In archaeology, the general meaning of horizon is a distinctive type of sediment, artefact, style, or other cultural trait that is found across a large geographical area from a limited time period. The term derives from similar ones in geology, horizon or marker horizon, but where these have natural causes, archaeological horizons are caused by humans. Most typically, there is a change in the type of pottery found and in the style of less frequent major artefacts. Across a horizon, the same type of artefact or style is found very widely over a large area, and it can be assumed that these traces are approximately contemporary.
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👉 Archaeological horizon in the context of British Iron Age
The British Iron Age is a conventional name used in the archaeology of Great Britain, referring to the prehistoric and protohistoric phases of the Iron Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding prehistoric Ireland, which had an independent Iron Age culture of its own.The Iron Age is not an archaeological horizon of common artefacts but is rather a locally-diverse cultural phase.
The British Iron Age followed the British Bronze Age and lasted in theory from the first significant use of iron for tools and weapons in Britain to the Romanisation of the southern half of the island. The Romanised culture is termed Roman Britain and is considered to supplant the British Iron Age.
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: Archaeological horizon
- 👉 Archaeological horizon in the context of British Iron Age
- Archaeological horizon in the context of Andronovo culture
- Archaeological horizon in the context of Scythian cultures
- Archaeological horizon in the context of Corded Ware culture
- Archaeological horizon in the context of First Temperate Neolithic
Archaeological horizon in the context of Andronovo culture
The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC, spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia and western Xinjiang in the east. In the south, the Andronovo sites reached Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is agreed among scholars that the Andronovo culture was Indo-Iranian. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon.
Andronovo culture's first stage may have started as early as the waning years of the 3rd millennium BC, with a focus on cattle grazing in the vast grasslands of the region. The slightly older Sintashta culture (c. 2200–1900 BC), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now thought to be distinct from Early Andronovo cultures. Allentoft et al. (2015) concluded from their genetic studies that the Andronovo culture and the preceding Sintashta culture were derived from an eastern migration of the Corded Ware culture, given the higher proportion of ancestry matching the earlier farmers of Europe, similar to the admixture found in the genomes of the Corded Ware population.
Archaeological horizon in the context of Scythian cultures
The Scythian cultures was an archaeological horizon that flourished across the Eurasian Steppe during the Iron Age, from approximately the 9th century BC to the 2nd century AD. It included the Scythian, Sauromatian and Sarmatian cultures of Eastern Europe, the Saka-Massagetae and Tasmola cultures of Central Asia, and the Aldy-Bel, Pazyryk and Tagar cultures of south Siberia.
The Scythian-Siberian world was characterized by the Scythian triad, which are similar, yet not identical, styles of weapons, horses' bridles, and jewelry and decorative art. The question of how related these cultures were is disputed among scholars. Its peoples were of diverse origins, and included not just Scythians, from which the cultures are named, but other peoples as well, such as the Cimmerians, Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, and obscure forest-steppe populations. Mostly speakers of the Scythian branch of the Iranian languages, all of these peoples are sometimes collectively referred to as Scythians, Scytho-Siberians, Early Nomads, or Iron Age Nomads.
Archaeological horizon in the context of Corded Ware culture
The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between c. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the Late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the contact zone between the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture in South Eastern Europe, to the Rhine in the west and the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Autosomal genetic studies suggest that the Corded Ware culture originated from the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the steppe-forest zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures, evolving in parallel with (although under significant influence from) the Yamnaya; while the idea of direct male-line descent between them has not received significant support yet, IBD-sharing between the populations of these two cultures indicates that, at the very least, they came from a recent common ancestor, with a Harvard Magazine article on the find referring to them as "cousins" who were "biologically separated ... by only a few hundred years".
The Corded Ware culture is considered to be a likely vector for the spread of many of the Indo-European languages in Europe and Asia.
Archaeological horizon in the context of First Temperate Neolithic
The First Temperate Neolithic (FTN) is an archaeological horizon consisting of the earliest archaeological cultures of Neolithic Southeastern Europe, dated to c. 6400–5100 BCE. The cultures of the FTN were the first to practice agriculture in temperate Europe, which required significant innovations in farming technology previously adapted to a mediterranean climate.
The constituent cultures of the FTN are: