Anthony Harding FBA FSA (born 1946) is a British archaeologist specialising in European prehistory. He was a professor at Durham University and the University of Exeter and president of the European Association of Archaeologists between 2003 and 2009. Following his doctoral research on Mycenaean Greece, Harding's work has mainly concerned the European Bronze Age, including major studies of prehistoric warfare and the prehistory of salt.
Harding was born in Bromley, Kent in 1946 and studied Classics and prehistoric archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Charles University in Prague. [1] He received his doctorate from Cambridge in 1973, with a dissertation on the northern connections of Mycenaean Greece supervised by John Coles. [1] [2] He taught at Durham University from 1973 to 2004 and was appointed Professor in 1990. In 2004 he moved to the University of Exeter, where he was the Anniversary Professor of Archaeology until his retirement in 2015. [1] He is an Affiliate of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, Prague, attached to the Institute for Classical Archaeology.
Harding was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1981, [3] a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001, [4] and is a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute and the Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria . [1] He was the president of the European Association of Archaeologists from 2003 to 2009. [5] Following his retirement, he spent a year as guest professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. [6]
Harding is a member of the Antiquity Trust, which supports the publication of the archaeology journal Antiquity. [7]
Harding's research focuses on prehistoric archaeology, particularly the Bronze Age of central and Eastern Europe. [4] [6] His work includes several volumes on warfare and violence in prehistory (Velim: Violence and Death in Bronze Age Bohemia, 2007; Warriors and Weapons in Bronze Age Europe, 2007) [8] [9] [10] [11] and on the prehistory of salt (Salt in Prehistoric Europe, 2013; Explorations in Salt Archaeology in the Carpathian Zone, 2013, with Valerii Kavruk; and Salt: White Gold in Early Europe, 2021). [12] He has also written two major syntheses about Bronze Age Europe, The Bronze Age of Europe (1979, with John Coles), and European Societies in the Bronze Age (2000). During his stay in Munich he wrote Bronze Age Lives (2021). [13] He has directed excavations at sites Velim-Skalka in the Czech Republic, Sobiejuchy in Poland, and Baile Figa in Romania, as well as at several prehistoric sites in England. [6]
Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, is a British archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, and the prevention of looting at archaeological sites.
Mycenaean Greece was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system. The Mycenaeans were mainland Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean cultures to develop a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own. The most prominent site was Mycenae, after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Tiryns, and Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens in Central Greece, and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and on Cyprus, while Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in the Levant and Italy.
Prehistoric archaeology is a subfield of archaeology, which deals specifically with artefacts, civilisations and other materials from societies that existed before any form of writing system or historical record. Often the field focuses on ages such as the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age, although it also encompasses periods such as the Neolithic. The study of prehistoric archaeology reflects the cultural concerns of modern society by showing interpretations of time between economic growth and political stability. It is related to other disciplines such as geology, biology, anthropology, historiography and palaeontology, although there are noticeable differences between the subjects they all broadly study to understand; the past, either organic or inorganic or the lives of humans. Prehistoric archaeology is also sometimes termed as anthropological archaeology because of its indirect traces with complex patterns.
The Wessex culture is the predominant prehistoric culture of central and southern Britain during the early Bronze Age, originally defined by the British archaeologist Stuart Piggott in 1938.
Prehistoric warfare refers to war that occurred between societies without recorded history.
The Nordic Bronze Age is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from c. 2000/1750–500 BC.
The Tumulus culture was the dominant material culture in Central Europe during the Middle Bronze Age.
A shaft tomb or shaft grave is a type of deep rectangular burial structure, similar in shape to the much shallower cist grave, containing a floor of pebbles, walls of rubble masonry, and a roof constructed of wooden planks.
Caroline Ann Tuke Malone is a British academic and archaeologist. She was Professor of Prehistory at Queen's University, Belfast from 2013 and is now emeritus professor.
The Archaeological Society of Athens is an independent learned society. Also termed the Greek Archaeological Society, it was founded in 1837 by Konstantinos Bellios, just a few years after the establishment of the modern Greek State, with the aim of encouraging archaeological excavations, maintenance, care and exhibition of antiquities in Greece.
Christos Tsountas was a Greek classical archaeologist. He is considered a pioneer of Greek archaeology and has been called "the first and most eminent Greek prehistorian".
The European Bronze Age is characterized by bronze artifacts and the use of bronze implements. The regional Bronze Age succeeds the Neolithic and Copper Age and is followed by the Iron Age. It starts with the Aegean Bronze Age in 3200 BC and spans the entire 2nd millennium BC, lasting until c. 800 BC in central Europe.
The Dendra panoply or Dendra armour is an example of Mycenaean-era panoply made of bronze plates uncovered in the village of Dendra in the Argolid, Greece. It is currently on display at the Archaeological Museum of Nafplion.
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5,200 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing having spread to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Raimund Karl is an Austrian archaeologist, Celticist and historian. He is currently a professor of Archaeology and Heritage Management Institute and at the School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology at Bangor University.
Hector William Catling, CBE, FSA was a British archaeologist who served as director of the British School at Athens between 1971 and 1989.
The Griffin Warrior Tomb is a Bronze Age shaft tomb dating to around 1450 BC, near the ancient city of Pylos in Greece. The grave was discovered by a research team sponsored by the University of Cincinnati and led by husband-and-wife archaeologists Jack L. Davis and Sharon Stocker. The tomb site was excavated from May to October 2015.
Karina Grömer is an Austrian archaeologist known for her contribution to the study of archaeological textiles. She is the head of the Department of Prehistory at the Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria.
Helène Whittaker is a Canadian-Norwegian archaeologist and scholar of antiquity. She is known for her work on the Bronze Age Aegean, ancient Greek and Roman language and culture, and Early Christianity. As of 2022, she is professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
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