One of the most fundamental questions in the social sciences concerns the development of social and economic complexity, particularly prior the emergence to of state-level societies. Yet the models archaeologists typically employ are strongly conditioned by a limited number of historical and ethnographic cases that are inextricably linked to modern states. Archaeologists are now recognizing great organizational variability among ancient complex societies, and in the pathways by which societies become complex. This project will investigate the varied roles that secondary centers play within the development of complex, non-state systems, highlighting organizational postures not documented in the ethnographic or historical present. This research will contribute directly to the theoretical understanding of emergent social complexity and the alternate pathways this development may take. It will also provide international research experience for American students, training in modern excavation and analytical techniques, and opportunities for student research
The site of Rabe "Anka Siget" (Serbia), provides the opportunity to investigate these questions in the context of a well-dated Bronze Age polity. The researchers will conduct a program of excavation and analysis at this secondary center to investigate its position within the Middle Bronze Age Maros (Mori) Group. The project will test alternative hypotheses concerning the potential roles Anka Siget may have played within the Maros polity. Activities and developments at Rabe with be compared with those recently documented by the researchers' NSF funded project at Pecica "Anul Mare" (Romania), the primary center of the polity. Additional lines of evidence will evaluate the strength and nature of the connections between Anka Siget and Pecica, with other Maros settlements, and with the wider set of peer polities in the Carpathian Basin. This project will be the first community-scale excavation of a Maros tell. The use of multi-tiered geophysical survey methods, combined with targeted excavations, will produce an unprecedented view of the internal organization of a Bronze Age settlement. Through this work, the investigators will not only elucidate the development of a pivotal Bronze Age polity, but also will contribute to the wider anthropological debate surrounding emergent social complexity by providing an alternative case of organization within a pre-state polity.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
