A Bioarchaeological Approach to Contested Mountain Landscapes in Transylvania’s Golden Quadrangle

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper, we introduce the agenda for the session Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes. Mountains and high altitude areas are ideal spaces where archaeologists can examine the relationship between social action and the environment. As this session will show, the study of human remains must be situated with a holistic bioarchaeological approach to life and death in order to understand the dynamic relationships between people and mountain and highland landscapes. We highlight one such approach through a case study of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology in the Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania (Romania). The Apuseni Mountains are home to the richest gold and copper deposits in Europe; key resources that fueled the development of social complexity during the Bronze Age. In this heterogeneous landscape, we document and discuss changes in upland use throughout the Bronze Age. We introduce the results of recent bioarchaeological research to discuss the biocultural consequences of living in upland environments. We argue that the Apuseni mountain topography channelized mobility through mountains, heightened competition for access to metal trade routes, and provided relief that Bronze Age peoples used to create monumental reminders of ancestral connections on daily and decadal temporal scales.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Living and Dying in Mountain and Highland Landscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23869