Bronze Fish

Marine Resources and the Bronze Age Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID22240286
AuthorsM Hudson (0000-0002-9483-9303, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), Irene M Muñoz Fernández (0000-0003-4934-849X, Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Year2023
Volume3
Issue1
Pages1-44
Publication date2023-05-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOld World Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2667-0755 • E-ISSN: 2667-0755
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/26670755-20230006
OpenAlexW4376504505
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited81

The Bronze Age was a time of pivotal economic change when new long-distance trading networks became associated with a macro-regional division of labour and decentralised political complexity. These developments occurred against the background of a shifting mosaic of subsistence patterns, which included the east-west exchange of crops across Eurasia and (in some areas) greater use of secondary products. As Bronze Age economies became more specialised and diverse, it might be assumed that there was also an increased emphasis on the procurement and trade of fish and other marine resources. However, archaeological analyses of such resources are limited in contrast to land-based subsistence patterns and many questions remain. This essay aims to build a broad interpretive framework for analysing the role of marine resources in the Bronze Age. Our provisional results find that an increased emphasis on specialist systems of agropastoralism reduced the use of marine resources in many parts of Eurasia during this period. However, evidence from Japan and the eastern Mediterranean suggests that, at least in some regions, marine resources became commodities traded over long-distances by the late Bronze Age, though this requires further quantification. Island Southeast Asia displays a different pattern from other regions considered here in a greater continuity of marine resource use from the Neolithic into the historic era, perhaps due to a lower reliance on agropastoralism

Agriculture · Archaeology · Biology · Bronze · Bronze Age · Business · Economics · Economy · Fishery · Geography · Herding · Marine conservation · Mediterranean climate · Mosaic · Procurement · Subsistence agriculture · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies