TY - JOUR
T1 - Strontium isotope analysis and human mobility during the Neolithic and Copper Age
T2 - A case study from the Great Hungarian Plain
AU - Giblin, Julia I.
AU - Knudson, Kelly
AU - Bereczki, Zsolt
AU - Pálfi, György
AU - Pap, Ildikó
N1 - Funding Information:
The research presented in this paper was conducted as part of Julia I. Giblin's dissertation project. We would like to thank the directors of the Körös Regional Archaeological Project, William A. Parkinson, Attila Gyucha and Richard W. Yerkes for making this work possible. This research was financially supported by the National Science Foundation (Dissertation Improvement Grant; Award #: 0929110 ; R.W. Yerkes, P.I.) and The Ohio State University (Office of International Affairs Graduate Student International Dissertation/MA Thesis Research Travel Grant, and an OSU Presidential Fellowship) . For access and help with the sample collection process, thanks goes to the University of Szeged (Erika Molnár, Antonia Marcsik), Muriel Masson, the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Szabolcs Makra, Béla Zilahy, Ildikó Szikossy, Tamás Hajdu), and the Eötvös Loránd University (Pál Raczky, Alexandra Anders, László Bartosiewicz, Márta Daróczi-Szabó, Anna Biller, Zsófia Kovács). For the analysis portion of the dissertation we would like to thank Gwyneth Gordon, Ariel Anbar, and Ruth Carina Arrua at the W.M. Keck Foundation Laboratory for Environmental Biogeochemistry. Finally, the authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
PY - 2013/1
Y1 - 2013/1
N2 - From the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age on the Great Hungarian Plain (4500 BC, calibrated) a transformation in many aspects of life has been inferred from the archaeological record. This transition is characterized by changes in settlements, subsistence, cultural assemblages, mortuary customs, and trade networks. Some researchers suggest that changes in material culture, particularly the replacement of long-occupied tells with smaller, more dispersed hamlets, indicates a shift from sedentary farming villages to a more mobile, agropastoral society that emphasized animal husbandry and perhaps secondary products of domestication. In a previous study (Giblin, 2009), preliminary radiogenic strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotope data from human dental enamel showed that Copper Age individuals expressed more variable isotope values than their Neolithic predecessors. These data provided support for the idea that Copper Age inhabitants of the Plain were acquiring resources from a greater geographic area, findings that seemed consistent with a more mobile lifestyle. In this article a larger sample from human and animal skeletal material is used to re-evaluate earlier work and shed new light on the transition from the Neolithic to the Copper Age in eastern Hungary. The expanded sample of strontium isotopes from human dental enamel shows that 87Sr/86Sr values are more variable during the Copper Age, but the change is more pronounced in the Middle Copper Age than in the Early Copper Age. These results, along with recently published complementary research, indicate that the transition from the Late Neolithic tell cultures of the Plain to the more dispersed Copper Age hamlets was more gradual than previously thought, and that the emergence of an agropastoral economy does not explain changes in settlement and material culture.
AB - From the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age on the Great Hungarian Plain (4500 BC, calibrated) a transformation in many aspects of life has been inferred from the archaeological record. This transition is characterized by changes in settlements, subsistence, cultural assemblages, mortuary customs, and trade networks. Some researchers suggest that changes in material culture, particularly the replacement of long-occupied tells with smaller, more dispersed hamlets, indicates a shift from sedentary farming villages to a more mobile, agropastoral society that emphasized animal husbandry and perhaps secondary products of domestication. In a previous study (Giblin, 2009), preliminary radiogenic strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotope data from human dental enamel showed that Copper Age individuals expressed more variable isotope values than their Neolithic predecessors. These data provided support for the idea that Copper Age inhabitants of the Plain were acquiring resources from a greater geographic area, findings that seemed consistent with a more mobile lifestyle. In this article a larger sample from human and animal skeletal material is used to re-evaluate earlier work and shed new light on the transition from the Neolithic to the Copper Age in eastern Hungary. The expanded sample of strontium isotopes from human dental enamel shows that 87Sr/86Sr values are more variable during the Copper Age, but the change is more pronounced in the Middle Copper Age than in the Early Copper Age. These results, along with recently published complementary research, indicate that the transition from the Late Neolithic tell cultures of the Plain to the more dispersed Copper Age hamlets was more gradual than previously thought, and that the emergence of an agropastoral economy does not explain changes in settlement and material culture.
KW - Copper Age
KW - Hungary
KW - Isotope
KW - Mobility
KW - Neolithic
KW - Strontium
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jas.2012.08.024
DO - 10.1016/j.jas.2012.08.024
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84867915507
SN - 0305-4403
VL - 40
SP - 227
EP - 239
JO - Journal of Archaeological Science
JF - Journal of Archaeological Science
IS - 1
ER -