Heterogeneity and Complexity in Bronze Age Europe: Divergence of Social Trajectories on the Great Hungarian Plain

在Paul Duffy博士和William Parkinson博士的指导下，来自国家科学基金会的资金将支持匈牙利东部一个可追溯到青铜时代中期（公元前2100 - 1400年）的不寻常墓地人口的挖掘和分析。在青铜器时代，欧洲由众多的社会组成，通过贸易、旅行和移民联系在一起。在非洲大陆的大部分地区，学者们认为，经济不平等和世袭职位首次出现，区域政治等级制度蓬勃发展。相比之下，匈牙利东部的青铜时代文化在社会复杂性方面经历了重大转变，但社会不平等却没有相应增加。尽管对青铜时代欧洲的研究主要集中在等级制度在复杂社会中的出现和运作方式上，但对农业和冶金生产加强但社会不平等却没有加强的地区却知之甚少。该项目提供了一个机会，研究人口密度、冶金生产和贸易如何在权力和控制权不落入少数人手中的情况下大幅增加。该墓地属于匈牙利大平原的奥托马尼文化，分析结果将与邻近地区的墓地进行比较。一个国际多学科小组将在青铜时代墓地进行系统调查，研究丧葬习俗、财富分配、移民模式以及其成员参与宏观区域贸易的情况。将挖掘出30到40个人类墓葬--可能是土葬、骨灰盒火化和骨灰散落的墓葬。在这个墓地的身体和健康，饮食和个人在它的区域起源的治疗将描述基于骨骼学和同位素分析。将记录精细陶瓷的形式、风格和起源，并研究青铜和黄金等外贸物品的分布。这项研究的学术价值将是检验长途贸易和外国意识形态对地区政治等级制度的出现至关重要的观点。这项拟议的研究广泛影响了长期存在的人类学关于非国家社会社会变异性的争论，并汇集了来自加拿大、美国、匈牙利和希腊的专家，为美国和匈牙利的学生提供主要的培训。 除了解决重要的理论问题外，还将采用一些遥感和地质考古技术来加强挖掘规划，更广泛地了解墓地的使用情况，并推动使用非侵入性技术来探测坟墓和其他太平间特征。这几个独立的证据线的组合来描述人和物体的流动性在太平间的情况下，将提供关键信息的贸易和人口的变化，在青铜时代的欧洲社会变革的基础，并提供洞察世界各地观察到的社会复杂性的范围。

Under the direction of Dr. Paul Duffy and Dr. William Parkinson, funding from the National Science Foundation will support the excavation and analysis of an unusual cemetery population in Eastern Hungary dating to the Middle Bronze Age (2100 - 1400 BC). During the Bronze Age, Europe comprised a plethora of societies connected through trade, travel, and migration. In most parts of the continent, scholars believe that economic inequalities and hereditary offices emerged for the first time and regional political hierarchy flourished. In contrast, the Bronze Age cultures of Eastern Hungary are known to have undergone significant transformations in social complexity without corresponding increases in social inequality. Although studies of Bronze Age Europe have focused on the way in which hierarchy emerged and operated in complex societies, little is known of areas where agricultural and metallurgical production intensified but social inequality did not. This project offers an opportunity to study how population density, metallurgical production, and trade can substantially increase without power and control falling into the hands of a minority.The cemetery in question belongs to the Otomani culture of the Great Hungarian Plain, and the results of the analysis will be compared to cemeteries in neighboring areas. An international, multi-disciplinary team will conduct systematic investigations at the Bronze Age cemetery, examining the funerary customs, distribution of wealth, patterns of migration, and participation in macro-regional trade of its members. Thirty to forty human burials - likely inhumation, urn cremation, and scattered ash burials - will be excavated. The treatment of the body in this cemetery and the health, diet, and regional origin of individuals within it will be described based on osteological and isotopic analyses. The form, style, and origin of fine ceramics will be recorded, and the distribution of foreign trade items such as bronze and gold will be studied. The intellectual merit of this research will be to test the idea that long-distance trade and foreign ideologies were pivotal to the emergence of regional political hierarchies. The proposed research broadly impacts long-standing anthropological debates over social variability in non-state societies and brings together specialists from Canada, the United States, Hungary, and Greece to provide major training benefits for American and Hungarian students. In addition to addressing important theoretical concerns, a number of remote sensing and geoarchaeological techniques will be employed to enhance excavation planning, generate a broader picture of cemetery use, and advance the use of non-intrusive technologies for the detection of graves and other mortuary features. This combination of several independent lines of evidence to describe the mobility of people and objects in mortuary contexts will provide critical information about the trade and population shifts underlying social transformations in Bronze Age Europe, and offer insights into the range of social complexity observed worldwide.