Paths to Bronze Age Complexity: Monitoring the Rise of Pecica "Santul Mare"

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With National Science Foundation Support, Dr. John O'Shea and an international team of colleagues from the United States, Romania, Hungary, and Italy will renew archaeological excavations at the site of Pecica "ªanþul Mare" in southwestern Romania. The great tell of Pecica "ªanþul Mare" is among the most important Bronze Age sites in Europe, and was a major center for the production and trade of bronze tools, ornaments and weapons. Previous National Science Foundation supported research has shown that Pecica was a complex polity with centralized public architecture, craft specialists, and segregated social strata. The research also demonstrated that Pecica was deeply involved in the spread of domestic horses, and possibly also chariots, into Europe. While this prior work presented a picture of Pecica at its peak, and of its rapid collapse, the present research effort is concerned with understanding how Pecica rose to prominence. The remaining archaeological layers at Pecica hold a unique record of the internal and external factors which brought the Pecica society into existence. The excavations will provide a detailed view of the emergence of Pecica as a major regional center and clarify the context of this development, both among the contemporary local communities and within the larger regional networks of the European Bronze Age. The research will contribute to our understanding of how social inequality and complexity develop, and highlight a form of societal organization that is central to cultural developments in the European Bronze Age but which may differ from the complex chiefdom type organization seen in other parts of the World. The excavation will generate important new information relating to the development and organization of metallurgy and craft production, and provide critical evidence relating to the Bronze Age subsistence and productive economies, and particularly to the transformative spread of the domestic horse and associated transport technologies into Europe. Finally, the excavations will provide a complete record of not only the material culture of this important EU Cultural Heritage site, but also of the Bronze Age climate and environment, and particularly the cultural impacts of Pecica's development on the local and regional environment that may be linked to significant environmental deteriorations at the end of the Middle Bronze Age.Apart from understanding the settlement of Pecica, itself, the research promises a number of broader benefits. The work at Pecica will contribute to the larger research effort in the Carpathian Basin Bronze Age. Concurrent research projects in Hungary, Romania, and Serbia are combining to provide a macro-regional dataset for archaeological research that is unique in Europe and may rival places such as the Valley of Mexico or Oaxaca as a laboratory for the study of culture change. The research provides international research experience for American graduate and undergraduate students, and provides training opportunities for beginning and advanced Romanian students. The collaborative and interdisciplinary effort provides training benefits to all participants, senior and junior alike, and is supporting innovations in research design and excavation strategies within Romania. The project is also contributing to the infrastructure of archaeological research by providing improved curation and access for the archaeological collections from this important site.