Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Pivotal Ponies: Horses in the Development of Emergent Political Institutions of Bronze Age Hungary

在Timothy Earle博士的指导下，Katherine Kanne将分析从匈牙利青铜器时代（公元前2800-800年）的七个定居点和六个墓地收集的考古数据。匈牙利的青铜时代社会显示了欧洲早期社会政治的复杂性，包括具有明显社会分层的地区酋邦的发展、广泛的贸易体系、新的冶金技术以及强大的战士阶级的兴起。随着这些社会政治转型的进行，马的使用似乎发生了重大转变。根据一些孤立的案例，人们不再吃马肉，马肉的大小和数量都增加了。根据Kanne的初步研究，一些人在这一时期开始骑马，并把它们埋在房子的地板上。这项研究试图重建人们如何改变他们对马的概念，然后重新调整他们饲养和使用马的方向，试图影响青铜时代匈牙利的政治、经济和社会变革。马的使用和生产对于研究政治经济、复杂社会和社会不平等的出现很有价值，因为马可以用来积累、维持和划分财富、权力和控制。这项研究验证了这样一个假设，即在匈牙利的青铜时代，有抱负的领导人开始强化马匹饲养，以增加战士阶级，为贸易提供快速和保护的运输，并创造额外的商品进行交换。在这种情况下，马的所有权和骑马将仅限于精英阶层。为了验证这些假设，Kanne将进行一项综合比较研究，结合动物考古学、稳定同位素、骨学和空间分析，从青铜时代匈牙利的定居点和墓地进行研究。对多种证据的研究将揭示这一时期的人们是否骑马，骑马是否与追求政治权力的精英战士联系在一起，马对这些社区的不同部分具有什么文化和经济意义，以及马是否被标准化为一种特殊的交换类型。这项研究有助于欧洲史前史的研究，增加了政治经济学的一般理论，并为考古学中的人类/动物研究提供了更理论化的方向。在这个项目中采用的创新方法有可能记录最早的确定的骑马的物理证据，并且应该引起研究马的驯化和骑乘开始的学者的兴趣。此外，在一个仍然盛产马匹和骑手的国家，这项工作将以匈牙利自己的语言作为论文的翻译和学术文章传播给匈牙利人。研究结果也可以纳入收藏研究材料的博物馆的展品中。最后，在美国，这项研究将以论文的形式发表，作为学术和流行文章发布，并在专业会议和公开讲座上发表，以进一步向学术界和公众传播研究结果。

Under the supervision of Dr. Timothy Earle, Katherine Kanne will analyze archaeological data collected from seven settlements and six cemeteries of the Bronze Age (2800-800 BC) in Hungary. Bronze Age societies in Hungary showed early sociopolitical complexity for Europe including the development of regional chiefdoms with marked social stratification, an extensive trading system, new metallurgical technologies, and the rise of a powerful warrior class. A major shift in horse use appears to have occurred as these sociopolitical transformations were underway. Based on some isolated cases, people stopped eating horses and they increased in both size and number. Based on Kanne's pilot studies, some people began to ride horses in this period and bury them in the floors of their houses. This research seeks to reconstruct how people may have changed their conceptions of horses and then reoriented their raising and use of horses in attempts to affect political, economic, and social change in Bronze Age Hungary. Horses use and production are valuable for studying the emergence of the political economy, complex societies, and social inequalities because horses can be used to accumulate, maintain, and demarcate wealth, power, and control. This research tests the hypothesis that during the Bronze Age in Hungary, aspiring leaders initiated intensive horse breeding to mount an expanding warrior class, to provide swift and protected transport for trade, and to create an additional commodity for exchange. As a result of this scenario, horse ownership and riding would have become limited to the elite. To test the hypotheses, Kanne will institute an integrative and comparative research study that combines zooarchaeological, stable isotope, osteological, and spatial analyses from settlements and cemeteries throughout Bronze Age Hungary. Examination of multiple lines of evidence will reveal if people of this period were riding horses, if riding became tied to elite warriors as they sought political power, what cultural and economic significance horses held to different segments of these communities, and if horses were standardized into a special type for exchange.This research contributes to the study of European prehistory, adds to general theories of political economy, and advances a more theoretical orientation of human/animal studies in archaeology. The innovative methods employed in this project have the potential to document the earliest definitive physical evidence for horseback riding and should be of interest to scholars investigating the domestication of the horse and the beginnings of mounted use. Moreover, in a country still rich with horses and equestrians, this work will be disseminated to Hungarians in their own language in a translation of the dissertation and a scholarly article. The results may also be incorporated into exhibits at the museums which house the materials studied. Lastly, in the U.S. this research will be published as a dissertation, released as scholarly and popular articles, and presented at professional meetings and public lectures to further distribute the findings to the academic community and the general public.