Revisited Analysis of Early Bronze-Age Bone Tubes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Comparative analyses have long helped archaeologists identify characteristics of artifacts including origins, social life, and use. However, this tool becomes problematic when broad conclusions are drawn without evidence beyond similar characteristics between types of artifacts. One example of this are Early Bronze-Age bone tubes. Decorated bone tubes are found in many contemporaneous regions and cultures and archaeologists are generally able to compare tubes cross-regionally with each other but this has led to overreaching assumptions about some artifact's uses. Such is the case of Early Bronze-Age Levantine bone tubes. Most Levantine bone tubes originate from a single workshop at Tell el-Hesi and these tubes are assumed to be pigment containers, as this is how similar bone tubes were used. Here, use-wear analysis and residue analysis of Levantine tubes along with an extensive literature review reconsiders established understanding of what these tubes were used to hold and the workshop identified at Tell el-Hesi gives archaeologists an opportunity to compare a chronologically distinct set of Levantine bone tubes to those from other regions. Better understanding of these tubes’ social lives allows better understanding of the cultures that used them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39736.0