Structure and Agency

doi:10.1017/9781009042826.004

Three - Structure and Agency

On Bronze Age Tell Settlement in the Carpathian Basin1

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2021

Tobias L. Kienlin

Edited by

T. L. Thurston and

Manuel Fernández-Götz

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T. L. Thurston: Affiliation:
University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Manuel Fernández-Götz: Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh

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Summary

Much Bronze Age research is dominated by a top-down approach – a specific interest taken in the evolution of stratified society and the socio-political impact of metalworking. In this context, Bronze Age tell sites of the Carpathian Basin are interpreted as (proto-) urban settlements that with varying degrees of success drew upon agricultural and other resources from their surroundings and controlled the exchange in valuable objects and raw materials from abroad. They were home, supposedly, to some kind of functionally and politically differentiated population with peasants, craft specialists – and some in charge of all this (e.g. Earle & Kristiansen, 2010; Gogâltan, 2010; Hänsel, 1996).

Type: Chapter
Information: Power from Below in Premodern Societies
The Dynamics of Political Complexity in the Archaeological Record
, pp. 61 - 89

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009042826.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

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