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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2022 21:06:46 GMT
INTERNAL CHANGES
Morintz & D. Rosetti (1959) expressed that the decline of the Gumelnita culture was
mainly caused by intensification of a pastoral economy as a response to worsening fertility of the
soil. Berciu’s excavations at Cernavoda allowed him to single out a separate culture and call it
by the same name as the site. The culture he divided into three successive stages (Cernavoda I,
II, and III) as part of the same complex. According to Berciu the culture of the first stage,
Cernavoda I, was formed locally in Dobrudja on the basis of local Gumelnita traditions
transformed by strong southern and eastern impacts. This conclusion has suggested rather a
transition from the Gumelnita to Cernavoda culture instead of full replacement one culture by
another. So it was a product of local development but significantly influenced by external
contacts. These conclusions, ahead of their time, were quickly forgotten however.
While acknowledging the evidence of steppe cultural elements in the Late Eneolithic
societies of Southeast Europe, Dmitry Telehin offered a relatively early explanation for these
patterns (1973). He saw an elite exchange system taking place between the steppe cultures such
as the Sredny Stog and with the Balkans cultures beginning in the late 5th millennium. It was
based on the exchange of a number of items between the emerging elite clans and chiefs in the
Balkans and those of the steppe tribes. It was primarily based on the exchange of copper from
the west to east. This was reciprocated by flint exchange in the opposite direction, in addition to
steppe funerary gifts such as Tripolye pottery and horse-head scepters on the periphery.
(Curiously, these anthropomorphic scepters are not found in the core area of the steppe region
between the Dnieper and Don where one would imagine their source.) Horses also may have
been part of this exchange as well. While this theory provides a possible explanation of
exchange networks and contacts between these two cultural spheres, it falls short of explaining
the cultural collapse seen in the West. Why were the villages abandoned en masse and why were
the ceramic and burial traditions replaced? JP Mallory later (2011) elaborated on this elite
change system in order to explain how the different groups living in the different river valley in
the Pontic Steppe could have come to speak the same language we know as Proto-Indo-European
across the region due to the elite interaction sphere which manifested later into the Yamanya
horizon. However, this returns us back to the discussions in the previous section.
To explain changes seen in the Aegean beginning in the 4th millennium, Renfrew (1972)
stresses the development of grape and olive production for commercial purposes. This sparked
the beginning of widespread sea trade throughout the eastern Mediterranean. He posits this led
to the system of elite trade seen in the Bronze Age in this region and this led to social
stratification. This all caused a movement from the mainland to the islands and corresponds with
the beginnings of the Helladic culture. However, this does not have relevance to the lower
Danube Valley where neither grape nor olive production is known from this time.
Actually, Renfrew proposed later that the first speakers of the Indo-European were
Early Neolithic farmers from central or Western Anatolia who spread the Indo-European
languages with the expansion of agriculture into Europe beginning in the 7th millennium B.C.
This would work with a theory of gradual internal change in the Balkans or with a later
migration of Indo-European speaking folk again out of Anatolia into the Balkans or even later
from steppe people who had become “Indo-Europeanized” before with the spread of the
agriculturalists. Reacting to criticism, Renfrew (2004) revised his proposal to the effect of
taking a pronounced Indo-Hittite position. Renfrew’s revised views place only Pre-Proto-IndoEuropean in 7th millennium BC Anatolia, proposing as the homeland of Proto-Indo-European
proper the Balkans around 5000 BC, which Gimbutas identified as the “Old European culture”.
He says that reconstructions of Bronze Age PIE society based on vocabulary items like “wheel”
do not necessarily hold for the Anatolian branch, which appears to have separated from PIE at an
early stage, prior to the invention of wheeled vehicles.
There are a number of problems that I, and others (Mallory 1989) see with this Anatolian
Indo-European homeland in the Early Neolithic. For one, if the Proto-Indo-Europeans were the
first farmers, who spread out to Europe, North Africa, and Southern Asia, then they would not
have come from Central Anatolia, but rather, the fertile crescent region. Furthermore if
agriculture subsequently spread to the Nile as it did in Europe by demic diffusion, why did the
ancient Egyptians not speak an Indo European language? The same goes for the Elamites and
Indus Valley culture. There is a way around this problem by seeing the homeland in the
Anatolian plateau but they were not the first farmers but were the carriers of agriculture into
Europe and then, millennia later in the steppes, speakers of an Indo-European dialect migrated
across the steppes and deserts of Central Asia into the Iranian Plateau and India which there is
evidence for. But the problem is that the cultures in the Ukrainian steppes preceding the Sredni
Stog (the first possible Proto-Indo-Europeans according to the Kurgan model) seem to show
continuous descent from the Mesolithic population in both physical type and material culture.
Then there is the Sumerian problem. Why are there so few loanwords and other signs of
lexical or grammatical exchanges between Sumerian and Proto-Indo-European? Why are there
so much more signs of language exchange between PIE and the Uralic languages? Why also can
we not read Linear A from Crete if they were Indo-Europeans, there by 6000 BC. It appears to
have a syllabic structure radically different from the structure of Indo-European words. Why
also does it appear from the early written sources that the Indo-Europeans were intrusive and a
minority among non-Indo European peoples already in Anatolia such as the Hatti, Hurrians, and
Kaskians. Mallory (1989: 180) says that an Anatolian homeland is at variance with the timedepth for the fragmentation of the Indo-European dialects, based on linguistic criteria. The debate rages to this day especially now in light of some conclusions based on a computerized phylogeographic study recently published in Science, using methods drawn from the modeling of
the spatial diffusion of infectious diseases which supports an Anatolian homeland (Pringle,
2012). I shall not linger on this debate more, but it is of concern to the theme of this report and
from the evidence I do not find it a viable hypothesis although an attractive one.
Bankoff and Winters (1990) explain changes in material culture, settlement pattern and
perhaps subsistence in the Morava Valley (Serbia) as the product of gradual internal changes.
They note the new ceramic inventory and the disappearance of the earlier Neolithic tradition of
painted wares. The large nucleated settlements also disappear. At the site of Bubanj in the
Morava River valley there is a clear gap in the Bubanj ceramic assemblage between Bubanj Ib
and Bubanj II which occurs at the time when Cernavoda III/Boleraz pottery appears in the north,
during the initial phases of the Baden pottery period: in other words; at the earliest phases of the
Early Bronze Age in Southeast Europe. We see this gap at contemporaneous horizons
throughout the region, which suggests large scale abandonment of the settlements and later reoccupation at some of them. Bankoff and Winters do not make note of this curiously contemporaneous horizon of abandonment and emergence of new cultures.
Bankoff and Winter are reluctant to go with an invasion hypothesis. They recognize the
major changes that occurred at the end of the Eneolithic/Chalcolithic but would suggest that
these sociocultural, economic, and material transformations may have been the result of gradual
changes over the considerable period of time, nearly 1500-2000 years; that is the Balkan
Chalcolithic. The result of this process was a uniquely European temperate farmstead pattern
with concomitant changes in society and substance. They suggest that these changes were the
result of continued agricultural expansion, combined with the probable effects of increased
animal husbandry and grazing and local factors affecting the soil. They also suggest that these
changes could have been the result of changes in agricultural technology such as the introduction
though diffusion of the horse from the Pontic steppe, animal traction, plows, and wheeled carts.
(Bankoff and Winter 1990, 190) The changes did occur, but they occurred over a considerable
amount of time. It wasn’t as if the Bronze Age arrived and everything changed at once from a
massive invasion. Bankoff and Winter fail to mention the appearance of the steppe-like kurgan
burials and make little discussion of the sudden change in pottery styles that resemble that of the
steppe. They share with us that one of the shortcomings of the archaeology of southeastern
Europe is the scarcity of data from intensive, systematic, field survey (177). This time frame
they give, 3200 to 2300 BC did see increasing changes in economy but was after our collapse
happened which doesn’t fit.
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2022 21:35:56 GMT
Whittle (1996) shares similar views. He says that a series of important changes, but less
dramatic than large-scale migrations took place in the fourth millennium. “Change was neither
synchronous nor identical from region to region.” (126). Although he admits there were
influences from outside, much change can be attributed to internal ‘structural reordering’. “Indo-
European language may have spread after these changes were underway, not as their primary
cause. Language shift need not only be associated with large-scale (or small-scale) population
movement.” (126). He says that Indo-European may have come to be the prime language of
these changed societies which emphasized mobility and interregional connections and that this
reorientation would have been possible from the beginning of the Neolithic. “Proto-Indo European of the fifth to fourth millennia BC was probably only one strand in a shifting continuum of language change. It seems most likely that it existed in unaltered form several millennia earlier. To posit an ancestral Pre-proto-Indo-European is to enshrine the unsatisfactory analogy of tree of descent.” (139). This does not have to be an “unsatisfactory analogy”.
Every language has a source, but it is probably true that there wasn’t one single proto language that
gave birth to all the other Indo-European languages but an area of similar languages and dialects
giving rise to different branches. Mallory (1989: 159) also said earlier that Proto-Indo-European
is the slice of one particular strand of the linguistic continuum, falling about 4500-2500 BC.
Whittle points out the weakness of the Kurgan model that it does not fit the chronology of
change seen in the Balkans. Were the chronology to be more convincing, one should see the
earliest signs of radical transformation on and west of the Dnieper, with subsequent shock waves
radiating out to the west. But, the reverse seems to be the case, changes working eastwards
(138). The alterations of the late Vinca, Tiszapolgar, and Gumelnitza horizons were
contemporary with the late part of the main Cucuteni-Tripolye sequence from Moldova and
western Ukraine. He sees the changes as actually beginning in the west, with the Vinca and
Tiszapolgar cultures and spreading west. He also does not see the early appearance of horses in
Tizapolgar and especially in Baden contexts in Hungary as being necessarily as an influx of
domesticated stock from the steppes but rather could have been a wild variety. Whittle claims
that it is in Serbia and Hungary that we see the first signs of change. “Processes of internal
change should be visible in the sequences of individual sites like Selevac in Serbia or Gorzsa or
İcsıdüKováshalom and BerettzóújfaluüHerpálz on the Hungarian Plain, in the first part of the
fifth millennium BC.“ (140).
The Neolithic and Chalcolithic lifestyle was probably always partly mobile but
innovations from the outside such as wheeled transport and horse-riding, coming in from the
outside helped to “reinforce tendencies to fragmentation and mobility which were already
strong“ (140). Also possible were attitudes to place and residence. People may have preferred a
lifestyle which allowed them to combine both independence and integration. He says that the
Indo-European language may have spread not as the result of substantial population movement,
but as a common language of communication and long-distance interaction in a world in which
mobility and exchange became more important. Some movement of steppe people into Ukraine,
Moldavia, and the lower Danube may have taken place, but this is likely to have been
“opportunistic infill as primary cause of change in that area.“(140).
Whittle gives a region by region analysis of the time span from about 4000 – 3500 BC
that concerns us. He correctly asserts that there is a lack of documented and published material
to get a complete picture of the degree of settlement abandonment or continuation from the Late
Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age phases in the Balkans. It is mentioned that some well-established sites like Ovcarovo in Bulgaria were already abandoned well before the “transition period“ at around 4500 BC. And although we lack radiocarbon dates in support, it is possible that some of the lower Danube tells, such as Gumelnitsa and Cascioarele were occupied into the
transition period. Published detail on site layout and use is still largely restricted to Ezero.
“There is therefore considerable danger in mistaking gradual process for event.“ (129). In all
Whittle gives a good analysis of the “Accents of change“ in the transitional period and it’s
possible explanations and gives a convincing case for internal processes with some outside
influences. At the same time he highlights the lack of sufficient available data and the need for
further research. His assertion (1996: 140) that there may been some movement of steppe people
into Moldova and the lower Danube, but this is as likely to have been ‘‘opportunistic infill as
primary cause of change in that area is certainly noteworthy.
Nikolay Sirokov and Tsoni Tsonev (1995), upon analysis of the flint assemblage from
Hotnitsa-Vodopada came up with the conclusion that there is no “discontinuity in the evolution
of the Eneolithic tradition into the Early Bronze Age.” (264). Therefore they emphasize an
internal evolution of the Late Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age communities. However, as the
authors note, such conclusions only account for this particular site and further regional analysis
is needed in this region pertaining to lithic tools. Their sample size was small and from “two
closely-packed settlement horizons, developed for a relatively short time and thus belonging to
the same culture phase”, not a very reliable way of determining temporal change in material
culture. It is also de facto knowledge in archaeology that stone technology and forms are very
conservative to change relative to pottery, of which there is strong evidence of change for this
time and place. Still, the authors make some important points in the end by stating some of the
convictions held by supporters of invasions and their rebuttal remarks. One is that the wellmarked stratigraphic hiatuses between Eneolithic horizons and the Early Bronze Age ones in the
Balkan sequences interpreted as a collapse of the Eneolithic communities are relatively short or
even shorter than the hiatuses within the various Eneolithic horizons (Nikolay & Tsonev 1995:
254). Also, the assertion for almost instantaneous collapse of the Eneolithic cultures in the
Balkans and that the transition period to the Early Bronze Age is almost uniform in time and
place is not entirely accurate, “But there are more or less pronounced aspects of the
autochthonous cultural tradition which occur between the Late Eneolithic and EBA that, in turn,
underlay the fact that the upper limit of the Eneolithic is not a uniform one.” (Nikolay & Tsonev
1995: 255).
Bailey (2000) in his conclusions about the post-4000 BC changes in Balkans society is
also leaning towards a local development over considerable time. He says that the invasion
explanation finds increasingly little support. “The many separate phases of fire destructions of
fifth millennium houses and villages occurred over a long period and had more to do with
severing local relationships of people and households identities than they had to do with
thundering troops of testosterone-exuding arsonists.” (260).
The main fallacy, he says, is the mistaken assumption that dramatic changes in material
culture, settlement and burial that are evident in the Balkans from 4000 to 3000 BC demands an
explanation in terms of population replacement. “Considering the time span over which these
changes took place, the regional diversity, especially in settlement and burial, and the threads of
continuity, it seems a much wiser approach to look for local patterns and rates of change.” (260).
He assures that when it comes, the DNA comparisons taken from pre- and post-4000 burials will
provide some more refined evidence about whether there were such population changes. But as I
had mentioned with Gimbutas, she said that there was evidence of a mixed population in the
Baden culture with earlier Mediterranean type Vinca people and the steppe type, based on
skeletal and cranial morphology. But perhaps this is pseudo science and based on out-dated
modes of racially classifications among Europeans based on cranial and facial morphology.
Bailey says that even when the DNA evidence comes, it will only tell us about local populations.
He posits the possibilities that these lifestyles developed independently of any potentially
causal events occurring outside of the region; or that perhaps people in the Balkans took
advantage of outside technological developments that changed their societies. Perhaps their
perception shifted with respect to what was an appropriate or desirable level of settlement
permanence or visibility with respect to the ways in which communities established and
maintained links to particular parts of landscapes.” (261).
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2022 17:54:46 GMT
Lolita Nikolova, in her article “The Balkan Proto-Indo-Europeans in the fourth
millennium” (2000), finds a complex of internal reasons as the primary factors of the decline of
the Late Copper Age in the Eastern Balkans. She says there is no reason to believe that
pastoralism was imported into the north Balkans from elsewhere. However, she does see an
economic shift toward nomadic and semi-nomadic structures in the entire Balkans in contrast to
the stable mixed farming economies of the Early and Late Copper ages. The gradual rise of
importance of stockbreading throughout the Chalcolithic could have consequently caused a
population decline due to decreased fertility during the transformation of agriculturalstockbreeding into a pastoral economy, which explains the demographic collapse of the Balkan
Final Copper Age (203).
She says “there is no homeland for the Cernavoda I culture pottery in the North Pontic
from whence it could have dispersed westwards.” This she says because the emergence of the
plain Cernavoda I pottery was gradual, as well as the decrease of the Gumelnita pottery. Also,
the emergence of the Cernavoda I culture predated the Usatovo stage of the Tripolye-Cucuteni
population that produced similar pottery. She also stresses that the appearance of scepter graves
in the western Circum-Pontic area is not evidence enough of a mass intrusion of population from
the northwest Pontic mobile pastoralists. “These changes in the Balkans were the product of
internal innovations that involved the adoption of some neighboring elements not only from the
north Pontic but also from central Europe.” (204). Yet still she includes that in ethnic terms we
find a “transformation and stagnations” of the tribes of Gimbutas’ ‘Old Europe’ and an
integration of the intrusive groups from the North Pontic.
Nikolova sees archaeological evidence for a migration of population from north-western
Anatolia into the northern Aegean and Bulgarian Thrace based on the popularity of channel
pottery at Poliochni I, Sitagroi IV, Dikili Tash IIIA, ect. She also sees the similarities with
Baden I as connecting the eastern central Balkans with the southern middle Danube as evidence
of a migration from central Europe to the south/southeast. She does acknowledge Yamnaya
culture of mobile pastoral groups integrating into the mixed farming systems at the end of the
Early Bronze Age I and in the EBA II. They defined the cultural development only in some
micro-regions like northeastern Bulgaria (208).
To conclude she says there are “reasons to believe that the cultural changes in the earlier
4th Millennium BC were due to a complex of factors including a series of economic and social
crises in the context of climatic deterioration.” (216). The only problem is she does not discuss
much of this climatic deterioration or elaborate on how this is linked to the “economic and
social” crises at all. But she does touch on the previous observations of Gimbutas regarding
elements of the steppe culture in the Balkans at this time without accepting an ideological war
between the different ethnic groups. She says that we find the decline of the fertility cult within
Old European society itself. The decline in the fertility cult was the result of social change
She says that the archaeological record demonstrates strong, well-organized societies,
which could not be destroyed by external factors. But this is in reference to the early Bronze
Age, not for the Late Copper Age, so the societies she is referring to were already after the
archaeological transition from Copper Age to Bronze Age where all the changes occur. And her
acceptance that the Yamnaya culture from the North-east Pontic steppes was penetrating into
some micro-regions of the Balkans in the late 4th millennium seems to contradict what she said
about there being no evidence for mass migrations. Yet still, she maintains that the ProtoEuropeans were in the Balkans long before the 4th millennium BC and the Early Bronze Age population was genetically connected with the Early Neolithic population. The transformations were the result of internal processes. So it appears Nikolova is suggesting that the IndoEuropean homeland was in the Balkans, which would mean they were descendants of the earlier
Danubian Neolithic cultures.
Recent studies have begun to look at the traditional Chalcolithic burial culture for clues to
explain the eventual changes. According to Chapman et. al (2006) "Once upon a time, not so
very long ago, it was widely accepted that steppe nomads from the North Pontic zone invaded
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2022 19:11:14 GMT
Recent studies have begun to look at the traditional Chalcolithic burial culture for clues to
explain the eventual changes. According to Chapman et. al (2006) "Once upon a time, not so
very long ago, it was widely accepted that steppe nomads from the North Pontic zone invaded
the Balkans, putting an end to the Climax Copper Age society that produced the apogee of tell
living, autonomous copper metallurgy and, as the grandest climax, the Varna cemetery with its
stunning early goldwork. Now the boot is very much on the other foot and it is the Varna
complex and its associated communities that are held responsible for stimulating the onset of
prestige goods-dominated steppe mortuary practice following the expansion of farming."
Following in their footsteps, Windler et al. (2012) and Müller (2012) see a steep increase
in social inequality as possibly being one of the main reasons for the collapse of Chalcolithic
societies around 4100 cal BC in Durankulak and other South East European regions. This rise
in inequality was associated with the rise of access to metals like copper and gold. The authors
provide good data and methods for measuring the amount of social stratification and material
wealth based on ascribed values for artifact categories in the burial goods. “Growing inequality
accompanies less economic growth” (208). The elites of the society at Durankulak and Varna
needed a surplus to maintain the structure of society but with more inequality they could not
offer the necessary growth of goods. This inequality in access to resources, in which only a
minor section of the population with access to prestige items, they believe, could have lead to
conflicts. They lack a thorough explanation of why this imbalance in access to prestige items
would have led to a re-structuring or collapse of society. Why would restricted access to prestige
items like copper and gold have led to a society unable to support itself by providing the basic
necessity of a healthy society, being able to feed itself and maintain a growing population and
labor force? Although the possibility that internal conflict between the elites and the majority
could have led to the commoners to pack up and leave town. There is still speculation, as the
authors have noted, as to whether the Durankulak cemetery displays general tendencies within
regional Chalcolithic societies. Further studies on other sites should be done to prove that rising
inequality within Durankulak communities at the end of the early Chalcolithic is not only a local
phenomenon.
This raises an intriguing extension of this hypothesis that uses an ethnographic example
described by Frederick Barth (1959) in eastern Afghanistan. This looked at two tribes on the
Kandahar plateau, the Pathans (today known as the Pashtun) and the Baluch. The Pashtun lived
primarily in the low river-bottom fields where status depended on agricultural surpluses. In the
local council’s Parthan landowners competed for power but no man admitted to being
subservient and all appeals were phrased as requests among equals. The Baluch, a neighboring
ethnic group, lived in the arid mountains as pastoral herders. They had a more open hierarchical
political system. Status was linked to herds, which could grow rapidly and to political alliances
whereas Pathan status was tied to land ownership and some who lost their land in feuds or in
debt were doomed to peripheral lives. All Baluchi chiefs were the clients of more powerful
chiefs all the way up to the khan. However there was no shame in being the client of a more
powerful chief and the possibilities for rapid economic and political improvement were great.
And so, refuges tended to go to the pastoral Baluch, and the Baluchi language thus gained new
speakers (Anthony 2007.)
Likewise in the Chalcolithic Balkans, as wealth increased among a few, perhaps a single
family living within the communities such as those that buried their dead at Durankulak and
Varna, they acquired higher status. The commoners could have chosen to abandon their more
sedentary agricultural village life for a pastoral nomadic way of life on this frontier region that
began having increased contacts with herders from the steppe passing along the Black Sea littoral
zone to trade with the Balkans. This is purely speculative but it has some analogy to the cited
study. However the opposite seems to be true rather that instead of migrating to the more
marginal steppe regions it appears the steppe herders migrated into the Lower Danube valley and
likely assimilated with the locals, eventually having their language(s) adopted.
A study of ceramic petrography from the Körös region of Hungary has some good
evidence of cultural continuity in the region into the Early Bronze Age (Parsons, 2012). Ceramic
petrography is based on the principle that ceramic manufacturing technology is resistant to
change over time, while form and decoration can change quickly even in times of demographic
continuity. Parsons looked at the measure of paste characteristics of 114 Middle Copper Age,
Late Copper Age, Early Bronze Age, and Middle Bronze Age sherds from different sites in the
region. He focused on the Late Copper Age Baden period sherds (ca. cal. 3500 B.C.), to
determine if changes in manufacturing techniques accompanied changes in ceramic from and
decoration. The results showed that there was little manufacturing and technology change
occurring at this time and therefore migration of new people into the region was not supported.
The Baden culture would be a continuation of previous traditions. This study does not take into
account however, the other cultural traditions such as burial practices and settlement
organization that are discontinuous from the proceeding Tizsapolgar phase. This conclusion is
also at odds with the study done by Sterud of the ceramic assemblage at Obre II, as discussed
above.
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2022 21:21:32 GMT
ECONOMIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES
Dennell (1975) saw interesting geomorphological changes occurring in the Nova Zagora
region of Southern Bulgaria at the end of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age. At this horizon
there is apparently a spike in the formation of smolnitza soils. “The formation of smolnitzas in
the Early Bronze Age appears to have been accompanied by other geomorphological changes,
some of which could have had profound effects upon the agricultural economies of the area
studied.” (1975: 101)
There also appears to have been severe erosion at Early Bronze Age sites and horizons
such as at Djadevo, where pottery-laden gravels adjacent to the site indicated that erosion had
been severe during the Early Bronze Age. Also at Brjastovo, an Early Bronze Age settlement on
the edge of the Srendna Gora had been severely eroded, but a nearby Late Bronze Age and Iron
Age site had not been so affected. It is possible that these erosion events were from the same
event, perhaps a flood in a particularly wet year in this region and not indicative of more
ubiquitous swing in the climate across the larger region.
He says it also seems likely that the deposition of the large sheet of riverine clay along
the upper reaches of the River Azmak is connected with the erosional phase and was of Early
Bronze Age date or slightly later. In the vicinity of Ezero and further downstream near
Lubenova Mahla, Early Bronze Age pottery was found overlying a leached form of the
Cinnomonic Forest Soil and was sealed by riverine clay. A similar situation was found at
Brezevo, where an Early Bronze Age horizon was covered by a smolnitza formation. “At Ezero
there is a sharp difference between the late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age layers. Whereas the
former are light-colored and similar to the eroded form of the Cinnomonic Forest Soil, the Early
Bronze Age levels are like the darker and heavier riverine clays.” (101). This increasing erosion
and deposition he suggests, was possibly caused by the over-use of the riverine soils for intensive
agriculture over 2 millennia along with soil runoff from the slopes of the surrounding mountains
due to deforestation for fuel for copper smelting. Dennell suggests that these erosion events
were rapid and occurred over two or three centuries (Dennell 1978: 141).
One response to the change in soil potential would have been to increase community
reliance on animal products and to decrease reliance on cereals. If a significant part of the
function of tell settlements was to serve as a focus for agricultural activities, then these changes
may have been a factor in their abandonment. “If similar erosion events occurred in other
regions at this time, then the shift to animal grazing and dislocation of field-based agriculture
may have been a widespread phenomenon across the Balkans.” (Bailey 2000: 257). The
dispersal of communities consequently would have disrupted the mining and copper industry for
a while and disrupted trade. Still, I find this hypothesis difficult to explain the abandonment of
tells in the Lower Danube Plain where rich agricultural soils are more plentiful and there are no
mountain slopes from which soils would have been washed down.
“Thus it would appear that the sites in the Nova Zagora are situated so as to take the best
advantage of the available arable land, the best land for plowing and growing crops. This is
particularly noticeable in the case of the Neolithic settlement pattern, in which almost every site
is located on potentially arable soil. By Eneolithic and Bronze Age times the amount of good
arable land had decreased and the number of sites increased, thus forcing settlement of the more
marginal areas.” (103) These new sites would have been smaller in terms of population.
Dennell and Webley (1978) envision a pattern of increasing year-round pastoralism over
time in order to maximize the efficiency of land use. In the Neolithic the quantity of year-round
grazing would have been very limited. There was a simple seasonal cycle, however, where herds
of cattle and goats were used interchangeably. Barker (1985: 106) also sees a landscape more
suited to ovicaprid pastoralism and less to agricultural production which he associates with the
colder climate accompanying the Piora oscillation around 3500 BC, something I will discuss
more of in the following section.
Sherratt (1981, 1983) offers a theory, which he labeled the “Secondary Products
Revolution”. He cites evidence for this second agricultural revolution as occurring over an
extended period of time of around a thousand years, from c. 3500 to 2500 BC, in which three
important innovations reached Europe, in the order: plough, horse, wool (94). He sees these
technologies as diffusing to the heart of Europe from outside; the plough and wool from the Near
East, and the horse from the Pontic Steppe. Also arriving from the Near East would have been
metallurgical technologies such as arsenical alloying and the two piece mold appearing in the
fourth millennium in Greece, Eastern Europe and the Pontic area, at about the same time as the
traction complex, equids and wool-sheep (1983: 99)
During the Late Chalcolithic (fifth millennium BC), at the same time as major
agricultural expansion was taking place in the alluvial plain in the Ubaid period, there was a
further development of animal technologies on the fringes of Mesopotamia. Cattle and Woolbearing sheep probably spread from the Zagros to the lowland steppe and semi-desert margins where significant changes were also taking place in the fifth millennium. Regions were becoming more linked by trade routes. In southern Palestine and Sinai the colonization of new areas filled the area between Palestine and Egypt, linking the Nile Valley with developments
in western Asia. With the expanding populations in the Nile and Mesopotamia came attempts to
secure direct supplies of metal, stone and wood. Trading colonies were established in peripheral
areas such as Palestine, Syria and Iran. The invention of the wheel allowed more goods to be
transported. The increased use of pack animals such as the horse, donkey and camel also
facilitated this
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