Social organisation & social change in the early and middle Bronze Age of Central Europe : a study using human skeletal remains

Mays, Simon Antony (1987) Social organisation & social change in the early and middle Bronze Age of Central Europe : a study using human skeletal remains. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

The thesis represents an attempt to integrate techniques from physical anthropology and the natural sciences into an archaeological research design in order to investigate prehistoric social organisation and social change. Previous writers have postulated the existence of exploitative social relations in early Bronze Age Europe. The aim of the thesis is the construction of methodology by which the possibility of the existence of exploitation in the marxist sense may be investigated using the archaeological record, and, in addition, to investigate the way in which high status individuals attained and maintained their social positions in the early and middle Bronze Age of central Europe. The database for the study comprises cemetery material from Lower Austria. Analyses of mortuary variability are used to investigate social organisation, principally using the methodology of the `New Archaeology', although attention is paid to recent criticisms of these approaches. The possibility of an inherited component to social status is investigated using multivariate analyses of metric and non-metric skeletal variants. This data is also used to investigate the spatial distribution of genetically related individuals within the cemetery area, and an attempt is made to study post-marital residence practices. Distribution of labour and resources with respect to gender and social status is also investigated. Differential distribution of subsistence resources may be manifested via differences in diet and in dietary/disease stress within a population. The first possibility is investigated using bone trace element analysis, together with a study of the distribution of dental pathologies; the second using a study of dental enamel hypoplasias. Distribution of physical labour is investigated using an analysis of degenerative joint disease. Inferences concerning social organisation made from the cemetery data are compared with those from settlement evidence. The results of the study are discussed in terms of their implication for the degree of social complexity in the central European early and middle Bronze Age. The relevance of various models of social organisation to the archaeological data is discussed, together with possible explanations for the social changes for which there is evidence in the period under study. (D75824/87)

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