Place and Time at Trypillia Mega-Sites: Towards a New Synthesis of Analyses and Social Theory

Abstract

The Trypillia mega-sites (‘TMS’) form an exceptional aspect of the broader Cucuteni–Trypillia group in the Balkan and East European Neolithic and Chalcolithic. The TMS are currently the largest sites and the earliest urban complexes in Eurasia in the fourth millennium cal. bc. In this article, we chart the trajectories of theoretical and methodological development of TMS research. We build on the social implications of the Visibility Graph Analysis of Nebelivka and Bayesian modelling of three significant TMS. In the key section, we examine TMS in the light of three points made in Graeber and Wengrow’s book The Dawn of Everything: cultural schismogenesis, the three elementary forms of freedom, and those of domination. The integration of the latest analytical results and political theory provides a new platform for future investigations of TMS.