The social organization of Early Copper Age tribes on the Great Hungarian Plain.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the topic of tribal social organization using archaeological data from prehistoric eastern Hungary. In order to model long-term changes in middle-range or tribal social systems, it is necessary to assume a theoretical perspective that emphasizes patterned variability in the structural characteristics of tribal systems. By combining this theoretical perspective with a methodological approach that concentrates upon two analytical dimensions---integration and interaction---it becomes possible to delineate precisely those elements of a social system that change over time, and those that do not. This methodology is applied to the Late Neolithic and Early Copper Age of the Great Hungarian Plain using spatial and ceramic data from a 2,000 km<super> 2</super> study area in the Koros River Valley, in eastern Hungary. Spatial data relating to site location and size, are employed for assessing the size, scale, and organization of the integrative units throughout the study area. The ceramic data, which derive from both excavated and survey contexts, are used in a complementary fashion to assess the degree of interaction that occurred throughout the area during the Early Copper Age. The results of these analyses suggest that social organization within the region was more complexly-integrated and that interaction occurred more intensively over smaller, spatially-discrete, areas during the Late Neolithic. By the Early Copper Age, this pattern gave way to a more loosely-integrated system within which interaction occurred more generally across the settlements of the region. These changes are associated with an increased reliance upon domestic cattle, and an increased degree of residential mobility. The social changes that mark the beginning of the Copper Age in the region are best understood as having occurred within a flexible social structure that allowed different social patterns to be expressed, 'actualized', given different social and environmental conditions. This tendency---of tribal societies to exhibit dramatically different social patterns when viewed over the long term perspective available through the archaeological record---can be found both to repeat itself throughout the prehistory of the region and in different ethnographic contexts, suggesting that it may itself be a criterion useful for defining tribal societies.