Beyond Heterogeneities: New Perspectives on Social and Cultural Diversity from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin

This volume presents various facets of recent archaeological investigations into Neolithic and Bronze Age societies in the Carpathian Basin spanning from the 7th and 2nd millennium BCE. It delves into population dynamics, settlement patterns, and the spread of the Neolithic way of life through methodological approaches such as demographic analysis and environmental modelling.

Moreover, the book explores social transformations and the development of inequalities, emphasizing the role of cultural complexes and technological advancements in shaping prehistoric societies. Interdisciplinary studies encompassing the spatial scales from the archaeological site up to the supra-regional level shed new light on domestic practices, subsistence strategies, and integration into regional socio-economic networks. Several contributions deal with enclosures and communal areas, which are reinterpreted to unveil their ritual significance and community dynamics. This is particularly evident in those cases that include burials. Ritual practices surrounding burial sites are seen as responses to social crises and complex situations, reflecting the negotiation of individuality and community identity.

Overall, the book underscores the multifaceted nature of Neolithic and Bronze Age societies, showcasing their adaptability, social complexity, and elaborate interactions with the environment and neighbouring communities.

Kata Furholt is a research fellow and lecturer at Kiel University (CAU) in Germany. Since 2021, she has been working on the XSCAPE project (ERC Synergy grant) where she studies the materiality of Prehistoric Societies with special attention to burial practices and how related to the objects and the body in the grave context in the light of the visuospatial perception.
She studied (as Kata Szilágyi) at Szeged (SZTE) and Budapest (ELTE) in Hungary. From 2011 to 2021 she worked at Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged, Hungary, and finished her PhD in 2019 at Budapest (ELTE), on the topic of the chipped stone tool production activity of the south-eastern-group of the Late Neolithic Lengyel culture.
She worked as an invited lecturer at the University of Szeged (2015-2019), the University of Oslo (2020-2021) and at Kiel University (2021). Her teaching focus is on Prehistoric Europe, social and cognitive archaeology, lithic technology, museology, and more detailed courses of burial rituals, settlement patterns and depositional practices in Central Europe (especially the Carpathian Basin) from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age.

Margaux L. C. Depaermentier's academic career began with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Archaeology at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (France), followed by a Master of Arts degree in Early Medieval and Medieval Archaeology at the Alberts-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg (Germany). She obtained her PhD at the University of Basel (Switzerland), where her dissertation, "Late Antique and Early Medieval Social Structure in Basel from an Archaeological and Scientific Perspective," advanced our understanding of Late Antique and Early Medieval societies in this border region.
Her research spans several research projects covering different sociocultural areas, including Neolithic Hungary, Neolithic Spain, and the Late Antique and Early Medieval High and Upper Rhine Valley. Her research focuses on mobility, social structures, diet, and subsistence strategies, which she investigates using innovative archaeological approaches and integrating multiproxy isotope analyses.
Margaux's career has been supported by scholarships, including a mobility grant for a six-month stay at the University of Cambridge (2022), a starting grant for her PhD preparation in Basel (2019/2020), and a scholarship for a Master's thesis in Freiburg (2018). Her work has led to a couple of publications, presentations at international conferences and contributions to workshops. In particular, her study of mobility patterns in Neolithic Hungary earned her an award for early career scholars ("Emilie Campmas" Prize 2023).

Michael earned Master's degrees in Geography, Geology, Meteorology (2010) and Archaeology (2018) from the University of Freiburg. He successfully completed his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Physical Geography at the same institution in June 2020. In the spring of 2020, he secured a two-year post-doctoral fellowship, funded by the European Union, at the Department of Archaeology and Museology at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Following this, he took on the role of a Visiting Scholar at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.
In June 2022, Michael became a member of the Geography Department and the CRC1266 at Kiel. In 2023, he achieved a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) post-doctoral fellowship for his project titled EXOCHAINS - Exploring Holocene Climate Change and Human Innovations across Eurasia. This project is situated at the Universities of Basel (Quaternary Geology, Department of Environmental Sciences) and Cambridge (Environmental Systems Analysis, Department of Geography).
Currently, Michael is actively engaged in several research initiatives, including the examination of paleoclimate and human mobility across Eurasia, conducting stable isotope analyses in both archaeological and ecological contexts, and employing computational methods to better understand past human behaviors. His primary areas of expertise encompass multivariate statistics, spatial analysis, and computational modeling within the fields of geography and archaeology.

Martin Furholt is Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, Norway. Before he was working as Research Fellow and Lecturer at the CAU Kiel.

His main research interests are the social and political organisation, mobility and community composition, local and regional social networks of Neolithic and Bronze Age communities in Southeast Europe, Central Europe, and Northern Europe. He conducted his Phd research on Baden Complex materials in Poland and Czech Republic, and his Habilitation thesis on the Neolithic and Chalkolithic of the Aegean Region.

He is currently conducting fieldwork on 6th millennium Neolithic settlement in Slovakia and Serbia, and publishes papers related to the ongoing 3rd millennium migration debate in Europe.