Hoards from the European Bronze and Iron Ages

Hoards are among the most enigmatic of archaeological finds. The term ‘hoard’ itself has been applied to different assemblages across space and time, from the Stone Age into the modern era, with an inventory that typically includes artefacts made of valuable raw materials, to which significant symbolic meanings can also be assigned. Archaeologists have been trying to understand this phenomenon for much of the last century, sometimes emphasizing the universal nature of hoards, but more typically focusing on specific regions, chronologies, and finds. They have, for the most part, used results derived from typolo-chronological methods. Contemporary archaeology has, however, developed a broad spectrum of paradigms and methods, and hoardresearch in the twenty-first century draws on an increasingly wide range of approaches.

This volume presents examples of research that make use of these multi-faceted approaches through a focus on European hoards of metal objects dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages. The contributors to this volume make use of diverse methods, among them archaeometallurgical analyses, studies of use- and production-wear, destruction patterns, and landscape archaeology, but together, their common denominator is the search for a methodological toolkit that will allow researchers to better understand the phenomenon of hoard-deposition more broadly.

List of Illustrations

1. Hoards Research — Past, Present, Future. A Few Words of Introduction
Marcin Maciejewski, János Gábor Tarbay, and Kamil Nowak

2. In an Interpretive Triangle. Main Trends in Research on Hoards in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Central European Perspective
Wojciech Blajer

3. The Cognitive Development of Prehistoric Wetland Deposition Tradition Through Mnemonics. Case Studies of Iron Age Wales and Scotland
Tiffany Treadway

4. There is a Light that Never Goes Out! New and Old Hoards from the Northern Adriatic
Martina Blečić Kavur

5. The Urnfield Period Metal Hoards in South Bohemia. Find Circumstances, Topography, and Analyses
Ondřej Chvojka, Jan John, Jiří Kmošek, and Tereza Šálková

6. An Active Search for Hoards? Contributions of a Systematic Field Survey to the Knowledge of Bronze Age Metal Hoarding. The Case Study of Salins-les-Bains, Jura, France
Estelle Gauthier and Jean-François Piningre

7. Ice-marginal Valleys and Hoards. Natural Landscapes, Cultural Practices and their Amazing Convergence in Different Regions of Central Europe (Poland)
Marcin Maciejewski

8. Twin Hoards and Hoard Selections from the Late Bronze Age Transdanubia
János Gábor Tarbay

9. Late Bronze Age Hoard from Nowe Kramsko. Is there a Method in Fragments?
Kamil Nowak and Nicola Ialongo

10. Comparative Technological Analysis of Middle Bronze Age Bronze Objects from Hoards and Burials
Szilvia Gyöngyösi, Péter Barkóczy, Julianna Cseh, Laura Juhász, and Géza Szabó

11. Re-theorizing Deposition in Bronze Age Europe
Kristian Kristiansen