Eneоlithic Cultures of Central and West Balkans
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I d edicate this book to my friends and teachers: Academician V ASA £llBRILOVl£ Academician ALOJZ BENAC A Professor STOJAN DIMfTRIJEVlC www.balkaninstitut.com INSTITUTEOR F BALKAN STUDIES Serbian A cademy of Sciences and Arts - Special edition No. 6 l in association with Publishing H ouse DRAGANIC -The Heritage Series Editor Academician M ilutin Garasanin General e ditor of the series Dragoslav Antonijevid: Corresponding member of the SASA BELGRADE l 995 www.balkaninstitut.com NIKOLA T ASIC ENEOLITHIC C ULTURES OF CENTRAL AND WEST BALKANS BELGRADE l 995 www.balkaninstitut.com T3 3 7 Reviewer Academician M ilutin GaraSanin English t ranslation Ivana Dordevid (pp. 9-93) ^ Nenad Tasid (pp. 1 03- 1 75) Proof-readers M arina Adamovid Nenad Tasid Layout N enad Tasid Drawings Plates h XLIII Sead Cerkez (from PJZ III, I 979) Figs, in the chapter Register... Sneiana Bekrid Published b y . The "DRAG AN l£" Co. The p ublication of this book has been financially supported by the Ministry for Sciences and Technology of the Republic of Serbia. The Research Funds of the SERBIAN ACADEMy of SCIENCES and ARTS and "MADLENA J ANKOVlC FOUNDATION" www.balkaninstitut.com CONTENTS Preface 7 Introduction 9 EARLY E NEOLITHIC I9 - T he Southern Pannonian zone 20 - T he Central Balkan zone 28 - T he Alpine slopes zone 35 - T he Adriatic zone 38 MIDDLE E NEOLITHIC 43 - T he Cernavoda III - Boler&z culture 46 - T he Baden culture 5 I - T he Kostolac culture 59 - T he Cotofeni culture 65 - T he Retz-Gajary horizon 69 - T he Pit-grave culture and the tumuli 72 LATE E NEOLITHIC 75 - T he VuCedol culture 76 - T he terminal Eneolithic of the Alpine zone 85 - T he terminal Eneolithic of the Adriatic zone 88 NOTES 9 3 REGISTERF O MAJOR ENEOLITHIC SITES IN FORMER YUGOSLAVIA.. I 03 BIBLIOGRAPHY I 7 5 SUMMARY I 9 I THE L IST OF PLATES (I-XLIII) 20 I www.balkaninstitut.com www.balkaninstitut.com PREFACE The n oble wish of Alojz Benac, the originator of the five-volume Serbo- Croat version of the Prehistory of the Yugoslav Lands (Sarajevo 1979; 1983; 1987) was to produce a book which would give a syntlietic account of that subject not only in Serbo'Croat, but also in English and German, This wish, we are sorry to say, has not been fulfilled. A. Benac' s death and, later, the disintegration of former Yugoslavia have prevented the completion of that project. By tliat time, some authors had already finished their manuscripts, and some others were still working on their portions of the text. According to the editor's arrangement, the texts for the English edition were to be written by Mitja Brodar ("The Palaeolithic"), Alojz Benac ("The Neolithic"), Nikola Tasic ("The Eneolitiiic"); Borivoje £ovi£ ("The Bronze Age", apart from the Pannonian region, which was to be discussed by Nikola Tasid); and Milutin GaraSanin ('The Iron Age"). The Editorial Board made certain general guide-lines for the authors. They were mostly based on the methodology used in the original Serbo-Croat edition of the Prehistory of the Yugoslav Lands. The illustrative material was reduced, but it was also updated with new drawings, plans and charts. Unfor tunately, this part of the work seems to have been lost in the tragic developments which have afflicted parts of the former Yugoslavia, especially Sarajevo arul the Centre for Bakanological Research, in which the documentation was kept. The a uthor of this book on the EneoUthic of Yugoslavia submitted his text to the Editorial Board as early as 1987. He was given valuable comments and suggestions by A. Benac, B. (Sovid and M. GaraSanin. In the meantime, the unfortunate events mentioned above have shown that the projected English edition is not likely to be produced in the near future, and therefore lie has decided to update his text and publish it as a separate monograph. What a re the most notable changes and additions in the present text? First of all, the former administrative entity (the Socialist Federative Republic ofYugosla www.balkaninstitut.com 8 T he Eneolithic cultures of Central and West Balkans via) e xists no longer, and therefore the earlier title has been replaced by the term "The Central and Western Balkan", which is not fully adequate, but which does cover approximately the territory of former Yugoslavia. The book discusses four regional wholes as in the original Prehistory of the Yugoslav Lands (Vol. Ill): the south Pannonian region, the central Balkan region, the Alpine region and the Adriatic region. The two former regions belong to the central Balkans, and the two latter ones to the western part of the Balkan region. In view of the character and the development of the individual Eneolithic culture (the Kostolac culture, aixd particularly, the Vuledol culture ), which extended over more than one region, this approach seemed appropriate. In order to avoid long descriptive expressions, the text uses terms such as "former", or "previous" Yugoslavia, and it is hoped that the well-meaning reader will accept them in the sense in which they are used. Another i mportant modification of tlie original text is the addition of the second part, which contains a list of the fifty most important Eneolithic sites in the regions. It includes those that have been used by the author for the synthetic part of his text, those are archaeological material from which is well known to the author. Since J 990, which may be considered the upper chronological limit of the greater portion of the text, a number of major Eneolitlxic sites have been explored, especially in the western parts of the Balkan Peninsula, but they have not been discussed here either because they have not been fully published of because of evidence on their chronology and cultural traits is stiU not available. It may be observed that the list of sites shows considerable regional variations as regards their distribution. It should be added, besides, that these regioixs have not been explored equally thoroughly: for example, the sites in Slavonia, Srem or Pelagonia are considerably better known than those in Istria, on the Adriatic coastline or Herzegovina. The i llustrations used in the book are of various origin, and that is specified in the appropriate place. The tables are mostly those used in Vol. Ill of the Prehistory of the Yugoslav Lands, and they were made by Sead C^erkez after the instructions of N. Tasi6, S. Dimitrijevii and B. fovanovii. They have been complemented by a few drawings made for the English edition by Elma Buiofrom the Centre for Balkanologi' cal Research of the Academy of Science and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The drawings in the chapter on the sites have been made by Sneiana Bekri6. www.balkaninstitut.com INTRODUCTION The s tudy of Eneolithic sites and cultures, and of the Eneolithic in general, does not have a long tradition in former Yugoslavia. If we take as its starting point the systematic excavations of Ig (Ljubljansko Barje) carried out by K. Deschman in 18751 we are left with a period of some 120 years. Extensive material has been collected during that time, relating to Eneolithic settlements and necropolises, the material and non-material culture of the period, the relative and absolute dating of the cultures, cultural groups, and their variants, as well as the period as a whole, so that it is now possible to offer a fairly accurate synthetic survey of the development of the cultures, their stylistic and typologi cal features. Deschman's r esearch was followed by the investigation of other Eneo lithic sites, most notably by F. Fiala at Debelo Brdo (1893), J. Brunschmidt at SarvaS (1897) and Vucedol (1898), Vohalski at Gomolava (1904), M. Vasic" at Kostolac (1906) and Vinca (1908), F. Milleker's many smaller-scale exca vations in southern Banat in the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, and many others.2 Ljubljansko Barje, Vucedol, VinCa, and Bubanj excepted, the first large-scale and systematic excavations were to take place only after World War II: at Gomolava, HrustovaCa, Vinkovci, Zecovi, Ravlida Pedina, GrapCeva Spilja, Gudnja, Vela Luka, Odmut, several sites in Pelagonia, Hisar and Lipljan in Kosovo, Ajdovska jama in Slovenia, and elsewhere. This survey of the Eneolithic in the Yugoslav Danube Basin, and the central and western Balkans is based on material gathered at these sites. In a ddition to archaeological excavations and the collecting of archae ological data, the nineteen-thirties saw the first attempts at systematizing the material from the Eneolithic sites and drawing up a periodization of the Eneolithic cultures. These attempts are to be found in the first volumes of what www.balkaninstitut.com I0 T he Eneolithic cultures of Central and West Balkans was t hen a ground-breaking series, the "Corpus vasorum antiquorum", chiefly the 1937 volumes by N. Vulic and M. Grbic dealing with the material contained in Belgrade's Prince Paul Museum (Muzej Kneza Pavla)3 and, to a lesser extent, V. Hoffiller's volumes of 1933, devoted to Vucedol, and 1938, publishing the results of excavations at Sarvas", Dalj, and Velika Gorica.4 A more thorough systematization of the Eneolithic cultures and their relative chronology became available only with the works of V. MilojCid (1949), M. GaraSanin (1959), A. Benac (1962), S. Dimitrijevic (1961), N. Tasic (1967) and, of course, compre hensive monographs such as The Prehistory of Serbia by M. GaraSanin and The Prehistory of Vojvodina by B. Brukner, B. Jovanovid, and N. Tasid.5 These synthetic works, numerous studies, articles and papers, excavation reports, and unpublished material, served as a basis for the five volumes of The Prehistory of Yugoslavia, whose third volume (by N.