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A: The Shang Dynasty in China (1523-1028 BC); B: Wine Vessel Lei (亞父方罍), Late Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), Shanghai Museum; photo by Qianse. Obr. 7. A-Dynastia Šang v Číne (1523-1028 BC); B-nádoba na víno Lei (亞父方罍), neskorá dynastia Šang (1600-1046 BC), Shanghai Museum; autor fotografie: Qianse. 

A: The Shang Dynasty in China (1523-1028 BC); B: Wine Vessel Lei (亞父方罍), Late Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), Shanghai Museum; photo by Qianse. Obr. 7. A-Dynastia Šang v Číne (1523-1028 BC); B-nádoba na víno Lei (亞父方罍), neskorá dynastia Šang (1600-1046 BC), Shanghai Museum; autor fotografie: Qianse. 

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Despite the fact that greater part of ingredients, such as dairy products or alcoholic drinks, were known already in the Neolithic, food technology of the Bronze Age changed significantly. This paper aims to investigate prehistoric dietary habits and comment on the stable isotope values (13C/15N) of human/faunal remains from several large Bronze Ag...

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... encounter a specialized vocabulary of ritual procedures, many interpreted as various forms of butchering (cleaving, splitting, decapitating). There are enumerations of quantities of cult: the numbers of cattle, sheep, or humans, for example (Yuan-Flad 2005). Archaeological evidence shows an array of specific rites, such as burning, drowning rites and so on. The most common treatment of human victims was decapitation with the corpse face down. During royal funeral, servants or concubines interred in their own coffins are quite different from humans slaughtered and buried like animals on a large scale in mass graves. The context for these offerings, feeding the ancestral spirits, is explicitly detailed by oracle-bone inscriptions. Bronze vessels (ding) were used during the Shang period in ancestral rituals. Ancestors, it was believed, could intercede on behalf of the living, provided they were honoured and respected. The bronze vessels were kept in ancestral halls and used during a variety of feasts and banquets. Most bronze vessels were used to heat or cool a millet-based wine. Early bronze vessels, including the jue, gu, and ding, were based on Neolithic pottery prototypes ( Bao-Ping et al. 2008). But as bronze technology improved, vessels took on shapes and decorative schemes that were unique to the medium. A common Shang decorative motif was the taotie (Fig. 7b). Other zoomorphic designs con- sisted of various animal parts flowing into one another. In the following period, this imagery had begun to turn into purely abstract ...
Context 2
... Bronze Age in China is linked to the period between about 2000 till 771 BC, however it is very often narrowed down to the Xia (2070-1600 BC) and Shang Dynasties (1600-1046 BC). Many legends, histories and folk tales is associated with the first rulers of dynastic China. Archaeological investigation has confirmed much of the legendary history of the dynasty following the Xia, the Shang, but the existence of Xia itself is still debated (Bagley 1999, 123-231). Today, Chinese scholars generally identify Xia with the Erlitou culture (1900-1500 BC), but debate continues on whether Erlitou represents an early stage of the Shang dynasty, or whether it is entirely unique (Guo et al. 2000;Thorp 2005, 21-61). The Erlitou culture is now recognized at more than 100 sites spread across Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, and Shaanxi. The Western Henan type has been identified at more than sixty sites. We encounter first archaeological evidence of walled palaces (walled internal cities), that served as political centre and later became well-recognizable feature of Chinese city planning and architecture (Ma 2009, 65-71). The range of metal items is relatively limited and specific. We encounter small knives, bells (ling), plaques with turquoise inlay, weapon and bronze vessels. Studies of the alloys used at Erlitou suggest that tin and lead were mixed with copper in ways suited to the function of the objects (Thorp 2005, 40). Thus, a weapon might have a high tin content for hardness. Some specimens are pure copper, while others are zinc-copper or tin-copper alloy. The ternary alloy (copper with tin and lead) that characterized much Shang bronze casting appears only in period IV at Erlitou site. Several dagger blades (ge) were also found. While the bronze ge dagger-axe became the mainstay of Bronze Age warriors in China, these examples may have been carried instead as regalia ( Bao et al. 2016). Archaeological evidence regarding the Shang Dynasty comes mainly from excavations at Zhengzhou and Anyang, both in Henan province. Zhengzhou assigned to the period 1500-1300 BC and Anyang (ancient Yinxu) to the period of roughly 1200 to 1050 BC (Fig. ...

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... Representatives of East-Manych Catacomb culture built their own kurgans, were expert bronze smiths, had established settlements, and manufactured animal-driven wheeled wagons (Anthony, 2010). They were able to travel longer distances compared to the Yamnaya and had a more diverse diet (Gerling, 2015;Pokutta, 2017;Shishlina et al., 2014;Ventresca Miller et al., 2014). Analysis of the artifacts from Catacomb burials also indicates material exchanges between the representatives of Catacomb culture and Caucasus agriculturalists (Andreeva, 2014;Kohl, 2007;Shishlina, 1997). ...
Article
After discovering the first kurgans in the steppes, the archaeologists were faced with the need to determine the social status of buried persons and the relationship between people buried within the same necropolis. Archaeology has developed its methods and criteria for assessing the social status of buried persons, such as the size of the burial kurgans, the location of burials in the center or on the periphery of the kurgan, the wealth of implements, etc. With the introduction of paleogenetic methods into archeology, new opportunities for research in this direction are opening up. The analysis of ancient DNA is a tool that allows you not to assume but to establish consanguinity. This study presents the archaeological and molecular analysis of human remains from the East-Manych variant of the Catacomb culture. Catacomb culture dominated eastern Ukraine and southern Russia in the 3rd millennium BCE. The skeletons were recovered from kurgans of the Ergeninskii kurgan group in Kalmykia (Russia) that were radiocarbon dated the Bronze Age (25th–23rd century BCE). Y-chromosome STR analysis revealed that both individuals belonged to haplogroup R1b. This paternal lineage appears at high frequency in central, western, and northern Europe, and commonly appears among the Yamnaya. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA variation revealed the Catacomb males to belong to haplogroups H and N, respectively, both of which also appeared in the Yamnaya. These genetic data suggest a possible relationship between the Catacomb and Yamnaya cultures and contribute to our understanding of the cultural and historical processes occurring in the steppes of Eastern Europe during the Bronze Age.
... The interest in survival and access to adequate resources is also salient for food safety, another copied goal that is also a peak in the landscape of survived goals. While the benefits derived from achieving this goal may have roots predating civilization in the origins of cooking (Wrangham, 2009), this goal becomes particularly noticeable in both the Bronze Age (Pokutta, 2017) and antiquity, observed in Ancient Egypt, China, and Rome (Miller, 1992), surviving both the Dark and Medieval ages in England (Hutt, 1985) and becoming increasingly prominent throughout the developed world towards the end of the 20th century (Weinroth, Belk, & Belk, 2018). Although science rather than law may be a more salient cause of progress made in food safety over the last two millennia (Hutt, 1985), political and economic variables may come to play an increasing role in food safety going forward (Miller, 1992) while institutional variables already have (Millstone & Zwanenberg, 2002). ...
Article
The completion of initiatives designed to address wicked problems often requires the participation of a variety of actors spanning multiple generations of both individuals and organizations. Until now, frameworks for addressing problems and articulating the sustainability of goals related to overcoming them have yet to adequately account for the timespans required for addressing such problems; particularly as far as the lifecycle of organizations is shorter than such timespans. Here, a framework is presented to articulate the survival of goals to the point of initiative completion under conditions in which it is not assumed that any individual organization or subunit exists long enough to fulfill the requirements for completing such initiatives.
... Donations marked the exceptional aspect of the feast (Wilk 2009), but played a fundamental political role in preventing social unrest and upheaval caused by the limited access to food that characterized the everyday condition lived by common people in the early cities (Scott 2017). Despite the complex foodscape that distinguished Bronze Age civilizations (Pokutta 2017), bread and fermented beverages were the most common goods donated in these occasions, thanks to their availability, convenience, and relatively long shelf life. In particular, in Rome, since the late republican period, food donation had the most significant role, both as a political tool used by ruling elites to appease the masses but also as a systemic strategy to counter the overall fragility of the urban food system (Stambaugh 1988) which saw large part of the population with scarce access to food from the markets (Holleran 2012) and very limited possibility of cooking (Kaufman 2006). ...
... Donations marked the exceptional aspect of the feast (Wilk 2009), but played a fundamental political role in preventing social unrest and upheaval caused by the limited access to food that characterized the everyday condition lived by common people in the early cities (Scott 2017). Despite the complex foodscape that distinguished Bronze Age civilizations (Pokutta 2017), bread and fermented beverages were the most common goods donated in these occasions, thanks to their availability, convenience, and relatively long shelf life. In particular, in Rome, since the late republican period, food donation had the most significant role, both as a political tool used by ruling elites to appease the masses but also as a systemic strategy to counter the overall fragility of the urban food system (Stambaugh 1988) which saw large part of the population with scarce access to food from the markets (Holleran 2012) and very limited possibility of cooking (Kaufman 2006). ...
... Parasite species in Mediterranean populations during the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman and medieval periods, however, were dominated by whipworm and roundworm (geohelminths), with the parasite species requiring animals to complete their life cycles becoming increasingly rare (Mitchell 2015b(Mitchell , 2017bWilliams et al. 2017;Anastasiou et al. 2018;Ledger et al. 2018). This might be explained by a change in lifestyle from the Neolithic mixed subsistence pattern of farming coupled with the hunting of wild animals and the gathering of wild produce, to later subsistence that was heavily reliant upon farming cereals, eating fruit and herding domesticated animals, such as sheep and goats (Petroutsa & Manolis 2010;Pokutta 2017). We should also consider the possibility that preservation conditions in the Mediterranean region may contribute to the apparent reduction of parasite species diversity over time. ...
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The early village at Çatalhöyük (7100–6150 BC) provides important evidence for the Neolithic and Chalcolithic people of central Anatolia. This article reports on the use of lipid biomarker analysis to identify human coprolites from midden deposits, and microscopy to analyse these coprolites and soil samples from human burials. Whipworm (Trichuris trichiura) eggs are identified in two coprolites, but the pelvic soil samples are negative for parasites. Çatalhöyük is one of the earliest Eurasian sites to undergo palaeoparasitological analysis to date. The results inform how intestinal parasitic infection changed as humans modified their subsistence strategies from hunting and gathering to settled farming.
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This research explores the historical and cultural impact of Oracle Bone Inscriptions (OBIs) on the development of Chinese Calligraphy, employing a systematic literature review approach. Focusing on the period from the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1050 BCE) to contemporary Chinese Script, the study uncovers the contributions of OBIs to the evolution of the Chinese writing system, character configurations, and linguistic structures during the Shang dynasty. Through an extensive review of primary sourced documents, specifically oracle-bone inscriptions from the late Shang dynasty, and secondary scholarly literature, the research elucidates traditional practices and the origin of the Chinese writing system. The evolution of OBIs into various script forms, including Bronze Inscriptions, Seal Script, Official Script, and Regular Script, reflects linguistic transformation and cultural refinement. This study sheds light on the intricate relationship between OBIs and Chinese Calligraphy, providing insights into how these ancient markings influenced the evolution of calligraphic art. The research illuminates intriguing parallels between Oracle Bone Inscription words, exemplified by "Dingxi" for divination, and their evolved counterparts in Chinese calligraphy. Notably, the character "羊" for sheep in oracle bones undergoes a fascinating evolution in calligraphy, showcasing the dynamic transformation of visual symbols over millennia. By detailing the selection criteria and the systematic approach employed in the literature review, the research enhances transparency and replicability, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the enduring cultural and aesthetic influence of Oracle Bone Inscriptions on the calligraphy tradition.
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The article provides a critical analysis of the most common clichés in archeologists’ notions about the nomads of the Eurasian steppes and the nomadic way of life. When interpreting archaeological monuments, scholars are keen on romantic, biased perception of nomadic lifestyle, focusing on certain “exotic” features. Among them is the postulate of a mound as a sure sign of nomadic life. The author presents the facts when barrows were constructed by sedentary population, not only in the steppes, but also in other landscape zones. Attention is drawn to the misconception of a consistent-joint grazing of livestock in extreme conditions as a regular phenomenon in the winter period. In the Eurasia steppe zone, highly specialized nomadism could exist only if there was a developed system of sedentariness centers that appeared only in the early Iron Age. Owing to this, in the Bronze Age the steppe population could have only a complex subsistence economy and sedentary lifestyle, as confirmed in recent years by the results of isotope analyses. The peasant colonization of Russia’s South steppes in the pre-industrial era is considered by the author as a vivid example of the fact that the natural and climatic conditions of the steppe make complex pastoral and agricultural economy and sedentary lifestyle possible. © 2019 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.
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The settlement of Chultukov Log-9 of the Xiongnu-Xianbei-Rouran period (or Hunno-Sarmatian times) is currently one of the better studied sites of the Maima culture, which makes it one of the most important sources for researching the Hunnic period settlement in the Upper Altai. In 2012-2016 an archaeological excavation was conducted on the site. Forty two archaelogical features, included hearths, huts, pits and post-holes were discovered. Although only a relatively small part of the site has been explored (approx. 220 m2 out of about 5000 m2), this area alone yielded 2750 artefacts and 4790 animal bones. Of particular importance is undoubtedly the collection of modified/worked bone objects, surely ranking among the most important sources for studies on this branch of craftsmanship in Southern Siberia. The field research was supplemented with laboratory analyses (paleobotanical, isotopic, radiocarbon dating).