Subsistence, Settlement, and Social Stratification on the Great Hungarian Plain During the Transition to the Copper Age
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Date
2013-12
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
This thesis concerns hunting and animal domestication during the Late Neolithic (5000- 4500 BC cal) and Early Copper Age (4500-4000 BC cal) on the Great Hungarian Plain. Intensively occupied tell sites and other surrounding flat areas characterized the landscape of the Carpathian Basin during the Late Neolithic. During the Early Copper Age, most tell sites were abandoned as farmers moved to more widely dispersed settlements. Faunal data from Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő-Mágor, two Late Neolithic sites, shows that hunting was more prevalent on tells than surrounding flat sites. Additional analysis of the Early Copper Age sites of Vésztő-Bikeri and Körösladány-Bikeri shows that the intensity of hunting and the occupation of tell sites declined simultaneously during the Early Copper Age. The variation in the faunal assemblages of flat and tell sites during the Late Neolithic can be attributed to a social hierarchy in which hunting was a luxury of the tell populations. Additionally, the decline of hunting and dissolution of tells in the Early Copper Age is evidence of a rejection of that social hierarchy.
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Keywords
zooarchaeology, Neolithic, Copper Age, prehistoric Europe, transition to agriculture, social stratification