Satellite images bring Serbia ’s hidden Bronze Age megastructures to light

More than 3000 years ago during the Bronze Age, people across Eurasia formed massive trade networks that tied the continent together. But the Pannonian Plain, an open expanse that today includes parts of Romania, Hungary, and Serbia, was considered a relative hinterland. That was true even after archaeologists 2 decades ago uncovered a handful of massive Bronze Age enclosures, some protected by walls and ditches many kilometers long. No one was sure how the structures were tied to cultural developments elsewhere in Europe, although scattered finds of bronze artifacts showed the enclosures weren’t completely isolated. “They were seen as unicorns on the landscape,” says Barry Molloy, an archaeologist at University College Dublin. “This was thought of as a backwater.” In 2015, Molloy and other archaeologists turned to satellite imagery to see whether they could spot more structures that ground-based investigations had missed. Last week in PLOS ONE , they report finding more than 100 of these distinct enclosures in what is today Serbia . Spaced closely together, they form a belt stretching 150 kilometers along the Tisza River, a major north-south artery dividing the Pannonian Plain. The findings suggest the structures were part of a vast network of settlements that took part in a booming, continentwide bronze trade that flowered some 3600 years ago. “For the first time we can see the extent of this phenomenon,” says Austrian Arc...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research