Reinventing the Wheel: Discovering the Late Copper Age in Hungary, Again

Summary

At about 3500 BC, a seemingly intrusive population of burial mound (kurgan) builders undertook a long-term series of migrations that resulted in the disruption of settlement patterns and social structures throughout eastern and central Europe. This phenomenon coincided with the emergence of the expansive and geographically homogeneous Baden material culture. From the 1960s to the 1990s, a series of archaeologists investigated the relationship between kurgan builders and Baden in the Carpathian Basin at various geographic scales. They questioned whether the Baden tradition was adopted by indigenous populations, if the tradition arrived with people via migration, and what role, if any, kurgan builders played in the emergence of Baden. The research presented in this paper is a reassessment and continuation of work done by researchers such as Maria Gimbutas and Andrew Sherratt, developed within the context of long-term, international, collaborative projects that address broad anthropological and archaeological issues related to social organization and hereditary inequality. Ultimately, I conclude that the shift in material cultural witnessed during the Late Copper Age on the Great Hungarian Plain is consistent with models of social change developed by other presenters in this session.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21803