Vajk Szeverényi

Archaeological research is currently redefining how large-scale changes occurred in prehistoric times. In addition to the long-standing theoretical dichotomy between 'cultural transmission' and 'demic diffusion', many alternative models borrowed from sociology can be used to explain the spread of innovations. The emergence of urnfields in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe is certainly one of these large-scale phenomena; its wide distribution has been traditionally emphasized by the use of the general term Urnenfelderkultur/zeit (starting around 1300 BC). Thanks to new evidence, we are now able to draw a more comprehensive picture, which shows a variety of regional responses to the introduction of the new funerary custom. The earliest 'urnfields' can be identified in central Hungary, among the tell communities of the late Nagyrév/Vatya Culture, around 2000 BC. From the nineteenth century BC onwards, the urnfield model is documented among communities in northeastern Serbia, south of the Iron Gates. During the subsequent collapse of the tell system, around 1500 BC, the urnfield model spread into some of the neighbouring regions. The adoption, however, appears more radical in the southern Po plain, as well as in the Sava/Drava/Lower Tisza plains, while in Lower Austria, Transdanubia and in the northern Po plain it seems more gradual and appears to have been subject to processes of syncretism/hybridization with traditional rites. Other areas seem to reject the novelty, at least until the latest phases of the Bronze Age. We argue that a possible explanation for these varied responses relates to the degree of interconnectedness and homophily among communities in the previous phases.

Bár írásos emlékeket nem ismerünk a bronzkor időszakából, a Kárpát-medencét érintő későbbi (pl. kora középkori) népvándorlásokra vonatkozó források ismeretében gyakran a bronzkor változásait is új népek betelepüléséhez, kisebb-nagyobb migrációkhoz kötötte a régészeti kutatás. Az utóbbi két évtizedben újra előtérbe került a történelem előtti időkben feltételezhető eurázsiai vándorlások nyomainak azonosítása, a kutatásba immár más tudományágak, többek között az izotóp-geokémia vagy az archeogenetika eredményeit is bevonva. Az MTA Lendület program támogatásával 2015-ben elindult kutatási projekt a mai Magyarországon feltárt települések, temetkezések és az innen előkerült használati tárgyak vizsgálatát tűzte ki céljául. A hazai bronzkor kutatásában eddig nem alkalmazott, 21. századi multidiszciplináris módszerek együttes használatával kerestünk választ a nagy piramisok építői és a mükénéi aknasírokba temetett görög hősök korában térségünkben letelepedett közösségek emlékanyagában megfig...

The present paper is a short review of Middle Bronze Age Füzesabony style pottery from the northeastern part of the Carpathian Basin. We briefl y sketch research history, main cultural features, vessel forms, decorative motifs and manufacturing technology through petrographic analysis. Füzesabony pottery is identifi ed as one of the most flamboyantly decorated and formed ceramic style of the Bronze Age in Europe. Even though vessel shapes and decorations show high skill and elaboration, the raw materials of these vessels do not seem to be standardised. Raw materials show high variability and there is no correlation between vessel types/forms and choices in particular raw materials. In the light of this, there seems to be no centralisation in the organisation of ceramic production and even the most elaborately decorated and burnished vessels were manufactured locally by skilled, most probably specialised potters both for everyday purposes and special occasions.

During the past two decades, the study of human remains from prehistoric settlements has gained new momentum in Hungary. The phenomenon of burials within settlements can be observed in many phases but was perhaps most prominent during the Copper and Bronze Ages. Thanks to the large-scale rescue excavations of the last few decades, our database of relevant material has increased considerably, shedding new light on previously excavated assemblages as well.
In our paper, we present burials from two Middle Bronze Age settlements in Hungary that yielded a series of skeletons and human remains, some of which showed traces of violence and perimortem trauma. We establish that at both sites the human depositions showed significant variability, indicating diverse cultural practices. A number of characteristics of these »mass graves« support the hypothesis that they may have been associated with some form of sacrifice and ritual violence, rather than warfare or other causes of death. Chronological data indicate a prolonged tradition of series of ritual acts, sacrifices, and possibly the secondary manipulation of human bodies.

ABSTRACT - The connections between the plains of the Po and the
Danube during the Bronze Age seen through the spread of the ‘urnfield
model’ - The adoption of a new funerary ritual denotes an important
change in society, although it can be difficult to identify the triggers. In the past,
theories such as that of Luigi Pigorini on the origin of the Terramare culture, the
concept of mass migration was used as the central explanation. In the 20th century,
alternative approaches have emphasized the role of local developments and
ideological change in response to ‘global’ macro-trends.
The massive introduction of urn cremation, which replaced the inhumation burial
that prevailed in previous periods, marks the beginning of the Urnfield Period.
Traditionally, this change has been dated to around 1300/1200 BC, the beginning
of Bronze Age D/Hallstatt A1 (Bz D/Ha A1), in Central Europe. In the light of recent
archaeological research, however, it appears that the ‘urnfield model’, which
originally developed within the territory of the tells in modern-day Hungary, was
introduced during the 15th century BC (Bz B2/C) - at least one century before the
‘Urnenfelderzeit’- in several areas between the Danube and the Po plains. However,
the archaeological record shows a wide spectrum of local attitudes towards
the spreading novelty, ranging from radical acceptance, to hybridization and rejection.
Our aim is to highlight this variability in Hungary, Lower Austria, western
and central Balkans and to connect this evidence with the Terramare area.

During the past few decades, the archaeological analysis of gender has gone through tremendous theoretical and methodological development. However, although gender relations are fundamental to the social life of any community, Hungarian archaeology only took its initial steps in the archaeology of gender relatively recently, in keeping with several other east central European research traditions. Bearing in mind the pitfalls of such a study, we will present several case studies based on the analysis of burials between the Neolithic and the end of the Iron Age and of a series of representations from the Late Iron Age and the Early Roman period. We ask what the archaeological record can tell us about the range of femininity and masculinity by analysing the life cycle of men and women, examining data concerning the social position of children, their transition into adulthood, labour division and craft specialisation, the transition into mothers or warriors, etc. Our aim is to highlight the similarities and differences in how femininity and masculinity were created using material culture and other media in these societies.

The Bronze Age Research group of the Institute of Archaeology of the Research Centre for the Humanities at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has for years been conducting research on the Danube Valley south of Budapest. We have performed non-invasive investigations into several archaeological sites in the Benta Valley to the west of the Danube, followed by excavations with the support of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Our micro-regional work investigating the settlement relationships that can be dated to the period of the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1500 B.C.) has been given new impetus by a grant received from the National Cultural Fund of Hungary in 2014. We also have research programs supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund launched at the beginning of the year, which are investigating Early and Middle Bronze Age burials. Within the framework of the project we are studying an important site at the town of Érd in the Benta Valley, where in several pits partial or complete human skeletons have been discovered, and in four cases multiple burials. Our goal is to perform as comprehensive an examination as possible into the burials and the settlements of varying functions and patterns.

The Bronze Age in Hungary witnessed significant social transformations
in the Carpathian Basin and more specifically in Hungary. The aim of this paper is to present the visible and invisible traces of social inequalities through several EBA and MBA case studies from Hungary: the investigation of the system of multiple tiered settlement networks, the differentiation of social status manifested in burial rites, and the study of the deposition of metal objects in hoards. Based on the analyses of the above-mentioned factors the authors seek answers to the questions of how inequality emerged, what kind of elites can be envisaged in this period, and what kinds of regional differences can be observed in this respect in Bronze Age Hungary.

The increasing expansion of the use of cremation rituals and the appearance of the “urnfields”, including hundreds, if not thousands of burials are among the major transformations affecting Europe in the second millennium BC. In Italy, the first large cremation necropolises of this kind date back to a late stage of the Middle Bronze Age (mid 16-15th century BC) the so-called “transitional period” from inhumation to cremation) and are concentrated in the geographic area of the Terramare. South of the Po River, the cremation ritual is the unique burial custom (eg. Casinalbo, Montata, Copezzato, Beneceto, etc.), while to the north we observe the use of biritualism (eg. Olmo di Nogara, Scalvinetto, Franzine Nuove, Bovolone, etc.), a practice that would almost be completely replaced by the use of cremation.
In Austria, the cemetery of Pitten, used between the early Middle Bronze Age to the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (mid 16th to mid 13th century BC), details how the transition to cremation unfolds in a small community south of the river Danube. Burial forms show a considerate element of variability and experimentation as the primary mode of burial shifted from inhumation to cremation. At Pitten, cremations were, at first, staged to create similarities to inhumation burials, before urn burial became common.
Since the dawn of Italian prehistoric studies, the adoption of a funerary custom so discordant with traditions of inhumation was one of the main arguments in support of migration theories from the Danube-Carpathian basin, which was considered one of the nuclei of the origin of Terramare civilization. However, according to the latest dating, the phenomenon of the urnfields and biritual necropolises in the areas surrounding the middle reaches of the Danube was established centuries ahead of the Po Valley. Early experimentations of cremating human remains are documented at least from the initial phases of the 3rd millennium BC in the Carpathian Basin, as also in Italy, but these are mostly small funerary areas, characterised by isolated graves or groups of a few graves, sometimes associated to inhumations. Cemeteries of the Bell Beaker
period (26-22th century BC) contained hundreds of graves, indicating a change to large communal burial places with biritual burial practice. Again, an experimental phase of the introduction of cremation (with in situ cremation in the burial pit) can be observed in several cases during the beginning of the second millennium BC (20-18th century BC). After that cremation became the dominant burial tradition until the end of the Middle Bronze Age (1500/1450 BC) in certain parts of the Carpathian Basin, e.g. applied by communities using Encrusted Pottery, and Vatya and Hatvan style material, however other parts of the region (using Maros and Füzesabony/Otomani style material) are characterized by inhumations. During the early Late Bronze Age (from mid 16th century BC, contemporary with the Pitten cemetery) the use of biritualism can be observed, shifting to the dominance of cremation, similarly to Austrian and Italian regions.
Contacts between the region of the Po and Danube are already documented from the Early Bronze Age (see eg. Gáta/Wieselburg material in eastern Austria and western Hungary, as well as Canar and Arano Cellore), but it still does not seem possible to link the appearance of the urnfields in Italy to a change in population, due to mass migration.
The phenomenon, especially as regards the large number and the long duration of the use of the necropolises, is rather closely related to the process of the stabilization of the settlements, the reorganization of agricultural production, and the sharp increase in population. In other words, there was a social reorganization and economic development of communities living in the Po Valley, which appear in many ways similar to the economic and social demographics of the Danube. From this perspective, the transformation of social order may not have been separated from the radical changes in religious views expressed by the funerary ritual. This was observed by several authors as the passage from inhumations to cremation where it would be accompanied by the emergence of new beliefs and representations of the afterlife, and linked to the relationship with a divine sphere that was transcendent and immaterial, in which the deceased could rise through the sacrifice of the materiality of the body during cremation.
The intent of this paper is to highlight similarities and differences between cremation and bi-ritual necropolises of the Italian Po Valley with the regions that are now Austria and Hungary, using a consistent set of archaeological and anthropological data. The stimulus for this debate stems from recent issues concerning significant funerary contexts, along with the role of patterns seen in funeral practices documented between the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in the Danube-Carpathian basin. Particular attention will be given to the chronology of the cemeteries, their relationship to the settlements, the internal organization of burial space and demography, in addition to ritual practices and social aspects recognizable from the pyre / grave good distribution and other indicators.

The Bronze Age of Eurasia (around 3000-1000 BC) was a period of major cultural changes. However, there is debate about whether these changes resulted from the circulation of ideas or from human migrations, potentially also facilitating the spread of languages and certain phenotypic traits. We investigated this by using new, improved methods to sequence low-coverage genomes from 101 ancient humans from across Eurasia. We show that the Bronze Age was a highly dynamic period involving large-scale population migrations and replacements, responsible for shaping major parts of present-day demographic structure in both Europe and Asia. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesized spread of Indo-European languages during the Early Bronze Age. We also demonstrate that light skin pigmentation in Europeans was already present at high frequency in the Bronze Age, but not lactose tolerance, indicating a more recent onset of positive selection on lactose tolerance than previously thought.

Vajk Szeverényi, Anna Priskin, Péter Czukor, Andrea Torma, Anikó Tóth

Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated that the
southern part of the Great Pannonian Plain can
be characterized by the emergence of a series
of massive fortified settlements around 1300–
1100 BC. This substantial change in settlement
patterns indicates important social and economic
transformations in the region, the nature
of which, however, is still unknown. Furthermore,
the function of these settlements is
debated to some degree as they have not yet
yielded substantial domestic remains (houses)
so that their interpretations as refugia or ritual
centres is also possible. We address this issue
through the analysis of the remains of the subsistence
economy from Csanádpalota-Földvár,
Southeast Hungary. We present the preliminary
results of the palaeobotanical and archaeozoological
analyses, complemented with the study
of agricultural macrolithic implements. The
results are then compared to those from other
contemporary sites in the Carpathian Basin
and Southeast Europe. The exploitation of animals
follows a general Bronze Age pattern in
the region. Plant cultivation shows more diversity
in the period. It seems that the practices at
Csanádpalota follow wider European trends in
some aspects, whereas they diverge considerably
in others. Both types of remains as well as
macrolithic tools confirm the presence of special
depositions at the site that were probably
the result of ritual activities.

The Bronze Age of Eurasia (c. 3,000-1,000 years BC) was a period of major cultural changes accompanying the transition from hunting-gathering and farming into early urban civilization. It remains debated how these transitions shaped the distribution of the human populations. To investigate this we used new methodological improvements to sequence low coverage genomes from 101 ancient humans from across Eurasia, covering the entire Bronze Age including the late Neolithic and the Iron Age. We show that around 3,000 BC, Europe and Central Asia receive a major genetic input from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe through people related to the Yamnaya culture, resulting in the formation of the Corded Ware Culture in Europe and the Afanasievo Culture in Central Asia. A thousand years later, migrations from Europe into Central Asia, gives rise to the Sintashta and Andronovo Cultures. During later Bronze Age, the European-derived populations in Asia are gradually replaced by multi-ethnic cultures.

Introduction

  The proceedings before us, comprised of seven papers, are inspired by the subject of the almost completed CRAFTER programme Creative Europe project. The full title of the project is Crafting Europe in the Bronze Age and Today, and in brief, the idea was to draw inspiration from Europe’s Bronze Age pottery to help revive modern-day artisanship. The project targets the appreciation of Europe's cultural heritage as a shared resource and the reinforcement of a sense of belonging to a common European space. In particular, it hopes to make cultural heritage a source of inspiration for contemporary creation and innovation and strengthen the interaction between this sector and other cultural and creative sectors. The main framework of the project was the idea that four potters from Spain, Germany, Hungary, and Serbia will draw on their skills to (re)create ceramic vessels representative of some of the most outstanding Bronze Age cultures of Europe: El Argar (southeast Spain), Únětice (Central Europe), Füzesabony (eastern Hungary) and Vatin (Serbia).
  The papers published within these proceedings are not strictly related to the project itself, but the problems of Bronze Age pottery in Europe in general. The problems discussed in the presented papers and the inspirations are drawn from the CRAFTER project. The original idea was to delve into the content of the pottery and define its composition and quality. These are, in fact, the elements responsible for the final appearance of the ceramic vessel and its function. Considering that out of four editors, two have presented papers within the proceedings, I have been honoured to write this short introduction on their significance and essence. The thread that connects all of the papers, although their concepts do not seem similar at the first glance, since some of the papers are dwelling on interdisciplinarity while others deal with certain chronological and cultural-historical problems, is that the primary analytical material in all of the papers is Bronze Age pottery, from beyond the Pyrenees, across Central Europe, to the Balkans, which is not unexpected considering that a Serbian institution was credited for publishing. The positive aspect is that the pottery is Crafting pottery in Bronze Age Europe: the archaeological background of the CRAFTER project discussed in a manner uncommon for archaeology, while on the other hand pottery studies have been more and more neglected in the past few decades, as such subjects are considered as passé in archaeology. The ever-rising number of specializations and specialists have pushed the pottery and potters into an undeserved corner, even though without such a set of analytic work the past can not be completely and adequately perceived.
  The pottery is “slow-moving”. It changes, circulates, and exchanges at a slow pace and it enables the perception of the beginning, development, decadence, and the end of a certain society. The pottery has regional character and reflects the primary contacts, the esthetics of a community, and the inspiration of the artist. Certainly, this implies to prehistoric pottery and communities which do not function within centralized social systems, such as the Bronze Age beyond Mediterranean Europe, which is indeed in the focus of these proceedings. With the appearance of the potter’s wheel, the production and distribution of pottery merge with industry and economy, and at that moment a puzzle of a small man from the past loses a piece. A piece without which we are unable to perceive small communities through such an important, fruitful, and data-rich object such as pottery and which we often tend to neglect as a discipline. In order to identify the contacts, exchange, and trade or reconstruct the communication routes in past, we often reach to the so-called luxurious artifacts: metals, amber, glass, and artisan objects… Likewise, pottery could narrate a story of one meal, one house, one potter, one village, or one community in the past, which is, like it or not, a fact that will make the interdisciplinary and diverse analyses of prehistoric pottery one of the primary archaeological methods.

Vojislav Filipović
Institute of Archaeology, Belgrade

Archaeology is well equipped to study history either as sequences of transformative events, or as a continuous process of everyday life where time serves as a function of cultural persistence. On a macro-scale, sweeping reconfiguration of human-material relations marked by events and interpreted as cultural change have been at the center of archaeological practice since the first descriptions of 'cultures' as convenient analytical and spatio-temporal units for the analysis of past societies in the early 20 th century. Wars, migrations, far-reaching effects of economic innovations have been considered the primary motors and signatures of change at the center of archaeological narratives, marked by an overwhelming focus on socioeconomic and political systems. Alternatively, the archaeology of everyday life to study the material residues of cumulative and repetitive action became a central topic of archaeological practice in the 1980's. Within narratives of everyday life, emphasis shifted to the mundane, to the multivocality and multidirectionality. Corresponding to the decreasing scale of analysis and interpretive context, the struggle became to present the ways in which people's repetitive day-today practices mattered and figured into great chains of historical events. With no attention paid to their complementary character, these approaches developed to involve different interpretative strategies, necessitate different narrative modes, rely on different properties or analytical assessment of material evidence, require different methodologies, and are linked to different spatio-temporal scales.

Recent decades in archaeological theory and practice witnessed increased attention on the complexities of mortuary practice. Breaking from characterizations of burial assemblages as normative and reflexive representations of social and biological facts, more emphasis has been given to idiosyncratic facets of the mortuary domain in an attempt to highlight human agency and the politics of death. In our perspective, idiosyncratic mortuary behaviour can materialize through a wide range of deposits from ‘mass graves’ to the minute, but significant, differences observed between the burial assemblages within a cemetery. However, such variability in mortuary practice often remains viewed through the lens of perceived cultural logic and grammar by merely introducing more nuanced, but still mostly non-negotiable biosocial categories—such as age-at-death, genetic variability, etc.—into the interpretative mix. Although it is undeniable that certain aspects of mortuary practice are governed by strict cultural rules and remain remarkably consistent over time and space, there are truly idiosyncratic, and contingent elements of funerary behaviour that can shed light on contemporary politics. Moving beyond the basic comparative and statistical assessment of mortuary assemblages, understanding idiosyncratic, ‘deviant’ or unorthodox elements and instances of funerary practice require different approaches, such as microarchaeology and archaeothanatology. We invite papers to our session that investigate such ‘non-normative’ mortuary behaviour in any region and period and seek to make sense of such rituals and political acts through their analysis.

Recent decades in archaeological theory and practice witnessed increased attention on the complexities of mortuary practice. Breaking from characterizations of burial assemblages as normative and reflexive representations of social and biological facts, more emphasis has been given to idiosyncratic facets of the mortuary domain in an attempt to highlight human agency and the politics of death. In our perspective, idiosyncratic mortuary behaviour can materialize through a wide range of deposits from ‘mass graves’ to the minute, but significant, differences observed between the burial assemblages within a cemetery. However, such variability in mortuary practice often remains viewed through the lens of perceived cultural logic and grammar by merely introducing more nuanced, but still mostly non-negotiable biosocial categories—such as age-at-death, genetic variability, etc.—into the interpretative mix. Although it is undeniable that certain aspects of mortuary practice are governed by strict cultural rules and remain remarkably consistent over time and space, there are truly idiosyncratic, and contingent elements of funerary behaviour that can shed light on contemporary politics. Moving beyond the basic comparative and statistical assessment of mortuary assemblages, understanding idiosyncratic, ‘deviant’ or unorthodox elements and instances of funerary practice require different approaches, such as microarchaeology and archaeothanatology. We invite papers to our session that investigate such ‘non-normative’ mortuary behaviour in any region and period and seek to make sense of such rituals and political acts through their analysis.

Archaeology is well equipped to study history either as sequences of transformative events, or as a continuous process of everyday life where time serves as a function of cultural persistence. On a macro-scale, sweeping reconfiguration of human-material relations marked by events and interpreted as cultural change have been at the center of archaeological practice since the first descriptions of 'cultures' as convenient analytical and spatio-temporal units for the analysis of past societies in the early 20 th century. Wars, migrations, far-reaching effects of economic innovations have been considered the primary motors and signatures of change at the center of archaeological narratives, marked by an overwhelming focus on socioeconomic and political systems. Alternatively, the archaeology of everyday life to study the material residues of cumulative and repetitive action became a central topic of archaeological practice in the 1980's. Within narratives of everyday life, emphasis shifted to the mundane, to the multivocality and multidirectionality. Corresponding to the decreasing scale of analysis and interpretive context, the struggle became to present the ways in which people's repetitive day-today practices mattered and figured into great chains of historical events. With no attention paid to their complementary character, these approaches developed to involve different interpretative strategies, necessitate different narrative modes, rely on different properties or analytical assessment of material evidence, require different methodologies, and are linked to different spatio-temporal scales.