5 The life of societiesглава из книги
Аннотация: 5T he lifeo fs ocietiesIn previous chapters, Ih avel ooked at an umber of lives -of people, of objects, and of places.Istarted by thinking about individual people and what they were like, then the objects which inform us about them and their lives, and lastlythe places in which they lived.Now Iwant to broaden my discussion out to encompass the whole environment that people knew,n ot so much physical as mental and ideological: the ways they interacted with each other,overshortorlong distances,h ow the communities within which they livedm ight have been structured, and how thosec ommunities livedt ogether; not justc ommunities at the local scale, but on the widest scale thatm ight have existed in the period, in other words the Bronze Age "world".T hat means consideringn ot just how large human groups were, and how manys uch groups might have livedi na givena rea or territory,b ut what the nature of their interactions was, peaceful or otherwise.In this,i ti sp robablye asiest to detect those interactions which were not peaceful.Just as our news-filled world todayisdominated by stories of violence and war,onthe grounds that peace and normal life -when nothing special happens -is not newsworthy, so our view of the past is likelyt ob ed ominatedb y those occurrences which indicate something happened, something other than birth, reproduction and death.In seeking to understand how ancient societies undertook and managed interactions, arangeoftypes of evidence are available to us.Traditionally, archaeologists recognised interactions through the studyo fa rtefacts,which would indicate "trade",i no ther words the movement of rawm aterials or manufactured objects from one place to another.This movement would indicate that societies wereincontact with one another,bymeans of travellers across short or long distances;itwould show that some kind of economic and/or social interaction was taking place.The presenceo fo bjects made in one place and found in another relies partlyo nt ypological factors,p artlyo nc omposition analysis;t he importance of this method of proceeding has not diminished,but it has been supplemented in recent years by astill more powerful analyticaltool:the use of ancient DNAa nd stable isotopes to determine the provenance and life history of buried individuals.AstudyofBronze Ageinteractions thus has arangeoft ypes of evidence from which to work.Before consideringt he nature of interactions, therefore, some words about the specifics of movement -of people and objects -are necessary.
Год издания: 2021
Издательство: De Gruyter
Источник: De Gruyter eBooks
Открытый доступ: hybrid
Страницы: 91–121