Wikipedia:GLAM/British Museum/Bronze Age

We are planning with the British Museum to collaborate in improving articles on the Bronze Age. A selected number of scholarly papers are available in PDF form. Comments and queries are welcome on the talk page, and please sign up below if you are interested in helping.

Participants

• Please sign up if you are interested in participating, wherever you are. It is helpful to give your usual location & any particular relevant expertise you have:

• London, Johnbod (talk) 14:49, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
• Hampshire, UK, Gaius Cornelius (talk) 06:42, 22 July 2011 (UTC). Availability depends upon exact dates. Hardly an expert, but very interested in Yetholm-type shields.
• Zurich, Dbachmann (talk · contribs). No special expertise in the British Bronze Age specifically, but some background in the Euraisan Bronze Age in connection with the Indo-Europeans, plus Bronze Age literature (Ancient Near East). --dab (𒁳) 10:01, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
• London ϢereSpielChequers 05:07, 27 July 2011 (UTC) No Bronze (or indeed metal) age experience, but I've spent a few weeks on a couple of Archaeological digs as a volunteer through Earthwatch.
• London, coordination, editing. Fæ (talk) 11:54, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Topics

• Bronze Age
• Bronze Age Britain
• Bush Barrow
• Flag Fen
• Neolithic Jade(ite) polished stone axes - nothing really (nb #14 of the 100 Objects); Commons category Prehistoric jade axe heads now created
• Bronze Age jet necklaces - Commons Category:Jet_necklaces set up but pretty bare - photos needed!
• Bronze Age shields - we have Yetholm-type shield, and Bronze Age sword
• Bronze Age warfare
• Climate change and Prehistory - we have stubby Historical impacts of climate change and Historical climatology. Paleoclimatology is much better. Nothing between the Holocene climatic optimum (not bad) and Medieval Warm Period it seems.
• Jens Worsaae - Elizabeth interested
• Christopher Hawkes - sources available below.
• Beaker culture - looks pretty good already, B class

• Automated candidate list (might take a minute or two to generate) Mostly Egypt, Middle East

BM objects

• Mold gold cape
• Ringlemere Cup
• Rillaton Barrow & cup
• Oxborough Dirk
• Little Thetford flesh-hook - no pic (not on display)
• Dunaverney flesh-hook - short article, more pics coming
• Sintra Collar, not yet on display, BM entry

• See also the images at the Commons category for Room 51
• Other possibles mostly Egypt and Near-East (watch out for false positives)

Hoards

Lambourne Hoard; PDF article available below

• List_of_hoards_in_Britain#Bronze_Age_hoards 24 listed, 5 covered by articles
• List_of_hoards_in_Ireland#Bronze_Age_hoards 6 listed, none with articles

Sources

Books

• Bacon, Edward (ed), The Great Archaeologists, Secker & Warburg, various editions, 1978-2002
• Barrett, John C., Fragments From Antiquity: An Archaeology of Social Life in Britain, 2900-1200 BC, 1994, Blackwell, (ISBN: 8189617001)
• Bradley, Richard, The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland, 2007, Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521612705
• Cunliffe, Barry, 2001, Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples 8000 BC-AD 1500, OUP, ISBN: 0199240191

Online etc

• British Archaeology - quite a lot of stuff online
• Archaeology data service
• Time Team - RS?

• Wessex Archaeology reports

• CIS - ??
• Regional assessments - not much online?

Background

• Bronze Age Review, Vol 1

Articles

The following are available as PDFs. Please follow links as stated or contact User:Fae or User:Johnbod by e-mail:

More general

• Roberts, B.W. 2009. Subsistence, Structures and Craftworking: analysing economic dynamics in Britain 2500-800 BC. In M. Bartelheim and H. Stäuble (eds.) The Economic Foundations of the European Bronze Age, 65-84. Rahden/Westf, Leidorf. Abs:"The analysis of the economic dynamics underlying prehistoric communities in mainland Britain has in recent years been subsumed under debates centring on social and ideological interpretations. This paper analyses the changing trends in subsistence, construction and craft practices during the centuries spanning c. 2500-800 BC and explores their implications."
• Development of metallurgy in Eurasia, Roberts, B.W., Thornton, C.P. and Pigott, V.C. 2009. Development of Metallurgy in Eurasia. Antiquity 83, 112-122. Also on Academia.edu
• Sheridan, JA & Shortland, A 2004, "beads which have given rise to so much dogmatism, controversy and rash speculation”: faience in Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland", in IAG Shepherd & GJ Barclay (ed), Scotland in Ancient Europe, 263–79 Edinburgh: Soc Antiq Scotland
• Marc Vander Linden, "What linked the Bell Beakers in third millennium BC Europe?", Antiquity, Volume: 81 Number: 312 Page: 343–352

Objects

• C. F. C. Hawkes, "The Sintra Gold Collar", The British Museum Quarterly, 1971, Vol. 35, No. 1/4 (Spring, 1971), pp. ii+38-50, also JSTOR (see "people" below for Hawkes)
• Alison Sheridan, Mary Davis, Iain Clark and Hal Redvers-Jones, "Investigating jet and jet-like artefacts from prehistoric Scotland: the National Museums of Scotland project", Antiquity, Volume: 76 Number: 293 Page: 812–825
• Ringlemere and Rillaton Gold Cups: BM online and paper monograph
• Needham, Stuart; Sheridan Bowman (2005). "Flesh-Hooks, Technological Complexity and the Atlantic bronze Age Feasting Complex". European Journal of Archaeology. doi:10.1177/1461957105066936. Retrieved 3 July 2010. ABSTRACT ONLINE
• Sheridan Bowman and Stuart Needham (2007). The Dunaverney and Little Thetford Flesh-Hooks: History, Technology and Their Position within the Later Bronze Age Atlantic Zone Feasting Complex. The Antiquaries Journal, 87, pp 53-108 doi:10.1017/S0003581500000846 [1] ONLINE

Sites, hoards

• Dalwood, H, "An Assemblage of Bronze Artefacts from Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire", Oxford Journal of Archaeology, Volume 6, Issue 1, pages 29–42, March 1987
• Varndell, G, Coe, D and Hey, G, 2007 "The Crow Down hoard, Lambourn, West Berkshire", Oxford J Archaeol 26(3), 275–301
• Gristhorpe Man, Gristhorpe Man: an Early Bronze Age log-coffin burial scientifically defined, Melton, Montgomery et al., 2010, Antiquity, 2010, vol. 84, no325, pp. 796-815
• Needham S., Lawson A.J., Woodward A., Bush Barrow, "‘A Noble Group of Barrows’: Bush Barrow and the Normanton Down Early Bronze Age Cemetery Two Centuries On", The Antiquaries Journal (2010), 90: 1-39
• Britton, D. (1971) The Heathery Burn Cave revisited. British Museum Quarterly 35: 20-38 - excavated in the 19th century and yielding amazing material - much but not all in the BM
• J. D. Blundell and I. H. Longworth, "A Bronze Age Hoard from Portfield Farm, Whalley, Lancashire", British Museum Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1967), pp. 8-14 Also JSTOR - This hoard is going on loan to be displayed in Manchester Museum...

People

• Christopher Hawkes, "Archaeological retrospect 3" (autobiographical), 1982, Antiquity, Volume: 56 Number: 217 Page: 93–101, also obituary on Word, source?

Photo requests

Please make short requests here, referring to a longer talk page post if necessary

• Little Thetford flesh-hook - BM, short article but no photo. Not on display?
• Sintra Collar, BM, not yet on display

Articles worked on

• Gold lunula - added a little