Abandonment of agglomerations in late Iron Age in Central Europe - complex society facing complex problems

0395616 - ARÚ 2014 CZ eng A - Abstract
Danielisová, Alžběta - Cimler, R. - Olševičová, K.
Abandonment of agglomerations in late Iron Age in Central Europe - complex society facing complex problems.
-. 2013.
[Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists /19./. 04.09.2013-08.09.2013, Plzeň]
R&D Projects: GA ČR GAP405/12/0926
Institutional support: RVO:67985912
Keywords : collapse * oppida * late Iron Age
Subject RIV: AC - Archeology, Anthropology, Ethnology

In the models of social complexity including and interconnecting innovation, specialisation, political structure, market integration, but also migration, settlement pattern changes and abandonment, population growth plays a crucial role. Population pressure and over-exploitation of resources are very important concepts from which wide social phenomena have been explained. The consequences of increasing social complexity usually involve the transition from universal subsistence strategies to (institutionally introduced?) intensive exploitation of resources aiming for surplus production, which leads progressively towards increasing dependency outside the community. As the population approaches the limit, surplus production gradually declines. The situation develops into the crisis and settlements must be abandoned or the strategy must be transformed. This contribution focuses on the period of Iron Age in Central Europe when large agglomerations came into picture. When examining their economy an issue of the resource crisis induced by population pressure inevitably appears. The archaeological evidence of rapidly increasing and then again decreasing occupation during the last two centuries BC could make "crossing the limit" one of the potential explanations of the end of the Iron Age agglomerations in Central Europe. However, the question addressed in this paper is whether this problem was not in fact much more complex.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0223638