New approaches to understanding cultural change and continuity at the Bronze-Iron Age transition in Lika, Croatia
Open Access
- Author:
- Zavodny, Emily Kathryn
- Graduate Program:
- Anthropology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 24, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Sarah Barbara Mcclure, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Sarah Barbara Mcclure, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
George Robert Milner, Committee Member
Douglas James Kennett, Committee Member
Mark Munn, Outside Member
David Webster, Committee Member
Jacqueline Balen, Special Member - Keywords:
- Croatia
Bronze Age
Iron Age
stable isotopes
radiocarbon dating
development of complexity
identity
Iapodian
chronology
risk
agriculture - Abstract:
- The European Bronze (ca. 2500 to 800 B.C.) and Iron (ca. 800-35 B.C.) Ages were times of swift cultural change that resulted in new social, political, and economic lifeways. Bronze and then iron-working technologies became common; tools and weapons began to be mass-produced in standardized forms; social differentiation and ranking became more entrenched; and peoples and ideas became increasingly mobile in Europe. Archaeological methods are well suited for identifying both the material and organizational changes that happened during this time (e.g. changes in status, diet, belief systems, settlement), and their effects on local populations. This dissertation examines evidence of increasingly complex social and economic systems during the Late Bronze (1300-800 BC) and Early Iron (800-600 BC) Ages in the Lika region of northern Croatia using burial practices and subsistence strategies as proxies of social reorganization. The groups who lived in Lika during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages are known collectively as the Iapodians because of an assumed shared mortuary ritual and material culture (Drechsler-Bižić 1979) that is assumed to have formed with the arrival of Urnfield culture and populations in the region and mixing with indigenous populations. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of human remains from multiple sites throughout Lika show that diet remained largely constant throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. Millet cultivation remained an important staple crop for local risk-management agricultural strategies, and any variation in its consumption was likely more an effect of the Lika climate than sociopolitical developments. New radiocarbon dates presented in this project are used to evaluate the assumed progression of these material markers, finding the earliest phases- those most important for understanding the emergence of a Iapodian material culture- are limited in their ability to describe and interpret local sequences of cultural development. These findings are supplemented with new analyses of the existing mortuary data and literature to recreate basic sociopolitical structures and identify the effects of long-distance exchange and interaction on cultural change and stability. Results show that groups in neighboring valleys adopted new rituals, materials, and status roles more gradually than expected based on varying socio-economic circumstances and contact with communities outside of Lika. In sum, this dissertation shows that while there was a trend towards regional sociopolitical and economic homogenization by the end of the Bronze-Iron Age transition, there is no evidence of a politically or culturally unified Iapodian group in Lika at this time.