The principal idea of this project is a complete study of the scientific problem about the intercultural contacts between the south-eastern Alpine region and the western Carpathian area in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (Initial and Early Urnfield period).

Research

It can be said that this research problem has not been systematically studied till now in the scientific literature. The concept of this project originates from the analysis of the urnfield cemetery in Ljubljana (on the courtyard of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) in the central Slovenia, which was conducted as a part of my finished Ph.D. research. In this analysis I stated that the best analogies for several grave-goods (specially ceramics) of the cemetery in Ljubljana (Slovenia) can be found in the objects from distant archaeological sites, pertaining to Piliny, Suciu de Sus, Egyek cultures in the N, NE Hungary and S, SE Slovakia.

With the existent scientific literature a comparative analysis of closed archaeological contexts will be done, while special focus will be given to the selected cemeteries from both mentioned regions. Beside the precise typo-chronological definition of the archaeological material from Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia, we will elaborate or supplement the distribution maps for particular finds. Other accessible archaeological data will also be analysed, such as burial practices, grave structures, attires as well as the structure and space organisation of separate cemeteries and settlements, at both of the above mentioned regions. Certain theoretical models will serve as a starting point to try to understand the course and dynamics of the studied intercultural contacts, but above all we want to understand the reasons for their formation, as in this way we could better follow the prehistoric populations, living on the described areas in the time of the Middle and Late Bronze Age. What is more, we want to investigate the phenomenon of cremation burials, characteristic not only for the treated areas, but also for the entire Urnfield culture in the Central and South-eastern Europe.

The main scientific questions of my research project are as followed: can the hypothesis about the intercultural connections between investigated areas in the Middle and Late Bronze age – the hypothesis which was so fare based mostly on the comparative analysis of the archaeological objects and the interpretation of the maps of distribution of these objects – be justified? Which are the motives and which are the mechanisms for these intensive contacts in this particular time span? What are the characteristics of these contacts and how can we reconstruct their course?