Approximately half way through the Otomani-Füzesabony period, what Kristian
Kristiansen and Thomas Larsson call “highly developed Bronze Age societies”
began to appear in Transylvania and elsewhere in the Carpathian basin:
Their expansion corresponds to a qualitative and quantitative leap in metal
production centered in the Carpathians, beginning around 1750/1700 BC. This
represents an indigenous production of metalwork of high standard. A whole
series of new weapon and ornament types were introduced—long swords,
lances, battle-axes, arm rings, ankle rings, pendants, etc., together with
new casting technologies and a new stable tin alloying.... Large-scale
metal production of a scale and quality hitherto unknown in central Europe
had emerged. A stratified settlement system with fortified central settlements
for production and distribution allowed an organised and widespread
distribution of this new metal industry, mainly prestige goods, weapons and
ornaments.^39This intensification of metal production, the commencement of which I must
date ca. 1650/1600 rather than a century earlier, continued through much of the
third quarter of the second millennium BC, as more bronze seems to have been
produced in the Carpathian basin (and especially in Transylvania) than anywhere
else in Europe. In addition to accidental discoveries of hoards of bronze (and
gold) artifacts throughout the basin, archaeological excavations have revealed
details about the mining and working of metals in Bronze Age Transylvania. Most
recently, eight seasons of digging at Pălatca and Bolduţin northwest Romania
have unearthed Late Bronze Age smelting furnaces and slag from copper ore, a
workshop with an anvil and an oxhide bronze ingot, a variety of clay molds in
which the molten bronze was cast into tools, weapons and ornaments, and possibly
even a religious structure with an altar for rituals that accompanied the whole
process of metallurgy.^40
Militarizing of the Carpathian basin: introduction
The vigorous exploitation of the Carpathian and Apuseni metals—gold, and
abundant new sources of copper—was accompanied by the appearance of luxury
goods and of a great number of objects decorated with spiral and curvilinear or
Wellenband(“wave band”) designs. Of more historical importance were the new
weapons mentioned by Kristiansen and Larsson: the weapons, along with the
sudden appearance of horse harness, indicate the presence of a new military class.
That such a class was to be found in the Carpathian basin in the second half of
the Bz A2 period is far from a new idea. Quite to the contrary, it is generally
assumed by specialists on the archaeology of the area. Klára Fischl and her
colleagues, commenting on the many deposits of weapons and gold that have been
found in Transylvania and eastern Hungary, go on to speculate about the signi -
ficance of the deposits:
140 Militarism in temperate Europe