Sacrifice, warfare, or burial? Middle Bronze Age "mass graves" from Érd and Makó, Hungary

During the past two decades, the study of human remains from prehistoric settlements has gained new momentum in Hungary. The phenomenon of burials within settlements can be observed in many phases but was perhaps most prominent during the Copper and Bronze Ages. Thanks to the large-scale rescue excavations of the last few decades, our database of relevant material has increased considerably, shedding new light on previously excavated assemblages as well. In our paper, we present burials from two Middle Bronze Age settlements in Hungary that yielded a series of skeletons and human remains, some of which showed traces of violence and perimortem trauma. We establish that at both sites the human depositions showed significant variability, indicating diverse cultural practices. A number of characteristics of these »mass graves« support the hypothesis that they may have been associated with some form of sacrifice and ritual violence, rather than warfare or other causes of death. Chronological data indicate a prolonged tradition of series of ritual acts, sacrifices, and possibly the secondary manipulation of human bodies

Realizing QVT with Graph Rewriting-Based Model Transformation

Model-based development is an increasingly applied method in producing software artifacts that is driven by model transformation. For instance, OMG's Model-Driven Architecture as a model-based approach to software development facilitates the synthesis of application programs from models created using customized, domain-specific model processors. Meta Object Facility 2.0 Query/ Views/ Transformation (QVT) is the OMG's standard for specifying model queries, views, and transformations. Extensive research of graph transformation provides a strong formal background for model transformation. The main contribution of this paper is to show how high-level constraint constructs facilitate to realize transformations specified in QVT with metamodel-based model transformation. As a result we can reuse the graph transformation constructs, and its formal background, which facilitates to make QVT transformations validated

Bronzkori tájakon a Benta völgyében : Kutatások a központ és „hátországa” kapcsolatának megismerésére | Bronze Age Landscapes in the Benta Valley : Research on the Hinterland of Bronze Age Centres

Közép-Európában a bronzkori települések hálózatának és a hozzájuk kapcsolódó temetkezéseknek a kutatása a régészeti terepmunkának mindig is meghatározó irányvonalát alkotta. Az elmúlt évszázadok kutatói elsősorban a nagyobb központi települések, tellek, földvárak megismerését tűzték ki célul. Az utóbbi bő évtizedben alapvető változás kezdődött ezen a területen is. A központi települések tanulmányozása mellett hangsúlyosabbá váltak a mikroregionális kutatások, az eltérő funkciójú és szerkezetű települések és temetkezések vizsgálata. A bronzkori tájhasználat tágan értelmezett kérdéseinek megválaszolására csak komplex kutatási programok vállalkozhatnak. A kutatás során többek között a következő kérdések merülnek fel: 1) Miként definiálhatók regionálisan és mikroregionálisan a bronzkor különböző időszakaiban a települési struktúrák? 2) Léteztek-e valódi központok, specializált települések a bronzkorban Közép-Európában? 3) Hogyan befolyásolta a kulturális háttér az adott régió tájhasználatát? 4) A temetőkben hogyan nyilvánul meg a társadalmi és politikai szerveződés? Ilyen komplex, nemzetközi kutatási programok keretében került sor Százhalombatta vidéke bronzkori településtörténetének vizsgálatára. | Research on the network of Bronze Age settlements and their burial grounds has always been a priority of archaeological fieldwork in Central Europe. Researchers of the past centuries tended to focus on the large central settlements such as tells and hillforts. The past decade has seen a shift in research perspectives: while the study of central settlements has lost none of its importance, interest has grown in micro-regional research and the investigation of settlements with differing function and layout. Only complex research projects can address broad issues of Bronze Age land use. We sought answers to the following questions: 1) Did differences exist between the regional and micro-regional settlement patterns during successive periods of the Bronze Age? 2) Were there genuine centres and specialised settlements during the Bronze Age in Central Europe? 3) How did a communityʼs cultural background influence landscape use in a particular region? 4) How is social and political organisation reflected in cemeteries? The Bronze Age settlement history of the Százhalombatta area was investigated as part of an international research project

An integrative skeletal and paleogenomic analysis of stature variation suggests relatively reduced health for early european farmers

Human culture, biology, and health were shaped dramatically by the onset of agriculture ∼12,000 y B.P. This shift is hypothesized to have resulted in increased individual fitness and population growth as evidenced by archaeological and population genomic data alongside a decline in physiological health as inferred from skeletal remains. Here, we consider osteological and ancient DNA data from the same prehistoric individuals to study human stature variation as a proxy for health across a transition to agriculture. Specifically, we compared “predicted” genetic contributions to height from paleogenomic data and “achieved” adult osteological height estimated from long bone measurements for 167 individuals across Europe spanning the Upper Paleolithic to Iron Age (∼38,000 to 2,400 B.P.). We found that individuals from the Neolithic were shorter than expected (given their individual polygenic height scores) by an average of −3.82 cm relative to individuals from the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic (P = 0.040) and −2.21 cm shorter relative to post-Neolithic individuals (P = 0.068), with osteological vs. expected stature steadily increasing across the Copper (+1.95 cm relative to the Neolithic), Bronze (+2.70 cm), and Iron (+3.27 cm) Ages. These results were attenuated when we additionally accounted for genome-wide genetic ancestry variation: for example, with Neolithic individuals −2.82 cm shorter than expected on average relative to pre-Neolithic individuals (P = 0.120). We also incorporated observations of paleopathological indicators of nonspecific stress that can persist from childhood to adulthood in skeletal remains into our model. Overall, our work highlights the potential of integrating disparate datasets to explore proxies of health in prehistory.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Magyar Kutatók 8. Nemzetközi Szimpóziuma 8 th International Symposium of Hungarian Researchers on Computational Intelligence and Informatics Architecture of an In-Memory Transformation Engine

Abstract: General purpose modeling languages, such as UML, had a great impact on reliable software engineering. After realizing the need for automated code generation from models, the more appropriately customizable Domain-Specific Languages emerged. The creation of these languages requires metamodel-based environments, in which new languages can be designed in a visual way with minimal amount of coding. Translations between different domain-specific models can be performed automatically by model transformation systems if the necessary conversion steps are defined. Usually, model transformation systems store their models in memory, however in this way the model distribution is hardly possible. The performance of database-based modeling environments is considerably lower than those of in-memory versions. This paper introduces the steps of converting a database-based modeling system into a modeling environment that is able to work in both database and memory without having to duplicate the previously implemented algorithms