The archaeological study of religion: some constituting elements
6.2 Oral and religious practice: beyond the written word
6.3 The twin gods
6.4 The Divine Twins materialised
Kivik: a door to Bronze Age religion
6.5 The twin rulers: the ritualised structure of chiefly leadership
Tracing the meaning of a symbol: the cap of the ruler andthe tiara of the god
Tracing the contexts of the twin dualism
Origins of the twin rulers
6.6 Hittite religion: a selective outline
General introduction
The Hittite pantheon
The sun cults in Hittite religion
6.7 The sun cult in Nordic Bronze Age religion
The sun and the horse
The sun-goddess and her twin brothers
Sun-discs and women: the sun-priestess personified
The chiefly priest with the campstool
The bronze figurines
6.8 Conclusion: institutional and cosmological longue duree
7. Among gods and mortals, animals and humans
7.1 The role of animals in Egyptian, Near Eastern and Nordic religion
Animals, humans and gods
The snake and other animals in Egyptian and Nordic mythology
Royalty and horse sacrifice/copulation (hierogamy)
Hippomorphic gods: the birth of the Divine Twins
7.2 Horns and horned gods
7.3 South Scandinavian rock art and ritual: the propagation of an elite ideology
7.4 Enculturing the body: the dialectic of social and religious behaviour
7.5 Conclusion: religion and ritual performance
8. Cosmos and culture in the Bronze Age
8.1 Centred and decentred cosmologies
8.2 The formation and consolidation of cultural identity and ethnicity
8.3 Periphery and centre dynamics in the Bronze Age
8.4 The end of the Bronze Age
8.5 Contemplating the unfamiliar
Epilogue: towards a new Culture History
References
Index
