 Good evening, everyone. Nice to see you here. Really nice to see all the colleagues, new friends in this marvelous place at the Queen's University in Balfast. I'm Alexandra Anders, members of the Scientific Committee of the EA annual meeting in Balfast. It's my honor to present to you today's keynote speaker, Jujana Shikloshi. Jujana is an assistant professor at the Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Uttar Shlore and University in Budapest, in Hungary. She's an expert in the neolithic and copper age of the Carpathian basin and focuses on various social archaeological issues. Her MA dissertation on Neolithic Prestige Goods won a publication award. She received Arthaspromising Researchers Award in 2018. She's currently leading two major research projects. One of them aims to model the spread of early copper artifacts and the technology of metallurgy from Southeast to Central Europe. Additionally, she's the PA of the Momentum Innovation Research Group, which explores the factors that affected the spread of innovations with the goal of understanding the transmission of technological know-how and of which factors influenced these transmissions. Thanks to her multidisciplinary interest and cooperation network, her name is also well known among leading research institutes and labs. She's a very active member of the EA community as a presenter or session organizer since the meeting in Zadar in 2018. We have known each other for quite a long time. We are colleagues at the institute and we have co-authored several papers and have co-edited various volumes. The situation of young female researchers is not easy anywhere in the world, but they have... Not easy anywhere in the world, but they have to work particularly hard in Eastern Europe to break through the glass ceiling. Juje is one of the few who have been able to do so through her talent, determination, commitment to science and archaeology, and the warm support of her family. The keynote speakers are scholars who were selected to be representative of EAA membership and because their fascinating areas of research span many aspects of the conference teams. This was the case with Zuzhenna, too. The motto of this year's AM is weaving narratives, telling stories about the past. Zuzhenna's talk will demonstrate how we can write a perceptive narrative of individual communities and local diversity in the fifth millennium BCA. Zuzhenna, come and spread your news from the Copper Age. The stage is yours. Thank you, Alexandra. This very nice introduction. We are colleagues, we are organizers. First of all, I would like to say thank you for the invitation. It is a great honor to give a keynote lecture here in Belfast. I'm very much grateful for the opportunity to present to you our new research group. We have already seen many exciting presentations today and I hope our work will also arouse your interest. The mere existence of an independent Copper Age has been debated among European archaeologists since the 19th century. The increasing number of pure Copper objects in European collections led some local researchers, mainly where raw Copper was available to insert a new period between Thompson's Neolithic and Bronze Age, the Copper Age. Ferenc Pulski's earth fits well into this European context. He argued for the existence of an independent Copper Age in 1883 based on Copper and Gold artifacts from Hungary and then recently found Stolhof Horde. In the first half of the 20th century, the Golden Child linked the technological development of archaeological periods and metallurgy, a craft specialization to the rise of complex societies. According to Child's definition and narrative, archaeological cultures were analytical units and active agents of prehistoric processes. As we all know, in the second half of the 20th century, the new archaeology reformed the definition of archaeological culture and highlighted some of its basic conceptual problems. However, the notion is still widely used. Following the new paradigm, Conny Ranfu argued for an autonomous Copper Age in southeastern Europe, which emerged independently from the Near East. Ranfu based his idea on the exploitation of local sources of Copper raw materials and the surprisingly rich cemetery in Varna supported by radiocarbon dating. At that time, this idea was revolutionary. He placed the spread of metallurgical innovation in an economic and social context and considered the large quantities of Copper artifact as prestige goods. He linked the beginnings and spread of metallurgy to the emergence of chiefdoms and social inequality. Ranfu believed that the production of metal objects required specialized craftsmen for which a society must be capable of surplus production and was controlled by chiefs. Processors archaeologists focused on the study of individuals, identities, micro histories and site-centered studies from the 1980s. However, from this point, we must take about parallel archaeologists, perspectives and trends. Regional or macro-scale investigations which use the traditional definition of archaeological culture implicitly or explicitly still existed. Almost 10 years ago, Christian Christiansen showed in an excellent paper that big data and expressive development of scientific analytical methods, primarily the ancient DNA, led to a paradigmatic shift again in archaeological research. Thanks to these new methods, now we can see how small or large-scale mobility as denotization or the Yamnaya impact reshaped the European continent's history. These analyses are so frequently considered archaeological culture as an analytical unit. This approach has been widely and severely criticized. Big data, big stories, but individual decision, right history. Even the post-protestual and biosocial archaeology is created, methodology to study individual life-ways, the different perspectives have been rarely applied together. The fact that we do not define what we mean by the spatial and temporal distribution of material culture is a basis of misunderstanding. We do not make a clear difference between the patterns of production, use, and deposition of objects. We do not focus on interpersonal relations and differences in access to knowledge and information when we discuss the distribution patterns of certain elements of material culture. We also pay less attention to whether distribution pattern is equal to a certain social unit and if yes, which unit it is. In my presentation, I will argue for the need to develop a multi-scalar approach building from the smallest social units, the individuals, via the communities and the local scale to the micro-regional and regional scale to understand how individual decisions lead to history-forming transformations. We need a multi-scalar and integrative approach that uses real social entities. The copper age was the age of innovations. This period saw the birth and spread of many historic technological innovations across Europe. These include the spread of metallurgy, the invention of the veiled vehicles and animal traction, the increased consumption of dairy products and the processing of wool. Except for metallurgy, Andrew Sherrod described them as the secondary products revolution. His theory has been refined since then. The emergence of these innovations did not occur together, but it is still true that eventually they were compiled into a package that shaped human history. So the question is how we can better understand the spread of these innovations and how we can detect individual decisions and real social interactions beyond them. The Carpathian Basin played a key role in the spread of these innovations because its geographical location provides a natural link between southeastern and central Europe. The Danube and its tributaries offer an excellent route for communication and transportation. The Great Hungarian Plain is the westernmost boundary of the eastern European steppe, but Transdanubia is linked to central Europe. Therefore, what is now Hungary is a natural linking point between large areas. Copper mines dated to at least 5,500, 5,300 BC are now from present-day Serbia and Bulgaria. Targeted archeometallurgical research has revealed many details about the local metallurgy and the organization of the production. Contrary to the previous assumptions, no special furnace was needed to smelt copper. A simple pit was sufficient. The key to the process was cooperation. In other words, instead of individual specialization within the community and individual workshops, the entire community of the settlement participated in metallurgical activities. If we can talk about secret knowledge, it was a secret of the community, part of the community's identity. The social identity-forming significance of metallurgy and copper objects is reflected in the groups of miniature anthropomorphic clay figurines excavated at Trikvines tublina in Serbia. Recent multidisciplinary studies on the Varna cemetery shed new light on copper age elite. The archeometallurgical analysis of gold artifacts and the complex interpretation of anthropological studies have led to the conclusion that the graves, which are extremely rich in gold objects, including gold imitations of the goldsmiths tools may have been the graves of goldsmiths. These people could have been involved in not only the production of these objects, but also their exchange. In other words, it was the craftsmen themselves rather than a separate elite who organized the transmission of the objects they made. Briefly, we can see a differentiation of knowledge in the 5th millennium BC. A high-level specialized knowledge of craftsmanship appeared at several places throughout the continent and was accompanied by a long-distance distribution of its products that can be regarded as prestige objects. Colin Renfue used the innovation of metallurgy as an example of his famous paper in which he highlighted the importance of studying the spread of innovations. He implemented average sociological study into archeological research. In the last decade, researching the innovations has become a leading field in archeology. However, no complex model has been developed so far which would integrate the results from different fields to explain why innovation and more broadly, knowledge transfer has spread rapidly in some areas and slowed down and stirred in others. But social factors help or hinder the transfer of information and knowledge. Who and how creates those social networks should which innovations spread and how are they maintained? One of the reasons for the lack of a comprehensive explanatory model is that archeological research either focuses on the flow of information between individuals at the site level on the spread of significant innovation innovations on a continental scale. This is because there is no methodological and theoretical framework that could connect the different levels and explain how human interactions between individuals become global historic events and how we can link these to the available archeological record. In material culture studies, the Chanel Paretoir approach has long been used to detect each step in the manufacture and reveal the skills and knowledge of the manufacturer. Using this methodology, we can trace the teaching and learning processes, the real interpersonal relations and communities of practice. Thanks to the wide range use of analytical methods, we now have the opportunity to reveal the traces of individual knowledge, skills and their differences among individuals and communities as well. In what follows, I will demonstrate how different narratives can be created using such a multi-scalar approach building from the bottom up instead of using the archeological cultures a homogeneous analytical unit. Examples will be shown from the copper age of the Carpathian Basin. The cultural and chronological framework of the early and middle copper age in Hungary seemed to be clearly outlined by the end of the 20th century. After the abandonment of late Neolithic tales on the Great Hungarian Plain, a new fine material called this apogalcature appeared around 4500 BC. It was accompanied by the appearance of the first former cemeteries and heavy copper twos and by a dispersed settlement pattern. The copper age lasted until 4500 BC, consequently. It was both a cultural and a chronological period or unit. The fine material called Bodrokerestur culture seemed to be its immediate cultural and chronological descendant. It was represented by the appearance of gold ornaments and heavy copper twos in greater months and accompanied by the continuous change of pottery forms and decorations. This chronological period, the middle copper age lasted until 3600 BC. Its second part was separated and called Hunyadi Hallowm culture based on primarily the changes of pottery. Moreover, this was the period when the first traces of local metallurgy appeared both on the Great Hungarian Plain and Transdenubian. The beginning of the Transdenubian copper age was not such a profound change. The Lengel complex survived, albeit with less intensity than in the late Neotic. The middle copper age Balaton-Lassigne culture was characterized by a dense network of small form-like settlements and was as rich in metals as the Bodrokerestur culture on the Great Hungarian Plain. The second half of the middle copper age is characterized by the sporadic settlements of the Furchenschtig pottery culture with central European relations and there were traces of local metallurgy. This traditional cultural historical perspective viewed things in terms of homogeneous spatial and temporary units as archaeological cultures and it described their unilinear, uniform development on the whole Great Hungarian Plain and Transdenubian. The first signs showing problems with this system appeared in the 2000s when large-scale excavations revealed two cemeteries. The fully excavated cemetery in Heiduböstermäy-Fichorito contained Disapolgaer-style pottery and was dated with EMS measurements to be between 4,350 and 4,250 BC. Another cemetery in Räköcyfa, Bivaito, was discovered with Bodrokerestur-style pottery, golden copper ornaments and heavy copper twos. Its EMS dates were surprisingly old, dated to the same period. We can see that two cemeteries which, according to the traditional system, should have followed each other in time might have been contemporary. Therefore, it was clear that we need to reconsider our conceptual frameworks to describe the copper age. Therefore, together with Paerotski, we took further EMS measurements and we interpreted them with Bayesian modeling. We found that the dating of the Disapolgaer-style did not change as much as the assemblies represented by Bodrokerestur and Hunyadi-Hallon pottery style, which were dated to a much earlier period than it was expected before. The results suggested that the former system of successive phases of Disapolgaer and Bodrokerestur cultures cannot be maintained anymore because these ceramic styles might have been partially contemporary. Therefore, I started my postdoc research project in light of these new results in 2012 and I focused on three strongly related group of questions. The problem of dating, the space and the problem of cultural and stylistic units. My colleague, Martin Silaghi, joined me in this project and his task was the systematic evaluation of pottery styles using a uniform statistics-based stylistic analysis. During this project, we built up our model from the smallest units as graves or pits via the sides to microegions and regions and we built different contradictory models. We used altogether more than 100 EMS measurements in Bayesian modeling. If we study the use of different styles in the context of space and time on the Great Hungarian plane, we can witness a contemporaneity of different pottery styles and the continuous spread of the Bodrokerestur style. It seems evident that what we call the Disapolgaer style appears earlier than the Bodrokerestur style. Based on these results, we can observe the contemporaneous use of various pottery styles at different sites on the Great Hungarian plane instead of homogeneous units of archaeological cultures. The picture becomes more complicated by the fact that it is usually not easy to make a difference between the Disapolgaer and Bodrokerestur styles. Instead, a mixture of different proportion of the elements occurs on several sites. Based on Bayesian models, the Bodrokerestur style appeared 130 to 230 years earlier on the Great Hungarian plane than the Disapolgaer style disappeared. Due to the multi-level modeling, we can even see the spread of Bodrokerestur style on the plane. We can witness the variability of styles in material culture, mortuary practice, and settlement pattern in a regional level on the plane. The regional homogeneity as Disapolgaer and Bodrokerestur cultures cannot be maintained anymore in a time interval that can be studied nowadays. Moreover, the first appearance of a step-origin barrier makes this picture even more colorful. An important consequence is that if we try to maintain the regional unit of archaeological culture, it would hide the variability that we can currently witness in the use of material culture. I think that we can find traces of overlapping complex social networks of individuals forming communities behind this variability in the material culture and archaeological features. And this is a much more realistic picture. We can reconstruct the life of past communities only if we try to reconstruct the real significant social unit at every level and we try to reconstruct the social networks and social interactions. Every community is built up of individuals with multiple and multiple level identities as age, gender, kinship rituals, and so on. These communities can be formed on a local level or on the basis of interactions between individuals who are connected with some common features. Therefore, we cannot expect that we will be able to reveal clearly separated units by this complex subterranean network of social relations can be explained by the mosaic variability of archaeological data. In the following, I will show this complexity using the example of the board of the Racocifa Bivito site 1C. A settlement of three buildings and several pits and a contemporary cemetery of 79 graves was revealed. Both were totally excavated and there was a dividing empty space between them. This fortunate situation provided us a unique opportunity to study how material culture was used in various archaeological contexts. A single barrier was found in the settlement contemporary with the oldest graves in the cemetery. At first glance, the barrier right is identical to that seen in the cemetery, but the left side laying is a female characteristic while the long, Volhynian flint blade is a male characteristic. Anthropological studies revealed that the deceased was an adult whale. It is striking that the decoration of the pottery grave goods is of excellent quality, which makes them more similar to the settlement's pottery. Even if we do not know exactly why this person was buried in the settlement instead of the cemetery, it is certain that the rules of the community made this situation possible. Two spatial groups can be distinguished in the cemetery. The western group is the older one, the eastern group is a little younger. The whole cemetery's use can be estimated for 130 years at most. Among the grave goods in the older group, both Tisapolgar and Bodrokker restore styles and even a Shejbenhenkel type plastic decoration occurred. All three graves with pottery of different styles can be dated between approximately 4,350 and 4,250 kBC, which can be explained either by a sudden change in the use of pottery styles or these styles were used contemporary, at least in a scale that we can detect now. One of the richest graves was a symbolic one. It was found in the center of the western group surrounded by an empty area. The grave contains all significant symbolic objects but gold. The Balkan copper axe, the special Balkan bifacial leaf point, the long volhynian stone blades indicating long distance connections and the triangular arrowheads and milk jug are typical of local barriers on the Great Hungarian Plain. We interpret this grave as a symbolic representation of the community's relationships. The differences between the use of material culture at the settlement and the cemetery is striking. The quality of the vessels, the forms and their frequencies are different in the settlement and the cemetery. The so-called milk jugs were mostly placed into the graves and hardly deposited in the context of the settlement. In contrast with the 18 copper artifacts and further gold ornaments found in the cemetery, no trace of metallurgical activity was revealed in the settlement. Based on the chemical composition and land isotope analysis, the objects were made of high purity copper or driving from the Balkan mines. According to Norbert Farago, the few napstones found in the settlement were made of local raw materials. Many napstones from the cemetery could be associated with the Volhynian prute type raw material from 400 or 450 kilometers north-east of Racocifalva. Further objects were made of obsidian or limnocidicit originating in the Tokaj mountains. An extraordinary piece, a bifacially retouched leaf point from the symbolic barrier was made of a bulk and flint, originating more than 800 kilometers away from Bulgaria. The tools were most likely made as well. During the evaluation and the refitting test of the Volhynian flint, traces of several nodules were found, but no conjoining pieces could be identified. This may prove that these pieces came together from the same workshop. Summarizing the results of the Racocifalva case study, the difference between the settlement and cemetery's material was surprising. It is also striking how different identity types appear in the two contexts. Two vervisible identities appeared in the cemetery. The smallest one, the individual, and an interesting dichotomy, the largest one, because the cemetery was also the place of the most distant connections and the emergence of large identity groups. In contrast with it, the settlement seems to be a different world, a parallel reality, with a completely different dynamism. No distant connections or stylistic separation is observable in the settlement material. For us, however, the main lesson was the variety of almost all artifact types or phenomena. The concept of site history made all these observations possible. Turban modeling and using the concept of archeological culture would have obscured much of this diversity. Going further from the site to the micro-regional and regional level, we conducted a similar site-based approach and besides local variability, we also detected shared traditions. Style and decorations can be easily copied and rapidly changed. Esther Sholnai started to analyze the ceramic fashioning sequences because these appear to be more resistant to change. Forming gestures become water habits during the learning process, where the tutor and the learner are always socially related. Thus, the sets of technical traditions are shared and transmitted over time within socially related communities of practice. This is true for not only ceramics, but any other crafts. This is why the shadow operator approach is the relevant methodology to reveal the learning processes and detect the set of skills and shared knowledge. Esther is analyzing the records if I will be vital assemblies and other contemporary sites in the Great Hungarian Plain in her PhD dissertation. The frequent forming techniques that occur in large quantities on the sites refer to a common set of technical traditions that strongly define the way of doing of the potters. The universal distribution of these techniques, independently from the ceramic styles, suggest a common social network. What is more, different, probably non-local traditions can be also detected on the sites with Bodroker-Estur's ceramic style. These indicate that the potters in these settlements might have had widespread social networks and diverse traditions. As we have seen, a dense network of small form-like settlements was established in the early Cuprage. These small-scale agro-pastoral settlements were economically self-sufficient. This suggests that there were close social ties between the inhabitants of the smaller settlements in a narrower geographical area which determined that they were buried in the same place. It is also possible that communities changed their residence frequently within a narrower area. The results of isotopic studies on the individual diet do not show differences by gender and wealth. So a degree of social inequality that would have limited access to basic food sources is unlikely. According to Strontium isotope analysis, the Tisapolgar barriers of Haidu Bössermi, Fichorito and Pustatas-Koiland-Ensa sites are of local origin. The barriers are in the Tisapolgar-Baschotanya cemetery, accompanied by Tisapolgar-style pottery are also essentially local. Here, however, the barriers with Bodrokkerestur-style pottery included several non-locally-born male individuals. Additionally, several mobility patterns were observed. There were some who moved here as a diet, some who had changed their residence several times during their lives, and others who were born here spend their early childhood somewhere else and they returned here. This suggests the diversity of individual life courses within a settlement, within a cemetery's community. Individuals with greater mobility tended to have fewer grave goods than individuals with stronger local connections. This raises a question of the relationship between the mobility of individuals and the use and deposition of long-distance objects. Could they have been the individuals who were involved in the transmission of long-distance objects, perhaps in the transmission of technological know-how? No evidence of local metallurgy has yet been found in early Copper Age settlements on the Great Hungarian Plain and the metal objects have been found typically as tray finds or as grave goods. They only find from a certain context that can be linked to the technology of metallurgy is a small, plumb-shaped, copper ingot fund in grave 59 of the cemetery at Disapolgar Baszotanya, the grave of a 30, 35-year-old woman with Bodokka Restur style pottery. This find also questions the early and implicit assumption that only men were involved in metalworking. This find suggests that social contacts with Balkan communities may have led to the sporadic transfer of information and technological knowledge. In 2017, I started a comprehensive project to investigate the origin of the raw material for the copper artifacts, whether potential sources in the Carpathian Basin were exploited and whether there were differences in the use of sources between Transdenubia and the Great Hungarian Plain and whether access to sources changed between periods. I will present its result tomorrow in another presentation. This time, I will only highlight some issues related to the topic of the analytical unit and the transmission of technological knowledge. According to the distribution of metal artifacts, the Bodokka Restur culture was thought to be a metallurgical center. I think that this interpretation misses the crucial difference between the consumption, deposition and the place of manufacture. This is a typical problem when prehistoric archeology uses the concept of archeological culture. If we look into the details, we can find that the majority of the copper artifacts are stray finds without any archeological context. Therefore, we cannot place them precisely in time and quite frequently even in place. Moreover, the Bodokka Restur culture covers the plain where there are no copper or sources. This distribution map usually covers a wide range of typological forms of axes and eddies, but from well-documented archeological find contexts, only Jalssondagne and Schirio type eddies are none. In these communities, only a very limited number of adult men could have had access to these artifacts. Therefore, the question should be what these communities could provide in exchange for long-distance artifacts, including copper, gold and stone artifacts. Returning to Transdanubia, another remarkable example we show as the long-distance interactions and various expressions of identities of a copper age community. A unique copper horde was unearthed in 2017 during a preventive excavation in the middle of Southern Transdanubia. Although similar hordes are none from Central Europe, there are either stray finds or were discovered in the 19th, early 20th century and literally is none about the archeological context. The discovery of the horde from Magyar Egrash represents an outstanding opportunity for studying the social role of copper hordes. The excavated part of the settlement reveals a well-organized settlement with Northwest Southeast-oriented buildings, huge amorphous pits, an area of economic activity and an enclosure. Based on Bayesian modeling of AMS measurements, the site was used during the second half of the 5th millennium BC. The horde was recovered from a port placed upside down at the edge of a large complex pit complex. The port contained two large spectacle spiral pendants, three large spiral bracelets, two of which fit together, intentionally cutting two halves, 19 spiral coils and more than 600 small copper bits, as well as almost 300 stone bits and one spondylene speed. The manufacturing technologies were revealed by Esther Horvath. The channel parallel was highly standardized and certain technological characteristics were shared in case of different types. Thin ornaments, such as cylindrical bits and tubular spiral coils were made of a single copper sheet. Thick pieces, like bracelets and pendants, were constructed by stacking several copper sheets to create a laminate structure, which was then rolled or folded and curled into a spiral shape. The sheets were flattened and shaped by hammering. Standardization is reflected also by objects' shapes, cylindrical, tubular, and spiral forms occurred. Lada isotope and chemical compositional analysis suggests the probable north-western Carpathian origin of the raw material. This is consistent with the archaeological data. Large spectacle spiral pendants are known from Hort or Strayfond in the territory of present-day Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Austria. The very context of the large spectacle spiral pendants is unknown, as these artifacts were never found in graves. The objects that make up the Horde were probably made elsewhere, but may have arrived as part of a gift or prestige exchange between high-ranking individuals. No artifacts have been found in the settlement material that suggests local manufacture. The making of all the objects of the Horde requires a high degree of skill, and the objects must have been of high value. The Balkan and the north-western Carpathian Metallurgical Centers were different in the sense of product distribution. The objects from the Balkans reached long distances as far as the North Sea, while at least some special types made in the northwestern Carpathians were only spread in a smaller area, which is called Balaton-Lassigne-Ludanice-Jordanov complex. This fact might be due to the different operations of the centers and the different attitudes towards their products. This is where we were before our current project. Thanks to the generous funding of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Landulet Momentum Programme, we could establish a new research group at the end of the last year. Following the above-presented approach, we build models from the individuals to the local communities and larger micro and regional social networks. We study the interpersonal relations with the combination of ancient DNA, isotopes and material culture analysis, or metals, stones and porteries. During this project, we pay particular attention to the archaeological material and the wide range of animal products. Using this integrative approach and social network analysis, we will be able to detect differences in access to raw materials, information, knowledge and resources, and finally define a set of knowledge that a certain community shared. In summary, we found essentially local small-scale communities who maintained intense contact with other small-scale communities based on the objects they placed in their graves. There is a difference in prestige or rank. We can rule out the possibility of major population movements that might have played a role either in the beginning of the Copper Age or in the spread of metallurgy. Mobility is likely to have occurred only within the plain and over shorter distances. For these small-scale Copper Age communities, it was essential to form alliances with other similar communities, to have access to additional resources, to avoid risk and to reach stability. There were several ways of doing this. Organizing communal feasts, gifting of prestige goods and building marriage relationships could all help to maintain and strengthen these alliances. These small-scale communities of the Copper Age were open, colorful and diverse. The key to their stability and success was their diverse network of relationships. The coordinated cooperation, collaboration and information that flowed between the members of these communities could also support creativity and the emergence or spread of new innovations. The results of this can be seen in the archaeological record. Thank you for your attention, and I would also like to say thank you to my colleagues, the members of the Momentum Innovation Research Group, with whom we would like to contribute not only the investigation of the Copper Age in the Carpathian Basin but also a wider European prehistory. Thank you.