Preliminary Analysis of Landscape – Social Complexity Relationship Changes from Neolithic to Bronze Age in South Carpathian Basin

Summary

The onset of the Early Bronze Age saw increasing degrees of social inequality and institutionalized leadership in most of Europe. In the Carpathian Basin these changes are most evident in shifts in burial practices and settlements. This research aims to see if these changes are reflected in regional settlement patterns by applying spatial analyses to two periods of a regional settlement dataset. I will examine the landscape and the environmental characteristics of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements and their respective catchments and compare the settlement pattern to a random distribution to determine the extent to which environmental and sociopolitical concerns shaped human settlement. Shifts in demographic focus from Neolithic tell settlements to Early Bronze Age cemeteries will be tested by examining network properties of ‘centrality’, and the emergence of new elite controlled trade by looking at the ‘betweeness’ of the settlement pattern. The importance of warfare during the two periods will be compared by examining defensive features like buffers zones or the utilization of less accessible areas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20367