Early Village Social Dynamics: Prehistoric Settlement Nucleation on the Great Hungarian Plain

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。威廉·帕金森和理查德·耶克斯博士将与一个国际同事团队合作，在匈牙利东南部进行三个季节的多学科实地研究。该团队汇集了美国、匈牙利、希腊和塞尔维亚的考古学、古植物学、考古动物学、地球物理学、土壤化学和地貌学专家，研究了中欧喀尔巴阡盆地内大匈牙利平原Körös地区城市前定居点的发展。具体来说，该团队将研究新石器时代中晚期（公元前5300 - 4700 cal）农业村庄考古中揭示的聚落核和人口聚集的过程。该项目考察了喀尔巴阡盆地在农业建立近一千年后发生的社会经济组织和定居模式的巨大变化。这些变化包括自然和文化过程，这些过程导致了紧凑的、有核的、强化的村庄的建立，这些村庄通过增加而成长为“故事”（跨越几个世纪的分层职业的人工土丘，由分层的白条和涂抹结构、填充特征和埋葬组成）。这个多学科研究项目在匈牙利Sebes-Körös地区的几个新石器时代遗址进行，将测试聚落聚集和成核的模型，这些模型可用于探索世界其他地方类似的社会过程。研究的主要目的是检验有核农业村庄出现的解释模型，这些模型强调不同的因果因素（例如，环境变化、新的畜牧业做法、仪式和战争的加剧、人口转变）。这个多学科的国际小组将在匈牙利Sebes-Körös地区的两个遗址和当代“扁平”遗址（非遗址）进行系统的调查。一个旨在重建该地区全新世中期水文的地貌和土壤取样项目也将进行。大多数数据恢复和分析将在匈牙利进行，只有一些用于破坏性分析的样本将被带回美国。数据输入和工件处理、清洁和分类将每天在Vésztõ的研究设施进行。对古代村落社会成核的研究有助于从人类学角度更广泛地理解自然和文化过程，这些过程为许多其他社会变化奠定了基础，包括城市化的出现、领土主义以及经济和政治复杂性的发展。通过评估独立的证据线，将有可能展示环境、生态和社会因素如何导致聚落核化，并最终发展为大型城市中心。对大匈牙利平原上这一长期过程的调查将有助于对自治村或部落社会内部的社会和结构动态的总体理解，这些动态推动和拉动了他们最终走向社会分层、等级组织和城市化。拟议的研究将有助于人类学知识和社会理论，促进美国和东欧学者之间的国际合作，并使数据集和研究结果在公开讲座、科学期刊、网站和专著中广泛提供。它将增加对人类过去的技术和科学理解，并展示当前的社会问题可能是如何起源的。

With National Science Foundation support Drs. William Parkinson and Dr. Richard Yerkes will work with an international team of colleagues to conduct three seasons of multi-disciplinary field research in southeastern Hungary. The team brings together U.S., Hungarian, Greek, and Serbian specialists in archaeology, paleo-botany, archaeo-zoology, geophysics, soil chemistry, and geomorphology to examine the development of pre-urban settlements in the Körös Region of the Great Hungarian Plain within the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe. Specifically, the team will examine the process of settlement nucleation and population aggregation as revealed in the archaeology of agricultural villages during the Middle and Late Neolithic (5,300-4,700 cal BC). The project examines dramatic changes in socio-economic organization and settlement patterns that occurred nearly a thousand years after farming was established in the Carpathian Basin. These changes include natural and cultural processes that led to the establishment of compact, nucleated, fortified, villages that grew by accretion into 'tells' (artificial mounds of stratified occupations that spanned several centuries and consist of layers of leveled wattle-and-daub structures, filled-in features, and burials). This multi-disciplinary research project at several Neolithic sites in the Sebes-Körös region, Hungary will test models of settlement aggregation and nucleation that can be used to explore similar social processes elsewhere in the world.The main research objective is to test explanatory models for the emergence of nucleated agricultural villages that emphasize different causal factors (e.g., environmental changes, new animal husbandry practices, intensification of ritual and warfare, demographic transformation). The multi-disciplinary, international team will conduct systematic investigations at two tells and contemporary "flat" (non-tell) sites in the Sebes-Körös Region of Hungary. A geomorphological and soil coring program aimed at reconstructing the mid-Holocene hydrology of the region will also be conducted. Most data recovery and analysis will occur in Hungary, with only some samples for destructive analysis being brought back to the U.S. Data entry and artifact processing, cleaning, and sorting will occur daily at the research facility in Vésztõ.This study of nucleation in ancient village societies contributes to a broader anthropological understanding of the natural and cultural processes that laid the foundation for many other social changes, including the emergence of urbanization, territorialism and the development of economic and political complexity. By assessing independent lines of evidence, it will be possible to demonstrate how environmental, ecological, and social factors resulted in settlement nucleation, and eventually the development of large urban centers. Investigations of this long-term process on the Great Hungarian Plain will contribute to a general understanding of the social and structural dynamics within autonomous village or tribal societies that pushed and pulled them eventually toward social stratification, hierarchical organization, and urbanization. The proposed research will contribute to anthropological knowledge and social theory, advance international collaboration between American and East European scholars, and make datasets and research results widely available in public lectures, scientific journals, websites, and a monograph. It will increase technological and scientific understanding of the human past, and demonstrate how current social problems may have originated.