Heterogeneity and Complexity in Bronze Age Europe: Divergence of Social Trajectories on the Great Hungarian Plain

在保罗·达菲博士和威廉·帕金森博士的指导下，国家科学基金会的资金将支持挖掘和分析匈牙利东部一处可追溯到青铜时代中期(公元前2100-1400)的不同寻常的墓地人口。在青铜时代，欧洲由过多的社会组成，通过贸易、旅行和移民联系在一起。在非洲大陆的大多数地区，学者们认为，经济不平等和世袭办公室首次出现，地区政治等级制度蓬勃发展。相比之下，众所周知，匈牙利东部的青铜时代文化在社会复杂性方面经历了重大变革，但社会不平等程度没有相应增加。尽管对青铜时代欧洲的研究集中在复杂社会中等级制度的产生和运作方式上，但对农业和冶金生产加剧但社会不平等没有加剧的领域知之甚少。这个项目提供了一个机会，研究人口密度、冶金生产和贸易如何在不落入少数人手中的权力和控制权的情况下大幅增加。该墓地属于大匈牙利平原的奥托马尼文化，分析结果将与邻近地区的墓地进行比较。一个国际多学科小组将在青铜时代墓地进行系统调查，检查其成员的葬礼习俗、财富分配、移民模式和参与宏观区域贸易。将挖掘30到40个人类墓葬-可能是埋葬、骨灰盒火化和散落的骨灰埋葬。在骨学和同位素分析的基础上，将描述在这个墓地中对身体的处理以及其中个人的健康、饮食和地区来源。记录精品陶瓷的形态、风格和产地，研究青铜、黄金等外贸物品的分布情况。这项研究的学术价值将是检验这样一种观点，即长途贸易和外国意识形态是地区政治等级制度出现的关键。这项拟议的研究广泛影响了关于非国家社会中社会变异性的长期人类学辩论，并汇集了来自加拿大、美国、匈牙利和希腊的专家，为美国和匈牙利的学生提供主要的培训好处。除了解决重要的理论问题外，还将使用一些遥感和地质考古技术来加强挖掘规划，更广泛地了解墓地的使用情况，并推动使用非侵入性技术来探测坟墓和其他停尸房特征。这几条独立的证据线结合在一起，描述了停尸房环境中人和物体的流动性，将提供关于青铜时代欧洲社会变革背后的贸易和人口转移的关键信息，并提供对世界范围内观察到的社会复杂性的洞察。

Under the direction of Dr. Paul Duffy and Dr. William Parkinson, funding from the National Science Foundation will support the excavation and analysis of an unusual cemetery population in Eastern Hungary dating to the Middle Bronze Age (2100 - 1400 BC). During the Bronze Age, Europe comprised a plethora of societies connected through trade, travel, and migration. In most parts of the continent, scholars believe that economic inequalities and hereditary offices emerged for the first time and regional political hierarchy flourished. In contrast, the Bronze Age cultures of Eastern Hungary are known to have undergone significant transformations in social complexity without corresponding increases in social inequality. Although studies of Bronze Age Europe have focused on the way in which hierarchy emerged and operated in complex societies, little is known of areas where agricultural and metallurgical production intensified but social inequality did not. This project offers an opportunity to study how population density, metallurgical production, and trade can substantially increase without power and control falling into the hands of a minority.The cemetery in question belongs to the Otomani culture of the Great Hungarian Plain, and the results of the analysis will be compared to cemeteries in neighboring areas. An international, multi-disciplinary team will conduct systematic investigations at the Bronze Age cemetery, examining the funerary customs, distribution of wealth, patterns of migration, and participation in macro-regional trade of its members. Thirty to forty human burials - likely inhumation, urn cremation, and scattered ash burials - will be excavated. The treatment of the body in this cemetery and the health, diet, and regional origin of individuals within it will be described based on osteological and isotopic analyses. The form, style, and origin of fine ceramics will be recorded, and the distribution of foreign trade items such as bronze and gold will be studied. The intellectual merit of this research will be to test the idea that long-distance trade and foreign ideologies were pivotal to the emergence of regional political hierarchies. The proposed research broadly impacts long-standing anthropological debates over social variability in non-state societies and brings together specialists from Canada, the United States, Hungary, and Greece to provide major training benefits for American and Hungarian students. In addition to addressing important theoretical concerns, a number of remote sensing and geoarchaeological techniques will be employed to enhance excavation planning, generate a broader picture of cemetery use, and advance the use of non-intrusive technologies for the detection of graves and other mortuary features. This combination of several independent lines of evidence to describe the mobility of people and objects in mortuary contexts will provide critical information about the trade and population shifts underlying social transformations in Bronze Age Europe, and offer insights into the range of social complexity observed worldwide.