Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant-Trade and Social Boundaries During the Late Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain

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Social and cultural boundaries are highly contested and constantly changing. They do not always correlate with political boundaries (e.g., the social boundaries of former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, and Romania often cross-cut political demarcations), thus making the study of early social boundaries imperative for scholars to understand the modern developments in the region. With the support of her advisor, Dr. William Parkinson, graduate student Danielle Riebe will conduct research on the relationship between boundaries and interaction during the Late Neolithic (5000-4500 BCE) on the Great Hungarian Plain. Archaeologists often cite interactions between people as a trigger for emergent social complexity as seen through the dissemination of ideas and technology and the spread of agriculture and animal domestication. The Plain offers an ideal location to investigate how interaction, specifically trade, impacts the formation, alteration, and destruction of social and cultural boundaries by focusing on two archaeologically defined groups, the Tisza and Herpály. In an area that is environmentally homogenous, these groups emerged in the archaeological record at the beginning of the Late Neolithic and are differentiated by very distinct material culture, including ceramics and chipped-stone tools. As people trade these materials, their ideas, traditions, techniques, and social practices are diffused at the same time. Analytical techniques, including laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), will be used to assess the composition of ceramic and chipped-stone material in order to model raw material provenience in relation to depositional context. By analyzing how objects are created, where they are constructed, and how they are circulated after production, Ms. Riebe will explore how communities on the Plain differentiated themselves and their neighbors. In addition to investigating theoretical issues concerning the role of interaction in social developments, this project also makes intellectual contributions to the field of anthropology by challenging how cultural boundaries are delineated. Traditionally, boundaries are demarcated based on the identification of similar or dissimilar cultural material. However, this simplistic approach does not account for how boundaries persist in spite of trade, suggesting that more attention be given to the reconstruction of interactions between peoples in order to understand the relationship between regional interactions and the process of boundary formation.This dissertation will contribute to a broader impact by promoting international collaboration between U.S. and Hungarian citizens and scholars, in the study of prehistoric boundaries and social change. Findings will be made available to academics and the public through public lectures, presentations at conferences, peer-reviewed articles and a monograph. All of the findings and interpretations from this project will be included in Ms. Riebe's dissertation, and copies of the dissertation will be provided to all participating institutions. Funding for this project will allow Ms. Riebe to utilize the skills and experiences that she has acquired during her academic training to produce a dissertation that is both anthropologically illuminating and progressive, and that advances the field of anthropology, our knowledge of prehistoric Eastern Europe, and our understanding of socio-political developments in the modern world.