This paper sets out to re-evaluate one of the chief processes leading towards culture change in prehistory. Widespread diffusion has for too long been the guiding principle in European prehistory; its validity is questioned here. The study of trade (defined in the first instance as the exchange or traffic of materials), and specifically the scientific analysis of raw materials, suggests that the importance of migration and of diffusion in European prehistory have been exaggerated. Change has often been due rather to the operation of local factors. The quantitative study of economic systems, and especially trading systems, for an understanding of the culture process at work is advocated. It is exemplified by the obsidian trade in the Near East in the 7th and 6th millennia B. C. Finally, an attempt is made to explain the formation of urban communities (i.e., of small townships) in the Aegean in the 3rd millennium B. C. as the result of local cultural processes, without significant outside influence. The chi...

Trade and Culture Process in European Prehistory

Part I of this study examines the practical and symbolic connotations according the term "frontier" over time. Opening with its limited military-territorial usage in colonial North America, I consider this within the context of the theories of Frederick Jackson Turner, the later impact of those theories, and the redefinitions proposed by his later critics and defenders. In this process a fortified zone of cross-border conflict became a leading edge of agricultural settlement and, later still, an often distant border region. Within this last, pioneer-frontiersmen are usually prominent. Meanwhile the material, intellectual, spiritual and other cultural values of an established centre or metropolis are first asserted in often primitive and hostile conditions, only to later rebound to interact with the home metropolis. In Part III investigate the extent to which the Turner and postTurner concepts are applicable to the activities carried out on the oceans that cover some 70 percent of Earth's surface. Apart from the territorial frontier nature of many coastlines, I propose there is a more general "Oceanic Frontier" on which mariner-frontiersmen are the equivalents of their traditional counterparts on land. This Oceanic Frontier comprise three sub-frontiers: the coastline on land; the maritime (or adjacent) coastal waters; and the distant high seas or "oceanic" frontier per se. All exist in a symbiotic relationship that has a unique impact on the mariner-frontiersmen who exploit them, as well as on the coastal dwellers who support them. Finally, I suggest this results in essential cultural differences between inhabitants of such maritime frontiers and those of the traditionally agricultural, often initially peasant, cultures of the continental interiors.

Frontiers, oceans and coastal cultures : a preliminary reconnaissance

In the mountain, coastal, and river‐valley ecologic niches of the Eastern Mediterranean, united by sea trade and with productivity of grain and olives and animals set by winter rains and summer dryness, population density depends on health and food as determining, first, adult female longevity (i.e. time for fecundity) and, second, survival rates of infants and children. Rapid density increases in Neolithic, Middle‐Late Bronze Age, Classic (up over 35 per km.2) and Modern periods occur apparently with balance or decline of malaria and slight connection to change of sea level and climate. The major drop in population to 10 per km.2, in Roman to Moslem times, lags behind the causal man‐produced ecologic destruction (deforestation, erosion, soil‐exhaustion). Site‐counts and census allow density estimates and study of skeletons and pubic symphyses allow estimates of longevity, fecundity and survival.

Ecology and population in the Eastern Mediterranean

The first advanced Bronze Age civilization of Europe was established by the Minoans about 5,000 years before present. Since Sir Arthur Evans exposed the Minoan civic centre of Knossos, archaeologists have speculated on the origin of the founders of the civilization. Evans proposed a North African origin; Cycladic, Balkan, Anatolian and Middle Eastern origins have also been proposed. Here we address the question of the origin of the Minoans by analysing mitochondrial DNA from Minoan osseous remains from a cave ossuary in the Lassithi plateau of Crete dated 4,400-3,700 years before present. Shared haplotypes, principal component and pairwise distance analyses refute the Evans North African hypothesis. Minoans show the strongest relationships with Neolithic and modern European populations and with the modern inhabitants of the Lassithi plateau. Our data are compatible with the hypothesis of an autochthonous development of the Minoan civilization by the descendants of the Neolithic settlers of the island.

/pdf/a-european-population-in-minoan-bronze-age-crete-2cx1hclspg.pdf

A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete

textBringing down the Hittite empire and dealing Egypt a 
blow from which it never recovered, the Sea Peoples’ episode 
at the end of the Bronze Age was crucial for a shift of 
the economic and political centre of gravity of the Mediterranean 
world away from the Levant and towards Greece, 
Africa Minor, and Italy. Soon this shift was to give rise to 
the splendors of archaic and classical Greece developing 
into Hellenism, Carthage, Etruscan civilization, Rome, the 
Roman empire, early Christianity, and, in the long run, the 
emergence the modern western European civilization, 
dominated by speakers of Indo-European languages, but 
greatly influenced by a Levantine religion (Judaism). For 
better or worse, the Sea Peoples’ episode was one of the 
few major turning points in world history, comparable to 
the period of the great migrations which led to the collapse 
of the Roman empire, or the rise and early spread of Islam.

/pdf/the-ethnicity-of-the-sea-peoples-2h88joae83.pdf

The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples

DEFINITION OF THE INQUIRY The Bronze Age in lands bordering the Aegean Sea was a period of roughly two millennia that followed the age of Neolithic cultures. The name is not perfectly accurate; men did begin to use metals more or less systematically in this time, but chief among them at the outset was natural copper, not yet deliberately alloyed with tin. None the less the phrase has useful connotations, reflecting the Greek memory of an older γeνος μeροπων ανθρωπων χαλκeιον, and it is firmly established. The terms Chalcolithic and Copper Age, logical and correct in themselves, are now best reserved for Anatolia and other areas where their meanings have won acceptance. As a source of confusion the name of the metal is of minor consequence. More perplexing are the formidable quantities of material remains that have been gathered in three generations of archaeological research, for they beckon the student of this area to conclusions more positive than are in fact justified. Since written records are lacking in Greece during the early period with which we are here concerned, one must rely upon stratification and comparison of objects at the known sites in order to establish a relative chronology. An approach to absolute dates may be made through proven relationships with Egypt and Mesopotamia, but these are few in number and less exact than one is often led to suppose. New and promising methods of dating, including particularly the process of radiocarbon (C–14) analysis, are still in experimental stages and the results they yield must be regarded objectively.

Greece, Crete, and the Aegean Islands in the early bronze age

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Greece, Crete, and the Aegean Islands in the early bronze age