Tárnoki Judit szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 19. (2009)
Természettudomány és régészet - Alice M. Choyke - László Bartosiewicz - Telltale tools from a tell: Bone and antler manufacturing at Bronze Age Jászdózsa-Kápolnahalom, Hungary
I Tisicum XIX. exploit to final decoration, choices more dictated by custom than by efficiency. These technical choices were subject to individual interpretation, of course, 1 8 constrained by both conscious and unconscious traditions. These manufacturing processes are passed on, from one generation to the next, perhaps modified by individual choice. 1 9 However, in traditional society where people keep a close eye on the way their neighbors carry out their daily tasks, people would be alert to such apparently subtle changes in the customary daily life. Bourdieu (1977) has termed this social pressure for maintaining sameness in non-state society, habitus. He considers it a mechanism for maintaining social stability. Habitus consists of sets of learned behaviors that can be expressed, consciously or unconsciously, in material ways. 20 Thus, as part of maintaining social coherence, people living in the large villages of Middle Bronze Age Hungary would have especially relied on "habituation, familiarity, and repetition" in their daily round of activities, 2 1 a way of expressing their participation in local custom. Conforming to tradition in technical styles would also have been reflected in the way individuals chose to select and work the huge range of potential osseous materials they had at hand. At the same time, it is also noteworthy that there are classes of artifacts at Jászdózsa-Kápolnahalom and elsewhere during the Bronze Age in this region at least, that definitely do not have the greater stylistic coherence of worked osseous materials from in the Neolithic. This process of loosening of the manufacturing rules actually seems to have begun during the Chalcolithic despite the fact that these tools continued to be used in similar ways in tasks of equal importance. Elsewhere, this has been described in terms of a manufacturing continuum of quality with Class II representing one extreme of tools made from opportunistically chosen bone fragments and representing used unworked or barely worked ad hoc specimens compared to Class I tools that stand for objects produced in multiple stages and made from carefully selected raw materials discussed elsewhere. 2 2 In the Middle Bronze Age, utilitarian objects in bone antler and teeth are generally less carefully manufactured and be more open to variation in their formal details. These objects thus, fall closer to the Class II end of the so-called manufacturing continuum, although there is also a small group of extremely well-made elaborate ornamental objects, falling close to the other extreme, the Class I end of the same continuum (Figure 3). Many of the latter elaborated, planned representative types in the Bronze Age, such as bridle cheek pieces, rein-dividers, 18 WOBST, H. Martin 1977.1999. 120-121. 19 GOSSELAIN, Olivier P. 1992, 1998; LECHTMAN, Heather 1977. 15; SACKETT, James R. 1986. 268-269, 1990. 33, 37. 20 BOURDIEU, Pierre 1977. 21 STARK, Miriam T. 1999. 28. 22 CHOYKE, Alice M. 1997, 2001. Figure 3. Basic differences in the distribution of Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts along the manufacturing continuum ranging from ad hoc to planned tools. ornamental handle ends and various ornaments have broad distributions. These latter objects are, thus, much more stereotypic both in the way they were manufactured and in their formal characteristics. Since these objects were intended to display the higher status of the people using them, it is hardly surprising that it had to be possible for their underlying message to be interpretable over wide territories. Furthermore, since many of these objects are associated with the horse as a instrument of long distance travel, it is possible that many objects were lost or discarded far from their original places of manufacture. People at Jászdózsa-Kápolnahalom used types of objects such as horse harness ornaments, which can be found well outside of the immediate region of the northern region of the Great Hungarian Plain, extending not only to the far south of the plain, for example on sites of the Vatina culture, 2 3 but also beyond the Carpathian Basin, beyond even Austria and Slovakia. 2 4 Cross-cultural research has shown for fineware ceramics and other more elaborated products, meant mostly for display rather than everyday use, that they tend to be distributed over wider areas with blurring of distribution boundaries. This is hardly a surprising circumstance given that such goods or the makers of more sophisticated goods may circulate widely. 2 5 Furthermore, such objects are meant to be seen and can be interpreted by a broad range of peoples over wide geographical areas. Some of these objects were certainly made by specialized craftspeople, themselves possibly mobile. All such possessions would have signaled that their owners were of high enough rank and had access to sufficient resources to acquire these special goods. Decorative objects are also more prone to relatively rapid, widespread changes in fashion since they are meant to be seen as opposed to utilitarian objects meant for household use However, these common objects were produced, that is, whatever their technical style, their traditions of manufacture seems to have been more resistant to change than decorative elements in the material culture because technical style is 23 UZELAC.Jovan 1975. 24 HÜTTEL, Hans-Georg 1981. 25 STARK, Miriam T. 1999. 29. I 360
