Tribal Social Change ‚ The Great Hungarian Plain, ca. 4,500 BC

Throughout both of the periods in question there is no evidence of institutionalized social ranking. Nor is there any evidence that the farmers and herders who inhabited the villages across the Plain were, to borrow Friedís phrase, ëimpinged upon by more complex social forms,í such as chiefdoms or states. Previous suggestions that these changes can be attributed to large-scale population replacement have recently fallen out of favor (see Banffy 1994). Clearly, the social transformation that affected the villagers of the Plain in the mid fifth millennium must be understood in terms of the wide range of variability that occurs within tribal forms of social organization.

The transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age on the Great Hungarian Plain coincides with the inception of several technological developments that changed the trajectory of social evolution in Eastern Europe for several millennia. The copper ore sources in the Carpathian and Balkan mountains began to be intensively mined and smelted during this time (Jovanovic¢ 1982). Domestic animals, and especially cattle, began to be exploited not only for their meat, but also for ësecondary productsí such as milk and cheese (Chapman 1983; Sherratt 1981, 1983a). The plow was also introduced to the region (Milisauskas and Kruk 1991), permitting heavy alluvial soils to be brought under cultivation for the first time.

Roughly contemporary with these technological developments was a radical transformation in the way life itself was organized on the Plain. The dramatic changes documented in the archaeological record include:

Changes in the spatial scale of ëcultural groupsí. The three geographically-discrete ëcultural groupsí that sub-divided the Great Hungarian Plain during the Late Neolithic were replaced by a single, relatively homogeneous ëcultureí that extended across the entire Plain during the Early Copper Age ‚ viz. the Tiszapolg·r Culture. The Late Neolithic ëcultural groupsí, as they are known in Hungarian literature, each produced distinct ceramic assemblages, and exhibit differences in settlement type, settlement location and economic strategies (see Kalicz and Raczky 1987a). No such sub-divisions are readily identifiable during the Early Copper Age (see Sherratt 1982; contra Bogn·r-Kutzi·n 1972).

Changes in house form. The large, possibly multi-family, domestic structures of the Late Neolithic (10 - 20m long) were replaced by much smaller (ca. 5m long), less substantial dwellings in the Early Copper Age (Bogn·r-Kutzi·n 1972; Goldman 1977; Kalicz and Raczky 1987a; SiklÛdi 1982, 1983).

Changes in settlement type. The Late Neolithic settlement pattern, which combined the habitation of large tells (up to 6 ha) with large ëflatí (i.e. horizontal) settlements (up to 11 ha), gave way in the Early Copper Age to the almost exclusive habitation of smaller, flat settlements (ca. 0.5-1 ha) (Bogn·r-Kutzi·n 1972; Chapman 1997a; Kalicz and Raczky 1987a; Sherratt 1984).

Changes in settlement location. In addition to being smaller than Late Neolithic settlements, Early Copper Age sites were less nucleated and more evenly dispersed across the landscape (Bogn·r-Kutzi·n 1972; Sherratt 1983b, 1984). For example, Sherratt (1997b:308) notes that in the Szeghalom region (ca. 68,000 ha), 106 Early Copper Age sites were recorded in an area where only 19 Late Neolithic sites were identified.

Changes in trade networks. The long-distance trade networks of the Neolithic, which brought goods from as far away as the Aegean, were re-structured and re-directed in the Early Copper Age to bring copper, gold, and chert from the Carpathians onto the Plain (Biro 1998; Sherratt 1987).

Changes in mortuary practices. Large formal cemeteries were established in the Early Copper Age. These cemeteries usually occurred isolated in the landscape ‚ entirely unassociated with settlement sites ‚ and replaced the Neolithic pattern of burying the dead in and around settlement sites (Bogn·r-Kutzi·n 1963, 1972; Chapman 1997b).

Changes in agricultural practices. Domestic cattle tend to dominate Early Copper Age assemblages, replacing the domestic/wild mix that dominate Neolithic assemblages (Bogn·r-Kutzi·n 1972; B–k–nyi 1959, 1962; Sherratt 1983b; Skomal 1983).

Despite the obvious potential of this period for studying anthropological questions of socio-economic change within tribal social systems, the Early Copper Age remains one of the most poorly investigated periods in Hungarian prehistory. This is unfortunate for our archaeological understanding of the region, especially since the preceding Late Neolithic period has been the focus of much recent research and analysis (e.g., Drasovean 1996; Hegedu‡s and Makkay 1987; Horv·th 1987; Raczky et al. 1994). Several Late Neolithic settlement sites have been excavated using modern techniques, as have many of the burials that frequently occur in and around the settlements. From this mortuary and settlement information, a picture of Late Neolithic socio-economic organization is beginning to crystallize (see Kalicz and Raczky 1987a). Systematic research into the Early Copper Age, on the other hand, has focused almost exclusively upon the analysis of a few large cemeteries, resulting in an unbalanced dataset composed almost entirely of mortuary data.

Thanks in large part to the extensive research that has been directed towards the Late Neolithic, it is relatively clear how the Great Hungarian Plain was organized during this period. The three geographically-discrete Late Neolithic ëcultural groupsí were each clearly-defined, with markedly different ceramic assemblages, settlement types, and house types, within geographically-discrete exchange spheres (Biro 1998; Kalicz and Raczky 1987a). Each of these larger social groups was, in turn, organized into regional systems of integration in which several smaller sites were organized around a single large site (Makkay 1982; Raczky 1987; Sherratt 1984). Often this large ësupersiteí was a tell, and frequently the smaller sites were flat (i.e., horizontal) settlements. This complex form of regional integration ‚ of smaller sites organized around a single supersite ‚ disintegrated at the end of the Late Neolithic when the cultural groupings themselves disappeared, yielding to a single, relatively homogeneous cultural group ‚ the Tiszapolg·r Culture.

In contrast to the Late Neolithic, the social organization of the Plain during the Early Copper Age is much less clear. Several years ago, Bogn·r-Kutzi·n (1963, 1972) suggested that the Early Copper Age Tiszapolg·r culture could be divided into four spatially discrete ësub-groupsí. She distinguished each of these ësub-groupsí by minor variations in Early Copper Age ceramic assemblages. Since these sub-groups were based upon ceramic materials from cemeteries and stray finds, rather than from controlled excavations at stratified settlement sites, it is unclear whether they are indicative of regional variations in burial practices, or of small-scale temporal shifts in style. Subsequent research has demonstrated that Bogn·r-Kutzi·nís Early Copper Age sub-groups are not temporally and geographically continuous (SiklÛdi 1984), and they certainly do not represent the same kind of intensive regional integration that characterized the Plain during the Late Neolithic.