Individuals and communities, social networks and innovations in the Copper Age of the Carpathian Basin
The Copper Age (4500-2800 BCE) was a period of innovation, when innovations such as metallurgy, the wheel and the wagon, the plough, wool or the increased consumption of dairy products, which fundamentally shaped the later history of humanity, spread across Europe. In our multidisciplinary project, we combine the latest research methods of 21st century archaeology to understand how different types of social relations between individuals influence the spread of information, knowledge, and innovation. The results of biosocial archaeology (kinship, residence, animal mobility) and various technological researches are combined with social network analysis in a GIS system, thus examining how the history-shaping changes took place from the individual level.
Due to its geographical location, the Carpathian Basin is an important link between South-Eastern and Central Europe and therefore offers an ideal place for examining the social factors influencing the spread of innovations. In the territory of present-day Hungary, in the Early and Middle Copper Age (4500-3700 BCE), small-scale communities engaged in productive farming lived in a dense network of hamlets. Formal cemeteries were established on the Great Hungarian Plain, in which richly furnished graves can be found. Early Copper Age was the heyday of Copper Age metallurgy, however, there is no evidence that these objects were made here, and knowledge of the technology of metallurgy is known only from the Middle Copper Age. Similarly, they are unfamiliar with the technology of making large stone blades and peaks. Our analysis reveals the social connections that allowed them to access high-value objects, and how and what Copper Age communities living in the territory of present-day Hungary provided in exchange, which in turn led to the acquisition of technological knowledge.