The potential to study the Neolithic and Eneolithic in a diachronic perspective
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The presentation deals with the interpretation possibilities of archaeological records in the Neolithic and Eneolithic through the diachronic perspective. It highlights the limits of current paradigmatic approaches in the efforts to reconstruct the social processes within prehistoric societies, starting with the formation of elite and organisational social ranks. Synthesis of classical political economy approach (topdown perspective) and collective action theory (bottomup perspective) shows a suitable solution for overcoming of these limits. Several specific types of movable, as well as immovable types of material culture (i.e. analysis of the spatial distribution of prestige goods, as well as the understanding of monumental architecture construction and its context), will demonstrate the potential of these approaches. The main aim of this lecture is to show that this kind of analysis is priceless for reconstructing the principles of social organisation within Opening lecturePresentation communities, intercommunity interactions, and related issues connected with the beginning of the formation of social hierarchies and heterarchies. It points out the fact that the knowledge generated using these approaches in the context of the Neolithic and Eneolithic is valuable for understanding former social processes. It is also invaluable for the diachronic study of the growth of sociopolitical complexity within prehistoric nonstate societies in general, i. e. even for understanding the social processes in the following historical epochs. |