Attila Gyucha | The University of Georgia (original) (raw)

Books by Attila Gyucha

Drawing from the collections of more than two dozen museums in southeastern Europe, First Kings o... more Drawing from the collections of more than two dozen museums in southeastern Europe, First Kings of Europe explores how ancient farming villages evolved into some of the earliest kingdoms in Europe. In this souvenir catalog, travel from the farming villages of egalitarian Neolithic communities to the gilded world of Iron Age Thracian and Illyrian rulers, about 8,000 to 2,500 years ago. Learn how the emerging elite wielded weapons, jewelry and tools to gain power by amassing wealth and controlling trade, technology, rituals and warfare. And discover the unique cultures of the ancient Balkans firsthand.

The CoTsen InsTITuTe of ArChAeology Press is the publishing unit of the Cotsen Institute of Archa... more The CoTsen InsTITuTe of ArChAeology Press is the publishing unit of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, a premier research organization dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and conservation of archaeological knowledge and heritage. It is home to both the Interdepartmental Archaeology Graduate Program and the UCLA/Getty Master's Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials. The Cotsen Institute provides a forum for innovative faculty research, graduate education, and public programs at UCLA in an effort to positively impact the academic, local and global communities. Established in 1973, the Cotsen Institute is at the forefront of archaeological research, education, conservation and publication, and is an active contributor to interdisciplinary research at UCLA. ThE CoTsEn InsTITUTE of ArChAEoLoGy PrEss specializes in producing high-quality academic volumes in nine different series, including Monumenta Archaeologica, Monographs, World Heritage and Monuments, Cotsen Advanced Seminars, and Ideas, Debates, and Perspectives. Through a generous endowment by Lloyd E. Cotsen, longtime Institute volunteer and benefactor, the Press makes the fruits of archaeological research accessible to scholars, professionals, students, and the general public. our archaeological publications receive critical acclaim in both academic communities and the public at large.

Coming Together: Comparative Approaches to Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization (The Ins... more Coming Together: Comparative Approaches to Population Aggregation and Early Urbanization (The Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology Distinguished Monograph Series; SUNY Press, 2019)

Archaeologists, anthropologists, and classicists discuss how urbanization first emerged in strikingly different sociopolitical contexts in North America, Europe, and the Near East.
The pursuit for universally applicable definitions of the terms “urban” and “city” has frequently distracted scholars from scrutinizing processes of how ancient nucleated settlements evolved and developed. Based on the premise that similar social dynamics to a great extent governed nucleation trajectories throughout human history, Coming Together focuses on both prehistoric aggregated and early urban settlements. Drawing from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, archaeologists, anthropologists, and classicists discuss how nucleation unfolded in strikingly different sociopolitical contexts in North America, Europe, and the Near East. The major themes of the volume are nucleation’s origins, pathways to sustainability, and the transformative role of these sites in sociopolitical and cultural change.

The volume can be purchased at http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6696-coming-together.aspx

Prehistoric Research in the Körös Region - Series by Attila Gyucha

The places around us are an integral part of our social life. Daily activities are associated wit... more The places around us are an integral part of our social life. Daily activities are associated with specifi c living and working areas, and these associations create patterns that refl ect the way people behave within defi ned spaces. Cooking, storage, craftwork, waste disposal, and other daily tasks take place in culturally

This study uses stable and radiogenic isotopes to explore the dynamics between subsistence, mobil... more This study uses stable and radiogenic isotopes to explore the dynamics between subsistence, mobility, and social organization on the Great Hungarian Plain during the Late Neolithic-Early Copper Age transition (ca. 4500 BC). Archaeological evidence indicates that many aspects of society changed from the Neolithic to the Copper Age in eastern Hungary, including what types of settlements people occupied, who they traded with, and where they buried their dead. In this book, chemical signatures (δ 13 C, δ 15 N and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr isotopes) recorded in teeth and bones from human burials are used to evaluate whether diet and residency patterns changed during this transformative time, particularly whether the observed changes in material culture were associated with increased mobility and an increased reliance on animal husbandry consistent with agropastoralism.

Boundaries and Interactions during the Late Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain Boundaries exi... more Boundaries and Interactions during the Late Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain Boundaries exist because people interact. These interactions become imbedded in material culture, and from production until discard, people use objects to create, reinforce, and dispute socio-cultural boundaries. This volume seeks to challenge and transform how archaeologists defi ne socio-cultural boundaries by reconstructing interactions through the assessment of various materials using an array of analytical techniques. During the Late Neolithic (5000-4500 BC), the communities of two major archaeological cultures, the Tisza and the Herpály, occupied the Great Hungarian Plain. These groups, traditionally defi ned based on the presence and absence of certain material traits, have long been reifi ed in the archaeological literature. This study illustrates that group affi liation cannot solely be defi ned by material traits but rather by the degree of connectivity between sites. Based on the analyses conducted on archaeological materials from 12 Late Neolithic sites across the Great Hungarian Plain, an actively enforced socio-cultural boundary can be modeled between the Tisza and Herpály archaeological cultures. This research has far reaching implications for how archaeologists can view interactions as a way to measure, reconstruct, and model socio-cultural boundaries throughout time and space.

Papers by Attila Gyucha

Over the past 100 years, archaeological research in Southeastern Hungary has resulted in a comple... more Over the past 100 years, archaeological research in Southeastern Hungary has resulted in a complex picture of the prehistoric past. To a certain extent, early concepts of archaeological cultures and their defining characteristics have become reified in the literature. Research on Late Neolithic (ca. 5,000-4,500 BC) cultures on the Great Hungarian Plain is no exception. However, through new collaborative archaeological projects, traditional concepts of culture and their associated cultural characteristics are being challenged and refined. This paper presents the results generated by the Prehistoric Interactions on the Plain Project (PIPP) at the Herpály site of Csökmő-Káposztás-domb. The data collected thus far illustrates that Herpály settlements could be quite expansive and complex in terms of settlement organization, which is transforming our understanding of cultural developments in the region

Organizacja wytwórczości tkackiej w osiedlu obronnym w Biskupinie, woj. kujawsko-pomorskie (Polsk... more Organizacja wytwórczości tkackiej w osiedlu obronnym w Biskupinie, woj. kujawsko-pomorskie (Polska), we wczesnej epoce żelaza Michał Grygiel The coinage of Celtic Boii from western Lesser Poland Marek Olędzki Vibilius romanorum socius et amicus Bogusław Abramek Inne spojrzenie na koniec starożytności i początki wczesnego średniowiecza na ziemiach polskich IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES Michał Brzostowicz Na szlaku do Łęczycy. Ląd i ziemia nad środkową Wartą w średniowieczu

RCHAEOLOGISTS IN EUROPE use the Arabic word tell to refer to a specific kind of archaeological si... more RCHAEOLOGISTS IN EUROPE use the Arabic word tell to refer to a specific kind of archaeological site that grows up vertically over time. 1 From northern Africa through southwestern Asia and into southeastern Europe, tell sites were created at many different times throughout prehistory and in historic times. 2 Tell sites are created when people live on the same piece of land for hundreds or thousands of years-for example, a large section of the modern city of Tel Aviv is a tell site that has been occupied for millennia. Archaeologically, tell sites tend to be associated with sedentary farming populations that built houses made of mud brick or wattle-and-daub, a kind of adobe technique. Because the walls of these houses are made of mud, they are relatively short-lived and need to be renewed or reconstructed regularly. Sometimes they are deconstructed or burned and rebuilt on the same spot. Other times, they are abandoned and rebuilt somewhere else on the settlement. When built on the same spot, prior to reconstruction, a new settlement layer is laid down by leveling the old house

The relationship between community formation and physical settlement configurations has been the ... more The relationship between community formation and physical settlement configurations has been the subject of scrutiny and design since Antiquity. From Plato to Thomas More, thinkers of social utopias emphasized habitation areas, and particularly cities, and have proposed markedly different ideas for organizing space to ensure livability and well-being (Baker-Smith 2000; Charbit 2002; for a summary of utopias, see Rosenau 1983). Ancient and historic architects and architectural manuals, including the Hindu vaastu shastras (Sinha 1998) and Joseph Smith's Plat of the City of Zion for Mormon communities (Hamilton 1995), also reflected the principal role of ideological agendas in settlement planning. Some early efforts, such as those promoted by the Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus, were explicit in aspiring to substitute organic spatial arrangements for regular, linear structure. In his famous and still relevant book Town Planning in Practice, Unwin (1909) presents the gridded layouts of the Greek city of Selinus and Roman Pompeii as examples of the early influence of this style (Figure 1.1). Regularity and administrative efficiency triumphed over human social interactions and natural landforms. Similar to these early works, social aspects were of central importance in settlement design manuals compiled for colonial settings from the 16th century onward, such as those issued by the Spanish Crown for its colonies in the Americas and the Philippines (Mundigo and Crouch 1977). More recently, urban planners seeking recipes to achieve social unity and betterment have reconsidered the cities' built environment as a key determinant. In contrast to the classical approaches to urban planning, Fredrick Law Olmstead's plan for the Riverside suburb of Chicago followed natural contours and deliberately avoided right angles (Beveridge et al. 1998). As the well-known modernist examples of Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City; Le Corbusier 1935),

The volume can be purchased at http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6696-coming-together.aspx

Hungarian Archaeology, 2021

This article explores the development and evolution of a Neolithic tell on the Great Hungarian Pl... more This article explores the development and evolution of a Neolithic tell on the Great Hungarian Plain, with a particular focus on the depositional and functional changes over time. Recent, multi-disciplinary research in conjunction with the reassessment of old excavation records allows us to identify three major phases in the morphological and functional development of the Szeghalom-Kovácshalom tell. The original primary use of the tell was residential in nature. After several generations, as the settlement expanded into the surrounding landscape, the tell was used for more communal behaviors until, during the latest phase, it was used primarily for burials. This evolution of the tellfrom a residential space to a cemetery-underscores the complexity of social processes that unfolded at prehistoric tell sites in southeastern Europe. The method we employ demonstrates how information from old and new research projects can be integrated successfully to model the development of complex, multi-period settlements.

A B S T R A C T Nucleated tell sites emerged on the Great Hungarian Plain nearly a millennium aft... more A B S T R A C T Nucleated tell sites emerged on the Great Hungarian Plain nearly a millennium after the earliest agricultural communities established sedentary settlements at the beginning of the Neolithic period. Once established, these unprecedentedly large population centers had a dramatic impact on their local environment. In this article, we present the results of our recent research at two Neolithic tells in the Körös Region of the Great Hungarian Plain. These sites – Vésztő-Mágor and Szeghalom-Kovácshalom – were established at roughly the same time and were located on the same branch of the Sebes-Körös River. Focusing on two methods – geophysics and micro-stratigraphy – we compare how these two nearby sites were established, evolved, and were abandoned within their local landscapes. Whereas geophysical surveys provide a horizontal picture of how the sites expanded over space, microstratigraphic studies provide a vertical perspective of the social processes that built the tells over time. Although both settlements were established at the same time, the sites developed in very different ways. We attribute these differences in the micro-regional trajectories to specific traditions associated with different local communities.

Compared to other parts of the Old World, nucleated, tell-based settlements emerged late in the e... more Compared to other parts of the Old World, nucleated, tell-based settlements emerged late in the evolution of Neolithic villages in the Carpathian Basin. This article presents the results of recent research conducted by the Körös Regional Archaeological Project and examines the long-term trajectories of two tell-based settlements in the Körös Region of the Great Hungarian Plain. In this article, we describe the various non-invasive investigative techniques that were employed to reconstruct the organization of Neolithic tell-based settlements at Szeghalom-Kovácshalom and Vésztő -Mágor. These techniques include intensive, gridded, surface collections, magnetometry, ground penetratingr adar, electrical resistance tomography, hyperspectral spectroradiometry, and soil chemistry.

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