Satellite photos reveal Bronze Age megastructures – 11/27/2023 – Science

It has long been known that extensive trade networks existed among the peoples of Eurasia during the Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago. However, despite this active exchange, the Pannonian Plain, a region that today includes parts of Romania, Hungary and Serbia, was considered a relatively isolated territory.

According to Science magazine, this perception persisted even after, two decades ago, imposing Bronze Age enclosures were discovered in the region, protected by extensive walls and ditches several kilometers long. “They were considered unicorns in the landscape,” Barry Molloy, an archaeologist at University College Dublin, told the magazine.

Now, however, archaeologists from University College, Dublin, together with colleagues from Serbia and Slovenia, have discovered in the Serbian plains a network of more than a hundred previously hidden Bronze Age sites, using satellite images and aerial photographs.

Complex society

The discovery suggests that these structures were part of a complex society, with an extensive network of communities, which included prosperous trade on a continental scale around 3,600 years ago. Furthermore, it is believed that these newly identified settlements may shed light on the origin of the megafortresses of that same era, the largest prehistoric constructions before the Iron Age.

“Some of the largest archaeological sites, which we call megafortresses, have been known for years, such as Gradište Iđoš, Csanádpalota, Sântana or the incredible Corneşti Iarcuri, surrounded by 33 kilometers of moats and which surpasses in size the contemporary citadels and fortifications of the Hittites, Mycenaeans or Egyptians”, said, in a statement, Molloy, main author of the study published in the journal Plos One.

“What is new, however, is the discovery that these enormous sites were not isolated, but were part of a dense network of closely related and mutually dependent communities. At its height, this network of Lower Pannonian localities must have tens of thousands of inhabitants”, added the expert.

The study details how archaeologists first identified these enclosures in 2015 by examining images from Google Earth. The text highlights the uniqueness of being able to obtain, in this way, such a comprehensive level of detail about the distribution and organization of these settlements in a specific area.

Prehistoric Innovation Centers

These archaeological sites, collectively called the Tisza Site Group (TSG), are located less than five kilometers apart and stretch along the river corridor created by the Tisza and Danube rivers. The proximity suggests that these communities were likely cooperative, allowing them to expand effectively.

Interestingly, the investigation also reveals that the TSG was a center of innovation in prehistoric Europe and played a crucial role between 1500 and 1200 BC, a period that coincides with the heyday of the Mycenaeans, Hittites and Egyptians of the New Kingdom, which also provides new data on European connections in the second millennium BC, an important prehistoric turning point.

The study therefore suggests that this society’s advanced military and earthmoving technologies spread across Europe after its collapse in 1200 BC, which helps explain similarities in material culture and iconography across Europe in the end of the second millennium BC

Specifically, according to Science, the discovery of clay chariots and weaponry in nearby cemeteries indicates that the inhabitants of these precincts were “familiar with war”, not with each other, but with the outside world.

“Our understanding of the functioning of their society calls into question many aspects of European prehistory. It would be highly unlikely that each of these more than a hundred sites had competing individual leaders,” said Molloy.

Archeology with cutting-edge technology

To detect these archaeological finds, the team used a wide range of state-of-the-art imaging technologies to map the ancient landscape.

“We employ a range of cutting-edge technologies, and in this work we rely heavily on imaging from space to discover a previously unknown network of massive sites in the heart of continental Europe: the Carpathian basin,” said Molloy.

Still, in addition to analyzing satellite images, researchers explored the site both by plane and in person, discovering countless structures and artifacts “hidden to the naked eye,” as Science reports. Radiocarbon dating of scattered animal bones confirmed the settlement’s antiquity, according to Molloy.

“It would have been occupied between 1600 and 1200 BC”, explained the professor. “On some occasions, we found pieces of burnt clay, indicating that the structures had suffered fire damage. The clay was applied to walls made of thin sticks to build structures such as houses in the past,” he detailed.

Abandonment of the settlement

However, something went wrong around 1200 BC The enclosures were abandoned, and evidence indicates that some were intentionally dismantled, with ditches filled in and walls torn down. The exact cause of the abandonment is unclear, but it evokes similar collapses in societies from Egypt to northern Germany around the same time.

“That remains a mystery for now,” Molloy said. “It’s possible that they simply became more mobile and moved around the landscape in a less restricted way.”

“It is fascinating to discover these new systems of government and see how they related to already known influential societies. But at the same time it is worrying to see how they ended up suffering a similar fate in the wave of crises that hit this wider region”, he concluded.