Middle Bronze Age
| Central European Bronze Age | |
| late bronze age | |
| Ha B2 / 3 | 950–800 BC Chr. |
| Ha B1 | 1050-950 BC Chr. |
| Ha A2 | 1100-1050 BC Chr. |
| Ha A1 | 1200-1100 BC Chr. |
| Bz D | 1300-1200 BC Chr. |
| middle bronze age | |
| Bz C2 | 1400-1300 BC Chr. |
| Bz C1 | 1500-1400 BC Chr. |
| Bz B | 1600-1500 BC Chr. |
| early bronze age | |
| Bz A2 | 2000–1600 BC Chr. |
| Bz A1 | 2200-2000 BC Chr. |
The term Middle Bronze Age or fachsprachlich shortly Middle Bronze is contrary to the terms Early and Late Bronze Age indicate that significant cuts and related periods, used as a mere phase between these two eras. The Middle Bronze Age begins in the ancient Orient and on the Greek mainland as well as on Crete around 2000 BC. Around 1600 BC. To end, while in Hungary it denotes the epoch of the "tell settlements", ie the large settlement mounds. There it accordingly ranges from 1800 to 1500 BC. In Central Europe, however, it lasted from around 1600 or 1550 BC in absolute chronological terms . BC to 1300 BC Because of the characteristic barrows in this region one speaks of "barrow culture". This is very different in Denmark and Scandinavia , where the Bronze Age is divided into five sections, and the term Middle Bronze Age denotes the middle of the five sections, which runs from around 1300 to 1000 BC. Lasted. The later onset of the Middle Bronze Age is definitely an indicator of a cultural gradient. These different time determinations often lead to confusion, for example when goods from the area of the Mycenaean culture , which is assigned to the Late Helladic , i.e. the Late Bronze Age, reach Western or Central Europe, where they meet Middle Bronze Age cultures.
Research history
The zone north of the Alps
In German-language research, the “zone north of the Alps” is commonly referred to as the geographical area between the northern edge of the Alps and the low mountain ranges. This zone includes today's federal states of Bavaria , Baden-Württemberg , Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as Moravia , Bohemia , Lower and Upper Austria, as well as northern Switzerland and Alsace .
Mainly for reasons of the history of research, this room still plays a key role in research into the Middle Bronze Age. As early as the years 1580 and 1690 there are documented burial mound investigations in southwest and southern Germany. At the beginning of the 20th century, the basis for the chronological structure of this period in Central Europe was developed here. However, research in southern Germany initially relied on methods and models developed in northern Germany and Scandinavia.
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen 's three-period system , established around 1830, which divides the entire prehistory into the Stone Age , Bronze Age and Iron Age , formed the basis for the more extensive typological method developed by Oscar Montelius and Hans Hildebrand between 1870 and 1880 . It consists of a formal analysis based on style criticism and found association in closed finds, with the main focus on the further development of the formal material. From then on, it became indispensable for the creation of relatively chronological subdivisions of the regional finds.
In 1902, using the typological method, Paul Reinecke divided the finds from the Middle Bronze Age in the zone north of the Alps into Bronze Age levels B and C. Due to the prevailing burial custom, he initially called this period of time "South Germany's burial mound bronze age", but changed this name in 1905 to "South German bronze grave age", which would also be the geographical focus of the research.
Hort and grave finds were available to Reinecke for his classification into the Bronze Age B, C1 and C2 levels. Most researchers refer to Reinecke's chronology system - even today - although they had to modify its classification, in some cases greatly, due to the regionally different form spectra.
Above all, Friedrich Holste should be mentioned here , who worked in the 1930s. Unlike Reinecke, his level B comprises two phases, while he did not subdivide level C any further. Holste's chronology is also largely based on grave finds. The holdings of his leading cemeteries, however, only marginally coincide due to the sparse equipment and many variants. He also divided the found material into regional groups, namely Danubian-Sudetic, South Bavarian, Upper Palatinate, Bohemian, Württemberg, Alsatian, Middle Rhine and East Hessian, and finally the Lüneburg group was added.
The Austrian Kurt Willvonseder conducted research in Holste's time and also used Reinecke's chronology. In some cases, however, there are considerable differences between Bavarian and Austrian finds, although the Austrian barrows are no younger than the southern German ones. Unlike his two colleagues, however, he was also able to fall back on settlement finds and compile find statistics that made it easier for him to make comparisons.
After the Second World War , there was extensive stagnation in research from the Middle Bronze Age. Due to the extensive work of Reinecke, Holste and others, the cultural forms of expression of the Middle Bronze Age are believed to have long been well known in essential features. They are also considered to be of little historical importance.
In the 1960s, Bernhard Hänsel transferred Reinecke's system to Slovakia and the Carpathian Basin . His approach is criticized by some researchers because they seem to have adopted Reinecke's chronological system as too unreflective.
In addition to what has already been mentioned, the following have also earned further insights in the Middle Bronze Age research: Rolf Hachmann , Walter Torbrügge , Ludwig Lindenschmidt the Elder . Ä. , August von Cohausen , Wolf Kubach , Friedrich Laux .
The Nordic Circle
North of the "zone north of the Alps" we speak of the "Nordic Group" or the Nordic Bronze Age , the southern Scandinavia, Schleswig-Holstein , parts of Lower Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the Netherlands , northern Poland and the Baltic states includes .
Based on Thomsen's three-period system from 1836, Worsaae developed a more extensive relative chronology of the Nordic Bronze Age in the mid-1850s . In 1885, the Swede Oscar Montelius , using the typological method he founded, devised the structure of the Nordic Bronze Age in six periods. Sophus Müller modified this structure for Denmark in the following years .
In the north, the Central European Middle Bronze Age corresponds chronologically to the Older Bronze Age (Period II according to Oscar Montelius), while the Nordic Middle Bronze Age (Period III according to Oscar Montelius) falls largely at the beginning of the Central European "Late Bronze Age" . In addition, the various stage names for the Nordic Bronze Age in North German and Scandinavian research are sometimes linked with different meanings. The synchronization of the Nordic with the Central European chronology is quite reliable in its rough outline, but the details are still unclear.
The Nordic Bronze Age is also a "tumulus culture" with burial customs similar to those in the "zone north of the Alps", to which there were sometimes close cultural ties. However, German-language research usually uses the term “barrow culture” much more narrowly, namely exclusively to designate the Middle Bronze Age cultural groups between western Hungary and eastern France. This terminological convention is only partly due to differences in archaeological finds, but partly to the development of research history.
Similar to Reinecke's chronology system, Montelius' division of periods was and is modified and is still valid today. However, the definition of the content of the levels has been changed significantly by recent research.
Chronology systems
The fact that different chronological structuring approaches exist side by side is mainly due to the fact that they are partly based on different excerpts (either regional or according to different archaeological types of finds, e.g. graves, hoards, settlements) of the archaeological source material, the development of which mostly not completely in sync. It is therefore difficult to undertake a more detailed chronological breakdown of the Middle Bronze Age, which is equally valid in different regions and for different types of finds.
This problem is well illustrated by the discovery of the famous Nebra sky disc . The sky disk was most likely used by the people of the Aunjetitz culture for a relatively long period of time during the Early Bronze Age in connection with astronomical observations. For this reason, it is generally (and in its regional context quite rightly) assigned to the Early Bronze Age. Some of the objects found together with the sky disc, especially the two bronze swords, which, according to their typological characteristics, are likely to come from the "zone north of the Alps" between western Hungary and southern Germany, already belong to level Bz B according to the chronological criteria of their original area of origin According to the criteria of the terminology as it is used in archaeological research in southern Germany and neighboring regions, the equally justified statement can be made that the sky disc was only buried in the early Middle Bronze Age . The burial of the sky disk is probably related to the social upheavals that took place at the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age, and as a result of which the role of such ritual objects may have changed.
The costumes and cultures of the Middle Bronze Age in Central and Western Europe
In the Middle Bronze Age, there was a diversification into several regional groups, which can be differentiated based on their typical finds. In Germany, the river systems of the Danube , Rhine , Weser , Elbe and Oder provide the guidelines on which the cultural similarities and connections between these groups are based. The south of Germany has connections to the Alpine countries and to Northern Italy, to Bohemia, Moravia, Austria and Hungary. Western Germany has connections with France, Belgium and Holland, even as far as the British Isles. East Germany is closely linked to Poland.
In the north, there are connections to Denmark and southern Sweden between Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg.
The south of Germany is characterized by various regional groups up to the northern edge of the low mountain range, which are mainly differentiated on the basis of different grave goods. These are the Southern Bavarian and Alb Group (Swabia), the Hagenauer Group (Alsace), then the Rhein-Main Group and the Upper Palatinate Group, and finally the Fulda-Werra Group (Northern Hesse) and the West or. South Bohemian Group.
A few other cultural groups can be defined between the northern edge of the low mountain range and the Nordic district, which no longer belong to the southern German burial mound culture in the narrower sense, but have equally pronounced connections to this as well as to the Nordic district, namely the Emsland-Oldenburg and the Lüneburg groups , then the Mecklenburg and the Vorlausitzer group.
Outside the area outlined by the distribution area of these groups, groups that can be attributed to the tumulus culture are mainly represented in the province of Salzburg , Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Styria and Burgenland . In the eastern part of Austria, in the older Middle Bronze Age from around 1600 to 1500 BC Chr. South of the Danube the type Mistelbach-Regelsbrunn. At that time, the Věteřov culture existed north of the Danube in northern Lower Austria .
The tumulus culture, which replaced the Aare-Rhône group of the Rhône culture and the Arbon culture , was also represented in western Switzerland and the Swiss Central Plateau. In large parts of the canton of Graubünden it was held from 1600-1300 / 1200 BC. The Middle Bronze Age inner-Alpine Bronze Age culture.
In the Carpathian Basin , numerous cultural groups can be distinguished that have more or less close ties to the southern German burial mound culture. These include the Wietenberg, Bubovac, Glasinac, Tápe, Otomani, Vatya and Piliny groups as well as the Pannonian groups and the Carpathian burial mound culture in the Slovakian Danube Valley.
In contrast, the Forró depot group and the Koszider depot group in Hungary are not defined on the basis of grave finds, but of hoard finds.
The Hagenauer Group, which is widespread in Alsace, belongs entirely to the cultural association of the tumulus culture due to its characteristic finds. In addition, typological connections to Burgundy (to the west) can be developed. Furthermore, a distinction can be made between the finds of southern France, the area of the lower and middle Loire and Brittany .
There are different cultural groups on the British Isles, which are mostly defined by settlement materials and hoard finds due to the extensive lack of Middle Bronze Age graves in Western Europe. The Deverel-Rimbury culture can be found in Great Britain (from approx. 1500 BC). Chronological phases of the Middle Bronze Age, which are mainly defined on the basis of typical bronze objects, are the Acton Park stage (1600–1400) and the subsequent Taunton stage (1400–1200). In Ireland this corresponds roughly to the Killymaddy (1500-1350) level.
In Europe there were many other regional groups and cultural phenomena in the Middle Bronze Age, which were characterized by their own set of forms. It is clear that no group developed completely without external influences and that there were strong connections between certain areas (e.g. trade and gift traffic), which today are more or less well determined by typological comparisons, but also partly with scientific methods can.
Burial customs and forms of grave
During the Middle Bronze Age, a characteristic grave shape dominated Central and Western Europe and the Carpathian Basin : the tumulus (also known as the tumulus). The barrows could be surrounded by circular, sometimes concentric or keyhole trenches, posts or walls; In the hills there could be built-in elements made of stone or wood. The fixtures mostly surrounded the dead or the coffin or urn .
For this reason, the term "tumulus culture" or "tumulus bronze age" is sometimes used synonymously with the term Middle Bronze Age in German-language research.
In the barrows of the Middle Bronze Age, people were buried in two different ways. There were body and cremation burials , and in most regions of Central Europe, body burials clearly predominated at this time.
In the case of body burials, the body was either placed directly on the ground or in a grave pit, after which the burial mound was heaped up. Most of the time the bodies were not buried in the coffin, and the above-mentioned fixtures were only optional components of the burial mounds.
There were several options for cremation burials. Either the dead were cremated on a separate cremation platform (sometimes with additions), or directly at the intended burial site. The ashes and the remains of the bones were either placed in urns or containers made of organic material (e.g. leather), or simply left on the ground. Then the burial mound was raised.
Sometimes there are also double or multiple burials in one burial mound. In some regions, later burials were regularly sunk in older burial mounds, and the mound was enlarged in part with subsequent embankments. Such findings give archaeologists valuable information about the chronological sequence of burials in a burial mound.
The grave goods were different for men and women. Women were usually given two or more needles and jewelry in the area of the Central European barrow culture; Men usually only had one needle in their grave, but were often buried with weapons.
“After the Middle Bronze Age ... with body burials in barrows, there has been a radical change in the shape of the grave and burial custom. The burial mound people have to give way to the urn field people. "
Settlements
Little can be said about the settlements of the Middle Bronze Age, as only relatively few traces of settlement are known from this time and even fewer of them have been archaeologically researched. It is noticeable, however, that the known settlements are mostly located on heights or mountain plateaus ( hilltop settlements ). The settlements were often fortified - in the Balkans and Carpathian Basins these settlements are e.g. Sometimes referred to as " tell settlements " because they have grown up as a sequence of layers of rubble and leveling through human activity. Most of the settlements were either in the middle of fertile or at least arable land. Caves were also increasingly visited in some regions during the Middle Bronze Age.
Only the Middle Bronze Age settlement structure in Northern Italy has been relatively well researched. The settlements of the Terramare culture consisted of rectangular houses and landscaped streets and were very densely built up.
Most of the settlements of the Middle Bronze Age in Central Europe probably consisted of only a few houses with relatively few inhabitants and looked more like small hamlets; Individual farmsteads with several outbuildings are also very likely (especially in the Nordic district). It is very likely that settlements that existed at the same time were only a few kilometers apart.
Social conditions
In contrast to the conditions of the Early Bronze Age in some regions of Central and Western Europe, there is surprisingly little evidence of a hierarchical structure in society for the Middle Bronze Age; From the known archaeological material hardly anything can be deduced about the structure of society.
In the few known settlements it has so far been impossible to identify any “princely seats” or the like based on the house floor plans, which would allow conclusions to be drawn about a socially prominent position. The found material of the settlements is quite monotonous and suggests a largely egalitarian society.
The grave goods also indicate a more egalitarian social structure and an equal treatment of men and women. The women are just as richly endowed as the men and are not underrepresented on the burial grounds. This allows certain conclusions to be drawn about the social order, but from this alone it is not possible to develop a valid social concept, because society could also have expressed its hierarchical structure in a way that has so far been "invisible" to archaeologists.
Occasionally there are “ceremonial graves” in the grave fields, especially in the later periods of the Middle Bronze Age, but more richly furnished “ceremonial graves” that might indicate “tribal leaders” or local “princes”. Men with a rich set of weapons or women with a lot of or special jewelry (e.g. tiaras in Pitten , Lower Austria). However, these graves are so rare that one must assume that the hierarchy was not quite as pronounced as in some regions during the Early Bronze Age.
However, another phenomenon can be observed: multiple and subsequent burials, which can most likely be interpreted as burials of families or clans under one burial mound. In many burial mounds there are other graves in addition to the original burial, which were subsequently introduced there or were planned for the first burial. This suggests that families or at least “spouses” were buried together under a burial mound. Here one can see the growing importance of family structures, which may have counteracted a pronounced hierarchization in society.
See also
- Bronze Age fortification near Bernstorf (approx. 1675–1510 BC)
literature
Standard works of older research
- Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae : Denmark's prehistoric times illuminated by ancient objects and burial mounds. Copenhagen 1844. ( digitized )
- John Evans : The Ancient Bronze Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain and Ireland. London 1881.
- József Hampel : The Antiquities of the Bronze Age in Hungary , Budapest 1886.
- Julius Naue : The Bronze Age in Upper Bavaria. Results of excavations and investigations of barrows from the Bronze Age. Munich 1894.
- Paul Reinecke : On the chronology of the second half of the bronze age in southern and northern Germany , in: correspondence sheet of the Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory 33 (1902) 17 ff.
- Paul Reinecke: On the chronological structure of the South German Bronze Age. Germania 8, 1924. pp. 43-44.
- Gustav Behrens : Bronze Age Southern Germany , in: Schumacher: Status and tasks of Bronze Age research in Germany Ber. RGK 10, 1917. p. 7 ff.
- Vere Gordon Childe : The Danube in Prehistory. Oxford 1929.
- Kurt Willvonseder : The Middle Bronze Age in Austria. Books on Prehistory and Early History 3, Vienna 1937.
- Friedrich Holste : The Bronze Age in South and West Germany , manual of the prehistory of Germany 1. Berlin 1953.
- Margarita Primas: Bronze Age between Elbe and Po: Structural change in Central Europe 2200–800 BC Chr. Habelt, Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-7749-3543-3 .
Older literature
- Ekkehard Aner, Karl Kersten : The finds of the older Bronze Age of the Nordic region in Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony. Copenhagen / Neumünster 1973.
- Bernhard Hansel : Contributions to the chronology of the middle Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin. Contributions to the prehistoric and early historical archeology of the Mediterranean cultural area 7. Bonn 1968.
- Anthony F. Harding: European Societies in the Bronze Age. Cambridge 2000.
- Albrecht Jockenhövel : Space and Time - Structure of the Bronze Age. In: Bronze Age in Germany. Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-8062-1110-8 , pp. 11-14.
- Friedrich Laux : The Bronze Age in the Lüneburg Heath. Hildesheim 1971.
- Hermann Müller-Karpe : Handbook of Prehistory. Volume 4, Bronze Age. Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-07941-5 .
- Peter Schauer : The swords in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland I. prehist. Bronzefunde IV, 2nd Munich 1971, ISBN 3-406-00750-3 .
- Walter Torbrügge : On the transition from the early to the middle Bronze Age in southern Germany. Arch. Korrbl. 9, 1979. pp. 23-34.
- Walter Torbrügge: The Bronze Age in Bavaria - State of the research on the relative chronology. In: Ber. RGK 40, 1959. pp. 1-57.
- Ulrike Wels-Weyrauch : Middle Bronze Age women's costumes in southern Germany, relations with the Hagenau group. In: Dynamique du Bronze moyen en Europe occidentale. Actes du 113éme congrès national des sociétés savantes, Strasbourg 1988, Commission de Prè- et Protohistoire. Paris 1989. pp. 117-134.
- Bert Wiegel: Traditional costume circles in the southern tumulus area. Studies on the addition custom of the Middle Bronze Age with special consideration of research-historical aspects. Espelkamp 1994.
further reading
- Kathrin Ebner: The Middle Bronze Age in South Thuringia. Investigations into the funeral rite. Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, 2009.
- Bernhard Sicherheitsl: Studies on Middle Bronze Age armament in the Czech Republic, northern Lower Austria and southwestern Slovakia. Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-7749-3234-4 .
- Stephanie Hoffmann: The origin and development of the Middle Bronze Age in the western low mountain range. Bonn 2004. online
Web links
supporting documents
- ^ Siegmar von Schnurbein : (Ed.): Atlas of the prehistory. Europe from the first humans to the birth of Christ. 2nd, improved edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 2010, p. 127.
- ^ Gisela Graichen, Alexander Hesse: The Bernsteinstrasse. Hidden trade routes between the Baltic Sea and the Nile , Rowohlt, 2012.