The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. It is also considered the second phase, of three, in the Metal Ages.
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Copper and Bronze Ages. It has also been considered as the final Age of the three-age division starting with prehistory and progressing to protohistory. In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age and Bronze Age. These concepts originated in describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but they now include other parts of the Old World.
Mediana is an important archeological site from the late Roman period, located in the eastern suburb of the Serbian city of Niš. It represents a luxurious residence with a highly organised economy. Excavations have revealed a villa with peristyle, thermae, granary and water tower. The residence dates to the reign of Constantine the Great 306 to 337. Although Roman artifacts can be found scattered all over the area of present-day Niš, Mediana represents the best-preserved part of Roman Naissus. In 1979, Mediana was added to the Archaeological Sites of Exceptional Importance list, protected by the Republic of Serbia.
The Basarabi culture was an archaeological culture in Southeastern Europe, dated between 8th - 7th centuries BC. It was named after Basarabi, a village in Dolj County, south-western Romania, nowadays an administrative component of the Calafat municipality. It is sometimes grouped with related Bosut culture, into the Bosut-Basarabi complex.
Guspini is a town and comune of about 12,000 inhabitants in west Sardinia (Italy), in the province of South Sardinia. It is 62 kilometres (39 mi) from the capital Cagliari and 14.6 kilometres (9.1 mi) from the railway station at San Gavino Monreale.
Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores in the region from Greece to India, and sub-Saharan Africa. The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread defined the Iron Age. During the medieval period, smiths in Europe found a way of producing wrought iron from cast iron, in this context known as pig iron, using finery forges. All these processes required charcoal as fuel.
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 Urewe culture developed and spread in and around the Lake Victoria region of Africa during the African Iron Age. The culture's earliest dated artefacts are located in the Kagera Region of Tanzania, and it extended as far west as the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as far east as the Nyanza and Western provinces of Kenya, and north into Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Sites from the Urewe culture date from the Early Iron Age, from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD. the Urewe people certainly did not disappear, and the continuity of institutional life was never completely broken. One of the most striking things about the Early Iron Age pots and smelting furnaces is that some of them were discovered at sites that the local people still associate with royalty, and still more significant is the continuity of language.
Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America is the extraction, purification and alloying of metals and metal crafting by Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European contact in the late 15th century. Indigenous Americans had been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BCE, and North American copper finds being dated to approximately 5000 BCE. The metal would have been found in nature without the need for smelting, and shaped into the desired form using hot and cold hammering without chemical alteration or alloying. To date "no one has found evidence that points to the use of melting, smelting and casting in prehistoric eastern North America."
Iron metallurgy in Africa developed within Africa; though initially assumed to be of external origin, this assumption has been rendered untenable; archaeological evidence has increasingly supported an indigenous origin. Some recent studies date the inception of iron metallurgy in Africa between 3000 BCE and 2500 BCE. Archaeometallurgical scientific knowledge and technological development originated in numerous centers of Africa; the centers of origin were located in West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa; consequently, as these origin centers are located within inner Africa, these archaeometallurgical developments are thus native African technologies.
Metals and metal working had been known to the people of modern Italy since the Bronze Age. By 53 BC, Rome had expanded to control an immense expanse of the Mediterranean. This included Italy and its islands, Spain, Macedonia, Africa, Asia Minor, Syria and Greece; by the end of the Emperor Trajan's reign, the Roman Empire had grown further to encompass parts of Britain, Egypt, all of modern Germany west of the Rhine, Dacia, Noricum, Judea, Armenia, Illyria, and Thrace. As the empire grew, so did its need for metals.
The Nuragic civilization, also known as the Nuragic culture, was a civilization or culture on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italy, which lasted from the 18th century BC up to the Roman colonization in 238 BC. Others date the culture as lasting at least until the 2nd century AD and in some areas, namely the Barbagia, to the 6th century AD or possibly even to the 11th century AD.
Kraku Lu Jordan is archeological site in Serbia. It is situated at the confluence of the Brodica river into Pek, near Kučevo. Represents the most explored metallurgical center in eastern Serbia. The metallurgic occupation of the site lasted for about 100 years, beginning around 280 AD and ending in 380 AD. Kraku Lu Jordan is precisely dated by discovered coins from Diocletian time. This metallurgical complex was then destroyed in a fire in the late 4th century. Archaeological excavations began in 1971, and with few interruptions, lasted until 1987.
The Giants of Mont'e Prama are ancient stone sculptures created by the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia, Italy. Fragmented into numerous pieces, they were discovered in March 1974 on farmland near Mont'e Prama, in the comune of Cabras, province of Oristano, in central-western Sardinia. The statues are carved in local sandstone and their height varies between 2 and 2.5 meters.
Saruq Al Hadid is an archaeological site in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and stands as one of the most important and enigmatic historical sites in the country. Findings from the site are displayed in a museum with the same name in the city of Dubai. The site was originally discovered by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, while flying his helicopter across the desert.
The Nuragic sanctuary of Santa Vittoria is an archaeological site located in the municipality of Serri, Sardinia – Italy. The name refers to the Romanesque style church built over a place of Roman worship which rises at the westernmost tip of the site. The Santa Vittoria site was frequented starting from the first phase of the Nuragic civilization corresponding to Middle Bronze Age. Subsequently, from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age, the place became one of the most important expressions of the Nuragic civilization and today it constitutes the most important Nuragic complex so far excavated.
The complex of S'Arcu 'e Is Forros is an important archaeological site located in the village of Villagrande Strisaili, in the province of Nuoro.
The Civic Archaeological Museum "Alle Clarisse" of Ozieri is one of the most important museums in Northern Sardinia. Since 2003 it has been transferred to the former Poor Clares' convent. Its showcases contain the most significant finds found in the municipal area of Ozieri: the materials on display date from prehistoric times to the Modern Age.
The Giorgio Asproni National Archaeological Museum is an archaeological museum in the historic centre of Nuoro, in Sardinia, near the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Snows. Established in 2002, it is located in a nineteenth-century building that belonged to Giorgio Asproni, a Sardinian politician and intellectual of that era.
