The Final Bronze Age in the Near East and in Temperate Europe

Abstract

When ten years ago I discussed the absolute chronology of the European Bronze Age, I took the amber beads from Kakovatos as providing a terminus ante quem about 1450 B.C. for its ‘Early’ phase and accepted the appearance in the East Mediterranean area of cremation burial in urn-fields, cut-and-thrust swords (fig. 1), safety-pins (fig. 3), turban dishes and urns with ribbed or twisted handles as indicative of a similar limit about 1250 B.C. for the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. The first date has subsequently been confirmed and given precision in a satisfactory manner. In his paper on ‘The Early Bronze Age in Wessex’ Piggott showed how his Wessex culture could be cross-dated by Aegean contacts. On the one hand many Wessex graves contain segmented faience beads imported from the East Mediterranean and plausibly dated there about 1400 B.C.: on the other, graves of the same culture at Normanton and Manton were furnished with gold-bound amber discs identical in form and size with one from a L.M. II tomb at Knossos. Assuming the latter to be a British import, it gave 1450 as a terminus ante quem for the rise of the Wessex culture. At the same time British types in Central Europe and Unětician types in Wessex barrows, established a synchronism between the Wessex culture and the advanced phase of the Early Bronze Age cultures of the Danubian area (in typological terms Reinecke's phase A2), to which phase the Perjamos grave at Ószentivan, containing imported segmented faience beads, identical with those from Wessex and therefore also datable about 1400, should be assigned.