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

在国家科学基金会的支持下，约翰·奥谢博士和一个由来自美国、罗马尼亚、匈牙利和意大利的国际同事组成的团队将更新罗马尼亚西南部佩西卡遗址的考古发掘工作。佩西卡大教堂是欧洲最重要的青铜时代遗址之一，也是青铜工具、装饰品和武器的主要生产和贸易中心。之前国家科学基金会支持的研究表明，佩西卡是一个复杂的政体，拥有集中的公共建筑、手工艺专家和隔离的社会阶层。研究还表明，佩西卡深度参与了家马的传播，可能还有战车，进入欧洲。虽然这项先前的工作展示了佩西卡在其巅峰时期和迅速崩溃的图景，但目前的研究努力关注的是了解佩西卡是如何崛起的。佩西卡现存的考古层独特地记录了导致佩西卡社会存在的内部和外部因素。这些发掘将提供佩西卡作为主要区域中心的详细情况，并澄清这一发展的背景，无论是在当代当地社区中，还是在欧洲青铜时代更大的区域网络中。这项研究将有助于我们理解社会不平等和复杂性是如何发展的，并突出一种社会组织形式，这种组织形式对欧洲青铜时代的文化发展至关重要，但可能不同于世界其他地区看到的复杂的酋长类型组织。发掘将产生与冶金和工艺生产的发展和组织有关的重要新信息，并提供与青铜时代生存和生产经济有关的关键证据，特别是关于国内马和相关运输技术进入欧洲的变革性传播。最后，发掘将不仅提供这一重要的欧盟文化遗产的物质文化的完整记录，而且还将提供青铜时代气候和环境的完整记录，特别是佩西卡的发展对当地和地区环境的文化影响，这可能与中世纪青铜时代末的显著环境恶化有关。除了了解佩西卡本身的聚落之外，这项研究还有望带来许多更广泛的好处。佩西卡的工作将有助于喀尔巴西亚盆地青铜时代的更大规模的研究工作。匈牙利、罗马尼亚和塞尔维亚的同时进行的研究项目正在联合起来，为考古研究提供一个宏观区域数据集，这在欧洲是独一无二的，可能会与墨西哥山谷或瓦哈卡等地竞争，成为研究文化变化的实验室。该研究为美国研究生和本科生提供了国际研究经验，为罗马尼亚初学者和高级学生提供了培训机会。这种协作和跨学科的努力为所有参与者，包括高级和初级参与者提供了培训好处，并支持罗马尼亚境内研究设计和挖掘战略的创新。该项目还通过改善这一重要遗址的考古收藏品的管理和获取，为考古研究的基础设施作出贡献。

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.