Technological choices and material meanings : analyses of early and middle bronze age ceramics from Hungary

Kreiter, Attila (2005) Technological choices and material meanings : analyses of early and middle bronze age ceramics from Hungary. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Record type: Thesis (Doctoral)

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between technology and social organisation. The primary research site is the Nagyrév and Vatya tell settlement of Százhalombatta, Hungary. In order to gain the widest possible picture about technological change and continuity the results of the investigation of Százhalombatta are compared with the ceramic technologies of other equally important Early and Middle Bronze Age societies. The chronological position of these sites makes it possible to investigate change and continuity in ceramic technology through time and to examine possible similarities or differences representative of a particular settlement, group of people or a particular period.

In pottery studies understandings of technology are often seen as limited as a result of functional and environmental constraints. There is little space for explanations of technology as stylistic expression. Through the concept of technological style, this thesis aims to break boundaries between the functional and social nature of technology and argues that the two are inseparable and that together they form a culturally accepted product. The concept of technological style incorporates material selection, preparation and manufacturing and highlights the relationship between technology, manufacturing sequences and social production. Technological tradition and change are investigated through microscope and ceramic petrological analyses. It is considered that in the process of material culture production technological choices are not only constitutive towards an end product but complex, dynamic constructions that involve social strategies.

It is argued that Bronze Age social relations were maintained through material culture production. Ceramic technology and shared technological choices can be viewed as a process that binds people together. Potters, and consumers, are seen to have a shred understanding of ceramic technological practices and how a culturally accepted vessel should be made. This approach calls into question the spatial boundedness of archaeological cultures and major historical processes such as migration, diffusion and acculturation, traditional to Hungarian approaches.

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