Craft production and political potential: Middle Bronze Age village societies on the Great Hungarian Plain (2300-1600 BC)

在John M. O'Shea博士的指导下，Paul Duffy将调查匈牙利青铜时代中期（公元前2400 -1400年）社会分层和经济专业化的潜在共存。考古学家声称，在青铜时代的欧洲，大部分地区的青铜生产都是由酋长管辖地和地区政治等级制度集中协调的，资源必须从平民转移到精英手中。由于富裕的墓葬和金属生产，这些青铜时代社会的中心通常被认为主要是村庄，但偏远的地点，被认为是平民的定居点，很少被系统地调查。达菲的研究将集中在匈牙利东部几个偏远地区的区域分析和挖掘上，以澄清中心和边缘地区在食品和工艺品生产和消费方面的差异。从没有真正政治分层的部落社会过渡到等级和政治权力世袭的社会，是整个人类历史上最根本的转变之一。然而，与这一变化有关的参数，如人口、对金属来源的控制和消费差异，必须进行独立调查，以便了解这种转变为什么以及如何发生。该项目采用多管齐下的方法来处理过渡时期的东匈牙利案例，其中包含一些通常与分层相关的元素，而不是其他元素。大匈牙利平原是喀尔巴阡山脉脚下的一片肥沃地带，这里盛产铜资源，也是东方第一批驯养马匹流通的贸易轴心。利用土地生产力估算，该研究进行了空间分析，以检测主要中心是否拥有足够多的人口，从而需要其他村庄的剩余粮食，或者它们是否可能是自治的，但由于它们位于贸易轴上，这是偶然的。在耕地表面收集文物也可以了解财富和经济专业化是如何分布的，因为进口的精美陶瓷和冶金碎屑可以表明富人居住的地方，以及青铜生产的地方。然而，挖掘工作对中心和外围的差异给出了最明确的答案。冶金窑、类似建筑的房屋、表明相似饮食习惯的食物残渣，以及在周边遗址发现的相当的青铜器，这些都有力地表明，这些社会中的个人，虽然死后很富有，但在生活中或多或少在政治上是平等的。人类学知识的结果可能是，政治分层和巨大的财富差异不一定同时发生。尽管大匈牙利平原作为西欧和巴尔干半岛与西亚之间的门户具有重要意义，但在东欧集团时期，对学术交流的限制扼杀了解决老问题的新方法。在匈牙利，考古项目的国际合作仍然非常罕见，该项目利用这个机会在研究中传递地理信息系统等专业工具。当地学生、考古学家和专家将参与这些挖掘和数据恢复工作，美国研究生也将参与其中，研究结果将在匈牙利语和英语期刊上发表。保护文化遗产也使该项目成为优先事项；与匈牙利主要的青铜时代遗址不同，这些遗址在景观上大而明显，这些外围遗址没有受到保护，并受到农业工程和城市扩张的影响。

Under the supervision of Dr. John M. O'Shea, Paul Duffy will investigate the potential co-existence of social stratification and economic specialization in Middle Bronze Age Hungary (2400 -1400 BC). For much of Bronze Age Europe, archaeologists claim that bronze production was centralized and coordinated by chiefdoms, regional political hierarchies with the obligatory transfer of resources from commoners to an elite. Because of wealthy burials and metal production, the centers of these Bronze Age societies are often assumed to be chiefly villages but outlying sites, the presumed settlements of commoners, are seldom systematically investigated. Mr. Duffy's research will focus regional analysis and excavation on several outlying sites in Eastern Hungary to clarify differences in food and craft production and consumption between centers and peripheries. The transition from tribal societies with no real political stratification to societies in which rank and political power are hereditary is one of the most fundamental in all of human history. Yet the parameters relevant to this change, such as population, control over metal sources, and differences in consumption, must be investigated independently in order to understand why and how this transformation takes place. This project takes a multi-pronged approach to a transitional Eastern Hungarian case, which contains some elements generally associated with stratification but not others. The Great Hungarian Plain is a fertile zone beneath the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, an area rich in copper sources and a trade axis in which the first domestic horses circulated from the East. Using land productivity estimates, the research carries out a spatial analysis to detect whether the major centers had populations large enough to have required the food surplus of other villages, or whether they could have been autonomous, but fortuitous because of their location on a trade axis. Collecting artifacts on the surface of plowed fields can also inform how wealth and economic specialization were distributed, as imported and fine ceramics and metallurgical debris can suggest where wealthy individuals lived, and where bronze production took place. Excavation, however, yields the most definitive answers on differences between centers and peripheries. Locating metallurgical kilns, houses constructed with similar architecture, food debris indicating a comparable diet, and equivalent bronzes on the peripheral sites could strongly suggest that individuals in these societies, while wealthy in death, were more or less politically equal during life. The consequence for anthropological knowledge could be that political stratification and great differences in wealth do not have to co-occur. Despite the importance of the Great Hungarian Plain as a gateway between Western Europe and the Balkans from Western Asia, restrictions on scholarly exchange during the lifetime of the Eastern Bloc stifled new approaches to old problems. International collaboration on archaeological projects is still extremely rare in Hungary, and this project uses the opportunity to pass on specialized tools such as Geographic Information Systems in research. Local students, archaeologists, and specialists will participate in these excavations and data recovery, as will American graduate students, with results published in both Hungarian and English language journals. Protection of cultural heritage also makes this project a priority; unlike the principle Hungarian Bronze Age sites, which are large and obvious on the landscape, these peripheral sites are unprotected and suffer from agricultural works and urban expansion.