A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 36. - 1994 (Nyíregyháza, 1995)

John Chapman: Social power in the early farming communities of Eastern Hungary – Perspectives from the Upper Tisza region

Social power in the early farming communities of ... to changes in the underlying ideological strategy of the group. In circumstances where social change is possible, or desirable for part of the group, but in conflict with traditional group ideology, the question of how to renegotiate social reproduction is of particular significance. A familiar pattern of social reproduction concerns the use of opposition to a traditional mode in order to formulate and clarify new principles of social reproduction. In this way, a cycle of ideological strategies may be set up, based on the establishment of difference from the past. This sequence may assume various spatial guises, in relation to re-use of previous monuments, abandonment or continuity of occupation. In the Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age of Eastern Hungary there are two basic patterns in the ideological domain, which are then combined in one period into a third domain. The first pattern concerns flat sites, whose relation with the ancestors is defined by extra-mural or intra-mural burial, as well as an increasing tendency to multiple re-occupation of earlier flat domestic sites. This pattern is seen in the Szatmár Group, the Middle Neolithic, most of the Copper Age and the Late Bronze Age. The second pattern is based on the ancestral home of the tells, where links to the past are based on the domestic domain, on living where the ancestors once lived. This pattern is found in the Late Neolithic and the Early-Middle Bronze Age tells. A basic difference between these two modes is that the first includes the principle of individual or household accumulation, whereas in the second the principle of communal accumulation and ownership is more strongly rooted in ancestral values (CHAPMAN 1991.). However, the existence of settlements larger than single farmsteads in the „individualising" periods, as much as single farms in the „communal" periods, signifies the continual need for negotiation and re-negotiation of these social values. The combination of the mortuary domain and the domestic domain is symbolised by the mortuary barrow, or kurgan. Kurgans share a strong visual similarity with tells and it is postulated that they represent the imitation of the tell monument in the landscape. The construction of a burial mound which contains all the ancestral place values of the tell yet which focuses on the single burial of an individual adult male represents a strong ideological statement about social reproduction, simply because it combines the two oppositional forms for previous social life generations. In short, the alternating sequence of tell-dominated landscapes and landscapes of farmsteads with intra-mural or community cemeteries, often located on previous settlement sites, indicates a continuing struggle for social reproduction, in which the tell ideology is constructed in opposition to the flat sites of the Middle Neolithic and then abandoned as the opposing, individualising ideology- becomes stronger. In the Late Copper Age, the individualising ideology reaches its apogee with kurgan construction, which then becomes the traditional set of values against which to construct the next, communal domain through the creation of tells in the Early-Middle Bronze Age. The abandonment of tells in favour of smaller farms and hamlets represents a further swing toward the individualising pole of this ideological continuum. Length of site occupation and form of settlement are critical determinants in the contribution of the mortuary sphere to social reproduction. In long-lasting tells, ancestral values and memories permeate the settlement and there is a ready home for the return of the ancestors. In less sedentary sites such as some Hungarian Neolithic flat sites, burial of complete skeletons may represent a strategy for the establishment of closer ties between ancestors and the living, and indicate that the bodies of the newlydead are deemed less polluting than before. While the domestic arena of power remains the principal, if. not the only, resting-place for the newly dead, the cyclical principle of social reproduction of smallscale social units (village, lineage, household) remains dominant. Two main causes have been identified for the differentiation of arenas of social power. Colonisation of new landscapes in Eastern Hungary (the Late Copper Age interfluves) led to novel opportunities for the exercise of social power. Here, the legitimation of such settlement expansions was based on the insertion of symbols of the traditional occupied areas into the newly settled landscape (barrows which imitated tells in Hungary). In this settlement expansion, a predominance of a linear conception of time may be noted. The contradictions between traditional community values and new opportunities consequent upon the expansion of exchange and alliance structures into inter-regional networks is a common theme in many parts of Eastern Europe and forms the strongest patterning in this exploration of mortuary change. The introduction of new prestige goods (copper and gold) brings the opportunities for accumulation by individuals, households or lineages which run counter to traditional values of communal ownership and tenure. There is widespread evidence for long and strenuous resistance to change by the guardians of the traditional ideologies. Ancestral values on tells were maintained in opposition to the new spirit of competitive accumulation for centuries in Eastern Hungary. It is in the period when competitive prestige goods accumulation is in sharpest competition with the traditional ideologies that mortuary arenas become the solution to structural contradictions. The creation of new spatial contexts for prestige goods display permitted the development of change through the interstices of the old order. It is in this interstitial change that we find the clearest instances of the use Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 1994 87