Antiquity / Volume 89 / Issue 343 / February 2015, pp 191-209
Representations of oxhide ingots in Scandinavian rock art: the sketchbook of a Bronze Age traveller?
Johan Ling and Zofia Stos-Gale
Bronze Age trade networks across Europe and the Mediterranean are well documented; Baltic amber and bronze metalwork were particularly valued commodities. Here it is argued that demand for copper and tin led to changes in Scandinavian trade routes around 1600 BC, which can be linked to the appearance of figurative rock art images in southern Scandinavia. Images identified as oxhide ingots have been discovered in Sweden and suggest that people from Scandinavia were familiar with this characteristically Mediterranean trading commodity. Using trace element and lead isotope analysis, the authors argue that some bronze tools excavated in Sweden could have been made of Cypriot copper; these two discoveries suggest that Scandinavians were travelling to the Mediterranean, rather than acting through a middle man.
Link
Im surprised that people are still flummexd by direct trade to the baltic from the med.
ReplyDeleteThe minoans cut out the iberian middle men and took trade to the british isles, minoan daggers have been found at stonehenge.
After the minoan trade empire collapsed from the loss of thera, their client states in greece, the myceneans, continued the trade and pushed into scandanavia.
The stone ships mark the locations where the ships put in, the scandanavian elite class even took on the mycenean practice of being clean shaven, with their newly aquired bronze razors.
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DeleteCan we please put to bed the notion that Minoan culture was ended by the Thera eruption? That volcanic event has been conclusively dated to around the end of the 17th Century BCE, whereas Minoan culture on Crete continued and flourished for another 150 years until the mid 15th Century. This has got to be one of the most pernicious and persistant misunderstandings in Bronze Age archeology. Knossos fell to Mycenae, not Santorini!
Delete"After the minoan trade empire collapsed from the loss of thera, their client states in greece, the myceneans, continued the trade and pushed into scandanavia."
ReplyDeletehttp://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-nordic-razor.html
Thanks Jim,
DeleteI missed that post, I've been trying to find the article on the Mycenean domestic goods found near one of the stone ships.
The spread-sheet of metalurgy seems to speak about a N->S movement:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age
The amount of grip-swords found in Europe seems to underline the hub of the bronze-age development:
http://www.catshamans.se/essae/0stenri/0stenr.htm
Hi Ron,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid the notion that 'Minoan' (actually Mycenaean, according to Atkinson in the 1950s) daggers were carved on the stones at Stonehenge has long ago been abandoned. The three carvings of daggers are too indistinct (even in the recent laser scan) to have any hope of identifying them as a specific type of dagger.
Nick T,
DeleteI was referring to (Minoan/Mycenean) bronze daggers recovered from graves near the henge.
The so called dagger carvings on the stones themselves, I believe, are actually a representation of a very energetic meteror shower, that's just my opinion, based on native American rock art with similar images.
I would tend to disagree with this statement from the article,these two discoveries suggest that Scandinavians were travelling to the Mediterranean, rather than acting through a middle man. " , the archeology shows that the scandanavians didn't have the shipping technology to journey to the med until after the Minoan/Mycenean traders brought the bronze age ,by boat.
"Cyprus" oxides? rotf.. I don't think so.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/WakefieldJS1.php?p=4
Oxhides were made in all of the world and made of many metals .
Well there's a spike of J2a men in southern Sweden I've wondered about for quite a while. But I can't find a link to look at the clades. M67 and/or M92 would tell me they're probably Minoan descendants. Or Roman. M530 - by my reckoning - would indicate Neolithic.
ReplyDeleteI hear rumblings we made it all the way to Michigan. I reject that out of hand. If something's amazing cool and makes my people look good I always do that. I don't want my "wants" to poison my observations. Same thing if I don't want something to be true: I work on the assumption it is. There's nothing more gratifying than a failing to falsify your position despite throwing everything you got at it. :-)
Nevertheless I note: if we had a trade route to Michigan, a colony in southern Scandinavia would make sense.
"the archeology shows that the scandanavians didn't have the shipping technology to journey to the med until after the Minoan/Mycenean traders brought the bronze age ,by boat."
ReplyDeleteBut the land route through eastern Europe was very active at that time. Bronze and the source metals were high value commodities and would have been worth shipping overland.
Jim
DeleteI agree with what you said, the overland routes were well used and very ancient as well. The people of the agean and baltic seas traded spondylus and obsidian for amber long before metals were the focus of trade.
But overland trade is also fraught with risk, bandits and shifting political structures would have taken a toll on profits.
After the Minoans gained control of the metals trade in the med they expanded to Britain and scandanavia.
Although there was land routes the bronze age came to scandanavia via coastal routes.
"the archeology shows that the scandanavians didn't have the shipping technology to journey to the med until after the Minoan/Mycenean traders brought the bronze age ,by boat."
ReplyDeleteThis is merely an assumption, using the "absence of proof to prove absence". Truth is archaeology have proven that Scandianvians as well as other N Europeans had boats already 11.500 years ago.
The assumption you use to "prove" your point is the question of sails on the early boats. This IS a much debated question among Scandinavian and Brittish archaeologist still today.
Not long ago a potsherd was found in England, from neolithic time, that had a ship incised with a mast and a sail clearly visible...
So this entire question is FAR from settled. What's more relevant is that Bronze Age Baltics and Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures where closely interacting - basically along the river-routes through central Europe (Wisla-Donau) and the Cutcuteni-area, run by the so-called "Wends"/"Veneti". Check out Herodot.
On the west-side its were the Seine/Rhine-Rhone-connection, ending up in Marseilles, ran by the "celts". Google "amber-road" and start thinking.
From Crete to Gotland:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guteinfo.com/?id=1275
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Bronze-Society-Transmissions-Transformations/dp/0521604664
ReplyDelete