engleski

Changing Identities of the Iron Age Communities of Southern Pannonia

The process of transition in each area/community was a unique combination of all or some of the general features which started from, and resulted in, a more or less uniform cultural complex. Deconstruction of the transitional Late Urnfield/Early Iron Age cultural package into separate elements which have their own independent dynamics provides us with a model to study that process. It seems that each cultural group followed its own dynamics of change and developed a unique model of cultural transformation. This is why communities in transition demonstrate the highest level of differentiation, while before and after that process they shared a more common cultural framework. The general exchange network of developed Iron Age was superimposed over a patchwork of regional exchange networks, which were both operated by local elites. The individual Iron Age centres within this network did not act merely as passive distributors of goods, but rather played a more active role in modifying and filtering the conceptual content of cultural transfer, with a direct influence on the cultural dynamics of the entire eastern Hallstatt area, and perhaps even beyond. That would mean that cultural innovation starts at the ‘periphery’, in spatial, but not in conceptual sense. Traditional Pannonian forms that survived intense changes in the Late Iron Age, indicate the continuity of the indigenous population, which took over the technological and cultural achievements of the La Tène Culture but maintained elements of its own recognizable material heritage. The heterogeneous nature of the newly-emerged communities can be explained precisely through diverse cultural and/or ethnic substrates having their origin in the Late Hallstatt period.

Iron Age, Hallstatt, La Tene, identity, Pannonia

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