Brit-Am Research Sources (12 February 2017, 16 Shevet, 5777)
Contents:
1. Phoenicians, Greeks and Egyptian Soldiers in Assyrian Employ
The Etruscans, Phoenicians and Tartessos by Andrew Selkirk
2. Mediterranean Elements in Celtic Civilization
Treasures point to trade links between Central Europe, Mediterranean cultures by Bruce Bower
3. Megalthic Monuments Aplenty in Wales, Yorkshire, and Irish Sea coast.
Heathery livrocky land: rethinking the stones of Neolithic Pembrokeshire
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1. Phoenicians, Greeks and Egyptian Soldiers in Assyrian Employ
The Etruscans, Phoenicians and Tartessos by Andrew Selkirk
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/the-etruscans-phoenicians-and-tartessos.htm
Extracts:
And then there were the Phoenicians who are a story in two parts. The story begins in the late Bronze Age when the peoples of Tyre and Sidon were great seafarers, but in the eighth century they were swallowed up by the Assyrians but managed to achieve semi independence providing they supplied the Assyrians with the metals they needed - copper and silver.
Phoenican art: silver bowl from Amathus
Silver bowl from Amathus in Cyprus, 8th - 7th century BC, now in the British Museum. The decoration shows an extraordinary blend of styles. The outermost frieze shows to the right Assyrian archers and Greek soldiers with their round hoplite shields attacking a city, while to the left, Egyptian soldiers climb ladders up the walls and other Egyptians cut down trees with Aegean double axes.
So first they went to Cyprus, then called in on the Greeks where they brought about an 'Orientalising[' phase, then on to Sardinia and eventually to Spain where they found lots and lots of copper and more particularly silver which is what the Assyrians really wanted. And in the course of their exploration, they also founded at Carthage and when Tyre began to decline in the fifth century, Carthage took its place and we come on to the Phoenicians, part two.
And then we come to Tartessos, in Spain, .... Tartessos sprang up along the River Guadalquivir where there are great deposits of copper and silver - it is known as the Rio Tinto, the red river. A great civilization sprang up called Tartessos which exported the valuable metals through Phoenician trading stations along the coast, and everyone grew rich on the trade. But then the Assyrians were conquered by the Medes and Persians and the Medes were not interested in silver, so the trade collapsed and so did Tartessos.
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2. Mediterranean Elements in Celtic Civilization
Treasures point to trade links between Central Europe, Mediterranean cultures
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/iron-age-secrets-exhumed-riches-filled-crypt
By
Bruce Bower
Extracts:
GOLDEN FINDS Five gold spheres and a gold pinhead (far right), each shown from two angles, were found on the skeleton of a woman buried near an early Iron Age hill fort in Germany. These and other items in the grave show connections to M
Discoveries in a richly appointed 2,600-year-old burial chamber point to surprisingly close ties between Central Europe's earliest cities and Mediterranean societies. Dated to 583 B.C., this grave also helps pin down when people inhabited what may have been the first city north of the Alps.
An array of fine jewelry, luxury goods and even a rare piece of horse armor found in the grave indicates that 'there were craftsmen working in the early Celtic centers north of the Alps who learned their crafts south of the Alps,' says archaeologist Dirk Krausse of the Archaeological State Office of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.
While surveying earthen mounds covering graves at the German site in 2005, Krausse's team noticed a gold-plated bronze brooch fragment lying on the ground. An excavation revealed that the brooch came from the grave of a 2- to 4-year-old child whose skeleton was surrounded by gold and gold-plated jewelry.
It turned out that the child's grave was an addition to a larger burial chamber. Because farming activity threatened the site, cranes were used in 2010 to hoist out the chamber and surrounding soil in a block weighing 80 metric tons. Researchers excavated the tomb at Krausse's facility.
Planks of oak and silver fir formed the chamber. Comparisons of growth rings in the planks with previously dated tree rings in the region indicate that the tomb was built in 583 B.C. Previous excavations over the past decade had suggested that the Heuneburg and several other early Iron Age settlements in Germany and France were the first cities north of the Alps, but the grave provides the most precise date yet. Prior to this find, settlements dating to between 2,200 and 2,000 years ago have traditionally been considered the first Central European cities.
Decorative styles of some items showed Mediterranean influences.
A decorated bronze sheet found near the second skeleton's feet was a piece of armor, called a chamfron, that covered a horse's forehead, the researchers say. Traces of plant netting and fur preserved on the inside surface of the sheet come from padding, they suspect. CT scans revealed remains of an iron horse bit at one end of the sheet, where it fit in the mouth.
This is the first chamfron found at a Hallstatt site. It resembles horse armor from around the same time found in several Mediterranean cultures, Krausse says.
'The tide is finally shifting' t oward accepting links between early European Iron Age cities and societies south of the Alps, says anthropologist Bettina Arnold of the University of Wisconsin,Milwaukee.
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3. Megalithic Monuments Aplenty in Wales, Yorkshire, and Irish Sea coast.
Heathery livrocky land: rethinking the stones of Neolithic Pembrokeshire
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/heathery-livrocky-land-rethinking-the-stones-of-neolithic-pembrokeshire.htm
Extract:
If so, this seems to have been an impulse widely shared, because propped rocks abound all around the Irish Sea basin and as far west as the Yorkshire Dales, not to mention on the near Continent. Many propped rocks occupy impressive settings and are visible from some distance away by sea and by land: Coetan Arthur, for example, is set on the cliffs above St David's Head, while King's Quoit, Manorbier, occupies a precarious perch at the end of a headland only 5m from the cliff edge. A propped rock on Skomer occupies a prominent skyline position at the north-eastern end of the island, moreover, while Carn Sian stands on the Preseli ridge.