Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships betw... more Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships between different types of sites. It is usually assumed that tells had the highest rank and most central role within a regional settlement hierarchy. The tell-building regions in Bronze Age Europe do indeed provide evidence of a particular settlement system, one in which there must have been various kinds of differentiations between the settlements. This much is unambiguous and generally agreed upon. It is not clear, however, what these differences meant. Nor is it obvious how to reach data-informed interpretations of the socio-political as well as economic dimensions of the co-existence of such diverse forms. The differences between various sites would have affected how people lived within them. They would also have informed fundamental aspects of life such as how people related to each other, their sense of generational time, and notions of belonging within a particular place. The core question about the nature of the relationships between these sites remains, however, as challenging and as unanswerable as ever. Sufficiently fine-grained comparative data from the range of sites, from small one-layered households to the densely settled long-duration tells, are still missing from our archaeological ‘data reservoir’.
The investigation of fires and burning within the archaeological record has a long history, and t... more The investigation of fires and burning within the archaeological record has a long history, and the applied methods are diverse. There have been several investigations of prehistoric archaeological sites, but Middle Bronze Age contexts (2000–1450 BC) of the Carpathian Basin have not been widely studied beyond studies of ritual burning or warfare. In this paper, we aimed to add further details to this topic in the household context via thin-section soil micromorphology and related phytolith and charred plant matter analysis. The combination of these techniques has been proven to be advantageous due to their high-resolution quality, but phytolith analysis of soil/sediment via thin sections (i.e., in fixed environment) has not been largely explored yet. In this study, these methods were used to investigate various burning events that affected a Middle Bronze Age Vatya house within the tell site of Százhalombatta-Földvár, Hungary. Three types of fire/burning events were investigated. On...
Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships betw... more Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships between different types of sites. It is usually assumed that tells had the highest rank and most central role within a regional settlement hierarchy. The tell-building regions in Bronze Age Europe do indeed provide evidence of a particular settlement system, one in which there must have been various kinds of differentiations between the settlements. This much is unambiguous and generally agreed upon. It is not clear, however, what these differences meant. Nor is it obvious how to reach data-informed interpretations of the socio-political as well as economic dimensions of the coexistence of such diverse forms. The differences between various sites would have affected how people lived within them. They would also have informed fundamental aspects of life such as how people related to each other, their sense of generational time, and notions of belonging within a particular place. The core ques...
Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships betw... more Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships between different types of sites. It is usually assumed that tells had the highest rank and most central role within a regional settlement hierarchy. The tell-building regions in Bronze Age Europe do indeed provide evidence of a particular settlement system, one in which there must have been various kinds of differentiations between the settlements. This much is unambiguous and generally agreed upon. It is not clear, however, what these differences meant. Nor is it obvious how to reach data-informed interpretations of the socio-political as well as economic dimensions of the co-existence of such diverse forms. The differences between various sites would have affected how people lived within them. They would also have informed fundamental aspects of life such as how people related to each other, their sense of generational time, and notions of belonging within a particular place. The core question about the nature of the relationships between these sites remains, however, as challenging and as unanswerable as ever. Sufficiently fine-grained comparative data from the range of sites, from small one-layered households to the densely settled long-duration tells, are still missing from our archaeological ‘data reservoir’.
The investigation of fires and burning within the archaeological record has a long history, and t... more The investigation of fires and burning within the archaeological record has a long history, and the applied methods are diverse. There have been several investigations of prehistoric archaeological sites, but Middle Bronze Age contexts (2000–1450 BC) of the Carpathian Basin have not been widely studied beyond studies of ritual burning or warfare. In this paper, we aimed to add further details to this topic in the household context via thin-section soil micromorphology and related phytolith and charred plant matter analysis. The combination of these techniques has been proven to be advantageous due to their high-resolution quality, but phytolith analysis of soil/sediment via thin sections (i.e., in fixed environment) has not been largely explored yet. In this study, these methods were used to investigate various burning events that affected a Middle Bronze Age Vatya house within the tell site of Százhalombatta-Földvár, Hungary. Three types of fire/burning events were investigated. On...
Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships betw... more Interpretations of tells have traditionally been linked to questions about the relationships between different types of sites. It is usually assumed that tells had the highest rank and most central role within a regional settlement hierarchy. The tell-building regions in Bronze Age Europe do indeed provide evidence of a particular settlement system, one in which there must have been various kinds of differentiations between the settlements. This much is unambiguous and generally agreed upon. It is not clear, however, what these differences meant. Nor is it obvious how to reach data-informed interpretations of the socio-political as well as economic dimensions of the coexistence of such diverse forms. The differences between various sites would have affected how people lived within them. They would also have informed fundamental aspects of life such as how people related to each other, their sense of generational time, and notions of belonging within a particular place. The core ques...
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