Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Negotiating Identities during the Copper Age: A Bioarchaeological Study of Burial and Social Networks on the Hungarian Plain (4500-3500 BC)

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Under the supervision of Dr. Lynne Schepartz, Ian Pawn will collect and analyze data from eleven Copper Age cemeteries on the Hungarian Plain. The Copper Age is well known for a series of major social changes, as seen in new residence patterns and the appearance of formalized burial areas outside of settlements. The most famous of these cemeteries is Tiszapolgár-Basatanya, where it was found that age and gender were denoted through the inclusion of specific grave offerings. It is hypothesized that as changes swept across the region, new social networks and conflicting identities were reflected in increasing differentiation in burial treatment. The project focuses on understanding how changing social and biological relationships are represented in mortuary ritual and how greater scales of interaction and changes in the way societies are integrated might have influenced prehistoric societies.This research is important because it makes clear the connection between how people live and how they treat their dead. This relationship is not as direct as it appears, but mortuary ritual still provides a valuable means to examine social relations and values. The project uses both skeletal remains and grave goods to examine the diversity in social networks and burials. To achieve this, the project will collect data on body positioning, location of the grave within the cemetery, items included in the grave, and biological data for age and sex estimation. In addition, it is hypothesized that the larger cemeteries on the Hungarian Plain may be burial areas used by many communities. Further, differences in burial treatment between genders may represent changing social relations between genders. To more accurately model social relations, the project uses biodistance analysis of cranial and dental metric and non-metric variation to examine kinship, individual mobility, and post-marital residence Beyond the interests of archaeologists and anthropologists, one broader impact of this project is to expand understandings of the development of social differentiation and how it relates to prehistoric social systems. This may help uncover the root causes of social stratification. The project employs a non-destructive method for examining social change that could easily be applied to other regions and time periods. The project promotes collaboration between American and European archaeologists and it will assist in the training of Ian Pawn as a professional anthropologist. Findings will be distributed through peer reviewed scientific publications.