Villagers of the Maros: A Portrait of an Early Bronze Age Society

by John M. O'Shea

Overview

John M. O'Shea explores this question by employing modern archaeological theory and analysis as well as mortuary theory to build a model of an Early Bronze Age society in the eastern Carpathian Basin. He focuses on the Maros communities and utilizes the densely encoded social information from their cemeteries to draw a picture of the Maros' social systems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306453229
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	09/30/1996
Series:	Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology
Edition description:	1996
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	7.01(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.04(d)

Table of Contents

I. Introduction and Background.- 1 • Introduction.- 2 • The Archaeological Study of Funerary Practices.- 3 • An Archaeological Overview of the Maros Group.- II. Archaeological Analysis.- 4 • The Cemeteries of the Maros Group.- 5 • Coding and Classification of Grave Inclusions.- 6 • Maros Funerary Differentiation: Body Preparation and Treatment.- 7 • Maros Funerary Differentiation: Grave Offerings.- III. Social Analysis.- 8 • Mortuary Symbolism and Social Differentiation at Mokrin.- 9 • Symbolism and Differentiation across the Maros Villages.- 10 • The Maros Group and the Early Bronze Age in the Eastern Carpathian Basin.- IV. Conclusions.- 11 • Conclusions.- References.

Editorial Reviews

‘I imagine that every archaeologist...has grown dissatisfied with sherds, rocks, and bones, and wished to actually see the society of long ago that produced the archaeological assemblages....Yet the question that must be posed is ‘Can such modeling or reconstruction be done with any degree of rigor?'
From the preface

From the Publisher

A dense archeological analysis of the Hungarian Maros site, an early Bronze Age society that has been under investigation for 20 years. O'Shea (U. of Michigan) argues that the traditional Binford-Saxe model of reconstruction has failed to yield a true picture of the society since it has focused on ethnicity and questions of ranking rather than the broader range of social information buried with the funerary remains. The author redresses the oversight by inductively examining the evidence in minute detail and then extrapolating a vision of the social patterns of the village. Includes maps and tables. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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