Institute of Archaeology
Topic
Women in the Eastern Hallstatt culture
PhD. program
Year of admission
2025
Name of the supervisor
Mgr. Anita Kozubová, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Comenius University Bratislava
Annotation
The thesis focuses on exploring the lives of women in the Eastern Hallstatt culture from various perspectives. Its primary aim is to identify women in the archaeological record and address questions such as: What was the position, role, and perception of women in Hallstatt society? To what extent did burial rites and grave goods reflect the social identities of women within the horizontal and vertical social structure? What factors influenced female visual identity (including costumes)? And what potential profane and ritual activities were performed by women? The distribution area of the Eastern Hallstatt culture consisted of several regional groups. Therefore, it will be important to identify any potential common features or differences in the researched issues across the various regions of the Eastern Hallstatt culture (with the aim of identifying possible interregional female communication networks). In addition to case studies of richly furnished graves, the graves of women with less rich grave goods or without any grave goods present an additional methodological and interpretative challenge.
The starting point of the thesis is almost exclusively on published cemeteries, supplemented by information from settlements. The successful completion of the thesis also requires an interdisciplinary approach – particularly the involvement of knowledge from physical anthropology, paleodemography, ethnoarchaeology, as well as cultural, social, and gender anthropology.
An additional contribution could be the comparison with the results of similar research in the Western Hallstatt culture, which has received more attention than the Eastern Hallstatt area. The issue of women and the female aspect has not yet been comprehensively addressed for the Eastern Hallstatt culture. Therefore, this topic is promising not only for the doctoral study itself but also offers the potential for further exploration during postdoctoral research, considering additional aspects.
The starting point of the thesis is almost exclusively on published cemeteries, supplemented by information from settlements. The successful completion of the thesis also requires an interdisciplinary approach – particularly the involvement of knowledge from physical anthropology, paleodemography, ethnoarchaeology, as well as cultural, social, and gender anthropology.
An additional contribution could be the comparison with the results of similar research in the Western Hallstatt culture, which has received more attention than the Eastern Hallstatt area. The issue of women and the female aspect has not yet been comprehensively addressed for the Eastern Hallstatt culture. Therefore, this topic is promising not only for the doctoral study itself but also offers the potential for further exploration during postdoctoral research, considering additional aspects.