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

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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.