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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2022 19:03:57 GMT
The appearance of wheeled vehicles in Europe between 3500 and 3000 BC was a major
socioeconomic development. It seems that wheeled vehicles appeared more or less
simultaneously in the Near East and Europe (Milisauskas, 1978). Some archaeologists (i.e. Chile
1951, Piggot 1983, Sherratt 1997) have argued for the diffusion of wheeled vehicles from the
Near East to Europe, while others such Haüsler (1992) and Vosteen (1999) have stressed their
local development.
Sherratt also overviews the emergence of the domestic horse in Europe (1983: 92). The
first identifiable culture to domesticate the horse were the Sredny Stog with evidence found at
sites such as Derievka near Kiev (Bibikova, 1986). The osteological evidence from this
collection indicates that they were most similar to domesticated horses than their wild ancestors.
These date to the second half of the 5th Millennium. There is also evidence for small numbers of
horses found in graves of the Tiszapolgar culture in eastern Hungary (Bökönzi 1978: 25). This
occurrence here coincides with other evidence for trans-Carpathian links such as imported types
of flint and status items. As Bökönzi notes, these early horses here were probably used as
novelties or status symbols and were not kept for breeding. They don’t reappear in Hungary
until the Baden period. In the later 4th and early third millennia, horses seem to have spread
among elite groups in the North European Plain through contacts between Funnelbeaker and
Baden cultures. Horse bones are known from the Funnelbeaker and related contexts in central
Germany (Müller 1978: 204), Czechoslovia (Peske 1982) and Bavaria (Driehaus 1960: 88-9)
“This evidence suggests that by 3000 BC small numbers of horses were being kept for riding by
certain elements of the TRB population in northern and central Europe, shortly after the time in
which the plough first came into use in there areas.” (92). By 2000 BC horses were common on
Bronze Age sites in Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe.
With that said, Sherratt picks out the various diffusive elements of secondary animal
exploitation that had appeared in different parts of the Near East and routes of trade that
dispersed them. The hinterland around Mesopotamia opened up, from Anatolia through the
Caucasus to Iran, in which new communities – Troy, Maikop, Altyn tepe – were developed
through new contacts. “The opening up of this mountain arc made possible connections into
Europe. As Eastern Europe lay open to contacts from both the Aegean and around the northern
margin of the Black Sea, Sherratt sees it logical that both routes were used in appearance of these
new technologies: traction complex, equids and wool-sheep. It appears that the plough made it
first, along with the wheeled cart. Like Thissen (1993), Sherratt sees this innovation reaching
central Europe from Anatolia as evident in the connection of pottery types between Baden,
Ezero, and Western Anatolia. However, he says, a steppe route is also possible, and this is most
likely for wool-sheep, and certain for the horse. Metallurgy technology (bronze and the twopiece mold) most likely arrived through Anatolia at about the same time as these other innovations.
In the Pontic region, agriculture had spread from the Danube valley farmers to the people
along the Black Sea littoral zone and in the riverine gallery forests of such rivers as the Dniester
and Dnieper (Mantu, Corneilia-Magda; 2000). This archaeological culture is the CucuteniTrypillian culture which flourished between ca. 5500 BC to 2500 BC. However, the true steppes had been avoided by early farmers, whose native population consisted of riverine groups who fished and kept domestic livestock, mainly cattle (Bibikova 1975). These were the Sredny-Stog
people. During the later fourth millennium these populations were becoming increasingly
pastoral, promoted by the use of the horse, which was locally domesticated, and the wheeled cart
which was adopted from neighboring Caucasian groups (Sherrat 1983: 100). Proof that horse-riding was contemporaneous with horse domestication comes from antler bits dated to the Early Copper Age (Telegin 1973). “These populations expanded both eastwards, towards the steppes of central Asia, and westwards to intrude upon sedentary agricultural groups in Eastern Europe.”(1983: 100). This passage appears to show Sherratt accepting the Kurgan Model for an invasion.
But it seems more likely he accepts it as merely a model for diffusion of the horse rather than
bringing about a grand demographic change.
For Sherratt, “their exotic features were not imposed on south east Europe: they were
eagerly sought as fresh novelties welcomed by emerging elites whose power was built on control
of such exotic valuables. But once in circulation, these exotic novelties like the horse and
wheeled vehicles were to cause fundamental changes in economy and society.” (1981, 194) He
also says that the growing steppe populations, were not “content to be passive trading partners”,
and “some steppe groups seem to have penetrated both into the lower Danube and even into
eastern Hungary, where the characteristic ochre-grave tumuli are still a prominent feature of the
landscape” (1981: 195). The emphasis I put on “some” because I do not believe Sherratt was
saying it was a mass migration as Gimbutas had envisaged.
The introduction of secondary animal products had clear economic implications. Milking
allowed humans to harvest animal protein without slaughtering the animal and wool production
provided the raw material for new forms of textiles. The use of large draught animals for pulling
the new technologies of ploughs and wagons enabled the intensification of agriculture (higher
yields per labor unit), expansion of environmental range of agriculture in heavier marginal soils;
and facilitation in transporting people and goods. An extensive strategy replaced small-scale
horticultural systems. The larger areas of fallow and abandoned land created by this more extensive form of agriculture made possible an expansion in the use of livestock, including both dairy cattle and wool-sheep.
The secondary product revolution also would have had significant social effects. It
enabled the population of Europe to spread out more easily across the landscape, whether
seasonally of permanently. The post-Neolithic of Europe is characterized by a reduction in
settlement size. “This appears to be the result of the fissioning of the large Neolithic
communities into many and smaller settlements composed of household holdings (i.e.
homesteads) since the technology of food production required fewer community members (how
vs. plow) (Greenfield 2010: 30). However, Todorova (1973) saw the transition from hoeing to
plowing as occurring in the early Eneolithic, not the later. Elements of the SPR were criticized
almost immediately (Chapman 1983), but modified versions of his economic model, pared down
to the diffusion of wagons, wool sheep, and beer/mead feasting quickly replaced migrations by
Indo-European horse-riders as a leading explanations for the far reaching changes that appeared
across Europe between 3500-2500 BC.
Years later, focusing on the Hungarian Plain, Sherratt (1997) emphasized a “considerable
measure of continuity” on the Hungarian Plain between the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age.
He argued for a depopulation event around 4000 B.C. based on his analysis of site distribution on
the eastern Hungarian Plain. This was due to a shifting emphasis on the importance of goods and
raw materials from outside of the Plain. As Parsons comments (2012: 460), “This may have
opened a niche for the pastoral kurgan builders to move into the now less densely occupied
region. However, it was the Plain’s incorporation into a broader economic sphere that ushered in
the appearance of Baden in the region, and not the influence of a migratory population.”
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2022 20:29:57 GMT
John Chapman, in his 1981 volume entitled The Vinca Culture of Southeast Europe,
devotes a single yet dense paragraph to explain the possible decline of the Vinca culture. He
sees a gradual decline occurring from about 3600 BC. He suggests that in the case of the Vinca,
intensive over-cultivation of the most fertile soils for two millennia would have “increased the
tendency towards differential soil exhaustion” (138). This would have also happened and been
more advanced on the more marginal soils. Lower agricultural yields would have affected two
sensitive areas – the degree of settlement nucleation and the availability of ‘ritual surplus’.
Chapman believes that the whole social fabric of the Vinca was steeped in ritual cult behavior
(77). So when the soil became less fertile the cult of fertility perhaps was abandoned and the
ritual-ascribed social ranking broke down, leading to a re-structuring of society. We are not and
will never be sure what role the astounding amount of figurines and other ‘ritual’ material meant
to the Vinca or what their beliefs were. But what Chapman means by “availability of ‘ritual
surplus’ is not clear. The lower perceived ritual success rate would have weakened the
centripetal social bonds and led to a tendency to disperse settlement (138). Ultimately this
precipitated a decline in information interchange, which we see in the lack of exchange routes in
the final Vinca phase. Again, the author mentions how there is little evidence for this process of
cultural decline, but he does offer a similar situation as Dennell did for central Bulgaria but
possibly involving social factors tied in to that. Chapman states that the environmental evidence
suggests that no major climatic changes occurred during the fifth and fourth millennia BC in the
Balkans (89). At the site type cite of Vinca, the population declined after 3500 but it continued
to be occupied until the Romans entered the Danube region (Tasic et. al, 1990)
To explain the appearance of the kurgan burials, Chapman has an alternative processual
explanation (1994, 1997). It says that most of the elements defining the kurgan phenomenon
have already occurred ‘singly or jointly’, in the earlier Copper Age. The kurgan ‘package’ was
an arrangement of local forms of burial practice. One point he makes is that fact that kurgan
burials represent only a fraction of the burials at the time. This alternative hypothesis seems
untenable to me. The facts that the kurgans, pit graves and posture of the bodies are so similar
throughout the Balkans, and with those from the Pontic-Steppe cast doubts that it was developed
locally throughout the region.
These changes aren’t limited to just Southeast Europe. Shennan (1993) discusses
changes occurring in Central Europe such as a Kruk in southern Poland. The fourth millennium
BC Trichterbecher (TRB/Funnelbeaker) culture groups settlement pattern was very extensive
with a pattern of very large settlements such as Bronocice, with smaller surrounding satellites. It
was this pattern, which ended with the Corded Ware phase, ca. 2900 BC, when evidence of
settlements disappears but the distribution of burial mounds points to occupation of the same
extensively cleared landscape and suggests an extremely dispersed pattern of small settlements
(Shennan 1993: 126). “Patterns in Central Germany and western Czechoslovakia are similar
respects. A distribution of nucleated settlement of varying sizes, often in hilltop locations, gives
way with the Corded Ware to a situation where virtually all the evidence comes from cemeteries
and burial mounds.” (Shennan 1993: 126). The Corded Ware culture, on the basis of it’s burial
archaeology, appears to some archaeologists be a strong candidate of direct descent from the
Kurgan culture from the steppes. “To many archaeologists, the paucity of settlement and
domestic architectural data for this culture suggests that they were nomads.” (Milisaukas, 1978:
305). Milisaukas and Kruk (1989) suggest, on the contrary, that the TRB phase was followed by
a period of major population decline ca. 3100, which they suggest was the result of
environmental degradation arising from the extensive nature of Funnelbeaker agricultural
practices. In the subsequent Baden and then Corded Ware phases, lasting until the later third
millennium, population remained low but was extremely dispersed. One line of evidence for this
comes from a study of the number of sub-fossil oak deposition found in river deposits in the
Danube valley in southern Germany (Becker et al., 1995). On the assumption that larger
numbers correspond to more extensive clearance it can be seen that the Danube valley has low
levels of clearance from before 3000 to after 2500 BC, before rising sharply at a time
corresponding to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (relatively later than in the Balkans).
This may be evidence for declining forest clearance. Schmotz’s (1992) survey work in the
Danube valley in Bavaria suggests that settlement density was already in decline by the mid
fourth millennium. Shennen says there are signs of renewed settlement in some places in the
succeeding Bell Beaker phase. Could this phenomenon be related to what happened in the
Balkans? The dispersals do appear to be around the same time. Again the question of why
remains? It could be related to Dennell’s hypothesis of environmental degradation as a result of
intensification in Bulgaria (1978), or to Sherratt’s ‘Secondary Products Revolution’, or
Gumbutas’s Kurgan Invasion. Or it could be climatic.
Also in a Central European context, Milisaukas and Kruk (2011) have stated that major
changes in subsistence patterns are visible beginning in the Late Middle Neolithic and continue
into the Late Neolithic. Beginning around 4000 BC there was intensive exploitation of uplands,
where many Late Neolithic settlements are located. The majority of Funnel-Beaker-Baden sites
in the Bronocice region were upland settlements. After large areas of forest were cleared for
agriculture throughout the Neolithic, there was a marked increase in silt deposition from
resulting soil erosion. They say that by the onset of the Late Neolithic the Bronocice region of
Poland had become a forest-steppe environment. “These anthropogenic changes may have been
caused by and may well have encouraged the more widespread herding of domestic animals.
Thus Late Neolithic subsistence patterns should be seen as a modification of earlier practice and
not as innovation marking a complete break with the past.” (2011: 304). The Central European
societies at this point seem to have been more committed to the herding of domestic animals.
They do not assume that pastoralism replaced sedentary agriculture but that the economy became
more mixed.
Interestingly enough, the “Bronocise pot” a ceramic vase recovered from a large
Neolithic site near Krakow is incised with the earliest known image of what may be a wheeled
vehicle. It suggests the existence of wagons in Central Europe as early as the 4th millennium. If
the wheel was first developed in Sumerian Uruk, its diffusion must have been extremely rapid.
They were presumably drawn by aurochs, whose remains were found in the pot. Their horns
were worn out as if tied with a rope, possibly a result of using a kind of yoke (Anthony, 2007).
Even though this is not exactly the region that the paper focuses on, the process would have
theoretically been similar in the Balkans. This early evidence of wheeled carts in Poland
possibly throws a dent in the theory that solid-wheeled carts diffused first from the Yamnaya
culture around 3100-3000 (Anthony 1995:561). This is also likely due to the poor preservation of
wood and we have yet to find the earliest evidence from the steppe.
Milisaukas and Kruk’s (2011) analysis of cattle burials in Central Europe
suggest that religious beliefs were changing between 3500 and 2200 BC. This is part of the
same phenomenon as seen in Southeast Europe. Burials of numerous animals together as
well as within human graves have been found. “They may reflect cattle’s importance in
economy, the high status of their owners, or they may symbolize sacred animals.” (312).
They comment how Late Neolithic pastoralism could have brought increased cattle
raiding as herd animals are mobile and easy to steal. Few people are needed merely to look after
a herd, but more would be necessary to protect it from an attack. “Cattle raiding may have
caused a warlike value system to develop, in which the military exploits of successful warriors
were rewarded with higher social status, prestige, or at least more cows.” (309)
To conclude, they comment how the traditional invocation of migration to explain Late
Neolithic changes in some parts of Europe is not currently popular. “However, materialistic
invocations of internal developments, population increase, and/or agricultural intensification also
seem inadequate to us. Warfare may well have been a process of cultural change, and an
important one.” (319). The domesticated horse could have been an instrument in rapid longdistance plundering.
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Post by Admin on Mar 13, 2022 21:48:49 GMT
CLIMATE CHANGE
It is now widely accepted that from 9000-5500 BP there was a long period of favorable
climate called the Holocene climatic optimum. This was large-scale rapid climate change that
pulled many regions out of the extreme aridity, which characterized the Younger Dryas from
11,000 BP to 10,000 BP. In general it was warmer and wetter in the Northern Hemisphere. It
was at this time the Neolithic populations flourished even though the first domesticates, wheat
and barley, were possibly selected for their ‘tough rachis’ mutation favorable to the extreme
aridity of the preceding Younger Dryas (Rossignol-Strick 1999). As the Younger Dryas abruptly
ended, the pollen records of land sites around the eastern Mediterranean show that the climate
very rapidly evolved from its most arid to its mildest and wettest, with no-frost winters and mild
summers. Conditions were also favorable in Europe being warm and wet. Some scholars have
attributed the end of the prosperous and stable societies of the Neolithic and Eneolithic to the end
of this climatic optimum and greater fluctuations in the natural environment. This sudden
cooling and drying event is known as the Piora Oscillation. According to changes in the annual
growth rings in oaks preserved in bogs in Germany and in annual ice layers in ice cores from
Greenland, the cold period peaked between 4100 and 3800 BC, with temperatures colder than at
any time in the previous two thousand years (Anthony 2009).
The most prominent supporter of the climatic catastrophe theory has perhaps been
Bulgarian archaeologist Henrieta Todorova. Todorova (1995) strongly claimed that the cultural
development of the late Eneolithic cultural block was terminated at the end of the fifth and
beginning of the fourth millennium B.C. was a “colossal, global and multi-causal environmental
catastrophe: the final stage of the climatic optimum, when the mean annual temperatures reached
their post-glacial maximum of 3° Celsius above their present temperatures.” (89). She is one to
ascribe to the idea of a Transitional Period, dividing the Eneolithic from the Bronze Age and
spanning more than half a millennium (i.e., the first half of the fourth millennium B.C.). The
collapse was the caused by the end of the optimum period.
One consequence of this rise in global temperatures was a rise in sea levels. The rising
sea levels caused the water table to rise resulting in the swamping of the plains (i.e., in Thrace,
Wallachia, south Muntenia, and Thessaly). These plains were precisely the places where
Eneolithic farming had flourished. “The final blow to the Eneolithic economy was delivered by
prolonged droughts which deprived the people of their means of existence and forest fires and
erosion put out any chance of survival.” (Todorova 1995: 89). Todorova says that sea waters
continued to rise during the first half of the fourth millennium B.C., bringing them above their
present level. It reached its peak ingression around 3,500. She refers to this as “the so-called
Flood”.
She divides this Transitional Period into two chronological stages: the final Eneolithic
(or-post Eneolithic) and the proto-Bronze Age. She states that as early as the mid-fifth
millennium B.C., the rising environmental catastrophe put an end to the Dhimini cultures in
Thessaly, the Maliq Ia in southern Albania and Dikilitash-Slatino in Aegean Thrace. Next
affected were the cultures of northern Thrace, Muntenia, the Black Sea coast and Eastern
Bulgaria. The Varna and KGK VI complex perished during their phase III (i.e. as early as the
end of the fifth millennium B.C.). “The catastrophe was of colossal scope as seen from changes
in the settlement density which in the late Eneolithic included more than 600 settlements. By the
start of the Transitional Period not a single site is known. It was a complete cultural caesura.”
(90). Life went on in western Bulgaria and the central Balkans situated at higher altitude, where
the settlements were fewer in number and better protected from the environmental “cataclysm.”
The collapse of the Balkan-Carpathian metallurgy is explained by the ecological
catastrophe, which led to the demise of both the Eneolithic settlement system and the population
carrying out the metallurgy. Nevertheless, after a while, she says metalworking went on as new
mines were opened and the old mine at Aibunar was abandoned. The mining and metalworking
centers in eastern Serbia at Bor and Majdanpek and northern Transylvania were producing new
weaponry such as the first metal cutting tools (Bodrogkeresztur knives), spearheads, and the
Yasladani cruciform axe/mattocks. This was at the end of the Krivodol-Salcuta-Bubanj phase III
and the beginning of phase IV in the final phase of the Copper Age. This increase in weaponry
was possibly due to the increase in resource scarcity from the catastrophe. Todorova states that
arsenical bronze in the Proto-Bronze stage was infiltrated into the Balkan Peninsula from the
territory of the late Tripolye culture (e.g. southern Ukraine and Moldavia). This Circum-Pontic
metallurgic phenomenon of early arsenical bronze followed a period in which metalworking had
“disintegrated” (91).
The proto-Bronze stage spans the period around the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.
during which time both the eastern and western parts of the Balkan Peninsula continued their
different developments, although some common elements are evident (91). “In Thrace there is
not a single archaeological site belonging to the Transitional Period and this cannot be due
entirely to a gap in research.” This presents a problem to explaining the origins of the early
Bronze Age Ezero culture, which appears in Thrace without any links to local antecedents.
The transitional phase is better represented in northeast Bulgaria with the Pevets culture,
a southern descendant of the Cernavoda I culture. “Their settlements are small, situated on
shielded foothills near streams and consist of five to ten dug-outs with ovens and hearths for
baking small loaves of bread. Goat and sheep dominated the domestic animal population with a
limited agricultural regime and augmented by gathering.” (91) Todorova sees Pevet’s pottery as
showing infiltrations from the Cucuteni B-Tripolye C cultural complex from the east with its
watery whitish paint and ornamentation. Pottery from the site of Ovcharovo, Pevets sites,
together with the Cernavoda I culture, shows connections with the Usatovo culture in the
northern Pontic steppes with its disk-like handles. At no point does Todorova entertain the idea
of invasion. This is all strange considering her earlier apparent strong position in favor of a
“main assault of the steppe invasion” (Todorova 1986). She saw the burnt down upper building
horizons of the Eneolithic sequences in Bulgaria as strong evidence for this. Oddly, in this paper
Todorova does not even mention the mound and pit-grave burials.
Valentina Voinea (2006) also attempts to explain the collapse at the end of the Eneolithic
in the area of the west Black Sea Coast due to rising sea levels. She looks at the last habitation
level of the Gumelnita settlement of the island of “La Ostrov”. She sees the rise in the level of
the Black Sea as causing a sort of deluge on the rich communities along this coast such as the
communities tied to the Varna cemetery. “Only a rapid rise in the seawater’s level could have
led to the simultaneous flooding of the Eneolithic settlements clustered in this (the Procadyska)
valley: Ezero I, Ezero II, Strachimirovo I (east), Poveljanovo, Morflotte (Varna 1) and
Arsenala.” (12). This is based on evidence of flooding from these sites. Ivanov (1989) was also
inclined to accept the idea of a large scale deluge, which would have ended of the existence of
the Eneolithic settlements of the Varna area, and he gave the following evidence for his
argument: the layer of rocks that directly overlaps the late Eneolithic piece and the presence of
the pollen in the flooded level, covered by the rock layer (1989: 56). This rise in sea level she
says was the result of the strong climatic warming trend from 7000 – 5000 BC, the optimum
climatic. The annual average was 3 degrees higher than the current one.
She says that the stratigraphic situation from Harsova rules out the possibility of violent
invasions; between the Cernavoda Ia and Gumelnita A2 levels, there is no stratigraphic pause, as
the first dwellings from Cernavoda were built over a layer of leveling with ceramics from
Gumelnita. This shows a peaceful cohabitation of the two communities. But, recall, the
invasion theory proposed by Gimbutas puts the more incursive 2nd wave occurring between
Cernavoda I and III, not these two layers. Cernavoda I was Kurgan influenced but not
dominated. Nevertheless, Voinea says there is nothing to suggest a violent penetration of eastern
tribes into the area of the west-Pontic coast.
Then later she seems to contradict herself and says, “Consequently, the eastern
penetrations must be regarded in the context of the climatic changes from the end of the
Eneolithic. The newcomers have preferred, at first, the Dobrudjan steppe, because they moved
south on the Danubian line, at the end of the Gumelnita A2 phase, as is proven by discoveries
from Harsova. The Cernavoda penetrations have taken place after or at most during the moment
of the flooding of the west-Pontic coast’s settlements.” (17).
So it appears she is acknowledging that there were population movements occurring at
this time, but only in the context of climatic and environmental changes coming first. “The
natural catastrophes sped the end of the Dimini, Dikili Tash-Slatino, Gumelnita – Karanovo VI
cultures. To this we add the foreign population penetrations, migrating in several successive
waves, and coming from the east.” (17). The population shifts towards higher ground and
towards the west which leads to the Krivodol – Salcuta – Bubanj cultural complex to become the
center of cultural ‘dissemination’. The choices of higher ground and hilltop settlements were
perhaps because the settlers feared further deluge and flooding. The old traditions are reborn in
the Salcuta environment, but the traditional forms are metamorphosed; instead of the multitude
of shapes and decorations emphasizing the skill of the ‘artist’, the utilitarian forms and the rigid
imitations are what followed. It is an intriguing theory that may have some weight concerning
the communities that lived on its shores such as the Varna and Hamangia cultures. The level of
the Black Sea has risen and fallen numerous times throughout the Holocene and inundation at
some point could have dislocated many communities, creating refugees who displaced other
communities to the west, though I find it a stretch to link it to the widespread abandonment seen
especially in the Danube Valley. Underwater archaeology may turn up some surprising finds in
the future.
Bailey et. al (2002) see the shift to tells from more temporary settlements in the mid 5th
-millenium as being the result of a more stable river-system, at least in the Teleorman valley floor
where before and after this brief optimal period, the river system was less stable and there was
more flooding. However, at the end of the 5th millennium BC tell sites such as Vitanesti and
Laceni were abandoned. Comparison of macro-flora from Teleor 008 and Vitanesti suggests that
conditions deteriorated, becoming unfavorable to cultivation (Bogard 2001). The appearance of
rye at Vitanesti and its importance as a cultigen at contemporary tells (Carciumaru 1996) suggest
that the growing conditions at the end of the 5th millennium BC were poorer. This deterioration
led to the tell abandonment at this site. They also see evidence of significant episodes of
enhanced fluvial activity in the Teleroman river-sediments that suggests that after the
abandonment of Vitanesti (i.e. the mid 4th millennium BC) the frequency of large floods
increased, making the landscape less suited to settled agriculture (354). Erosion then would have
degraded the riverine floodplains where crops were grown. Again, we must wonder if this was a
pattern throughout the Lower Danube and the Balkan region. If it is, then there is definitely
some climatic change throughout the region and beyond.
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Post by Admin on Mar 14, 2022 18:57:17 GMT
DISCUSSION
One theory that I could not find in the literature for this period and region was of a plague
or possible series of plagues. This theory has been proposed for other cultural collapses such as
the Bronze Age collapse (Robbins 2001). The increasing populations held within nucleated tell
settlements along with the increasing trade links of the Late Chalcolithic would have facilitated
some sort of plague, perhaps small pox. This would have depopulated the settlements and led to
population dispersal and left the land open to incursions of people from the steppe. But until
mass graves of those showing osteological evidence of such a plague, this hypothesis remains
most speculative.
This “Transitional Phase” is quite long, about 500 years when there is no permanent
settlements that can be dated between 3800 and 3300 BCE. In this transitional phase after the
collapse there is much less evidence of metallurgy occurring in the Balkans. “Metallurgy,
mining, and ceramic technology declined sharply in both volume and technical skill and
ceramics and metal objects changed markedly in style” (Anthony 2007: 228). The copper mines
in the Balkans suddenly ceased production. Oddly, this is when metallurgy really took off in
western Hungary and central Europe. Arsenical Bronze began to be worked with in these new
cultural complexes in the “Circum-Pontic interaction sphere”. The Bronze Age is thought to
begin about 3300 BC in Europe (Renfrew, 1979).
The crisis did not immediately affect all of southeastern Europe. The most widespread
settlement abandonments occurred in the lower Danube valley (Gumelnita), in eastern Bulgaria
(Varna and related cultures), and in the fertile mountain valleys south of the Balkan Mountains
(Karanovo VI). This was where tell settlements and their stable field systems were most
common and intensive. The traditions of Old Europe survived longer to the west in western
Bulgaria and western Romania (Krivodol-Sălcușa IV-Bubanj hum Ib). Here the settlements
system had been more flexible. The Old European traditions of the Cuceteni-Tripolye culture
also survived and actually seemed to be reinvigorated. After 4000 it began expanding eastward
towards the Dnieper valley and created ever more and larger agricultural towns.
However, the Vinca culture appears to have declined around the same time as those of the
Lower Danube and southern Bulgaria around 4200 BC. John Chapman (1981) suggested that
this was at least partly a consequence of two millennia of intensive farming in these river valley
which caused economic stresses due to decreasing fertility which led to an abandonment of the
traditional ritual system characterized by figurines possibly associated with the fertility of the
Earth. This model of anthropogenic induced environmental decline became a popular
explanation for the transitions of the Late Chalcolithic in southeastern Europe, gradually
replacing theories destruction caused by mass migrations from the steppes. But this migration
theory does still hold weight.
There is good evidence that a migration from the steppe did begin around the same time
as the collapse, but whether it caused the collapse is debatable. It is also debatable whether the
evidence from a number of graves is enough to signify a mass migration or perhaps just rogue
nomads part or as part of a trading party. This thesis is not the place to argue or search for an
Indo-European homeland solution. But in our attempt to find a solution to the end of the
Eneolithic cultures in the Balkans it is necessary to connect the dots from what others have
noted. With the apparent sudden appearance of steppe influences we begin to find in Southeast
Europe burial mounds and mortuary customs involving animals entombed with the dead, plain
grey corded ware pottery, and the increased appearance of horse remains. Red ochre does not
have any real significance because it had been used in the Chalcolithic in burials. In recent
years, mechanisms of change from within seem to be trending. Nevertheless, the hypothesis for
migrations from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe is still very much viable.
Gimbutas’ model provides a simple solution to our problem of cultural collapse in the
fourth millennium and also gives us a solution to how Indo-European languages spread and
became established in Europe. Zvelebil and Zvelebil (1988: 578) noted how “migrations are
notoriously difficult to identify in archaeological contexts, but most people would not rule out
the possibility of immigration occurring where there is a radical break in settlement pattern,
material culture, and ideology compared to the previous culture of an area.” As I have shown,
this is precisely what we find in the Balkans in the Late Chalcolithic.” Gimbutas has provided a
good model and some strong circumstantial evidence for such migrations, even if they may not
have been the violent hordes she makes them out to be. While it is possible that steppe
pastoralists of the Srendy-Stog or Suvorovo-Novodanilovka cultures had learned to ride with
primitive rope or leather bridles and bits. Any fighting would have been small groups of a clan
seeking to raid a village’s harvest or livestock and could have frightened a village enough to
abandon it. There was probably more dynamic interaction and exchange between the two worlds
with mutually beneficial trade and exchange. Among historically known pastoralists in close
contact with farming populations there has been a tendency for wealthy herd owners to from
alliances with farmers to acquire land as insurance against the loss of their herd (Anthony 2007).
Even though we see a diversification of arsenical cupric forms of weaponry after the 5th
millennium B.C., as well as more defensive settlements, the evidence of increased violence is
lacking. The burnt layers from the tells, as we have seen, were likely an old tradition of
intentional inhumation as a ritual and does not necessarily signify destruction by invading
armies. It is still a viable solution, but must be considered in context with other factors. Still,
mutualism alone cannot explain the abrupt collapse seen in the Gumelnita-Karanovo complex.
The evidence of ceramics and scepter heads closely resembling those found in the
Dnieper region during the Sredney Stog and Novodanilovka periods is perhaps not sufficient
evidence of an intrusive population. These kinds of cultural exchanges are expected in contacts
between adjacent regions. Some would say the scepters are nothing more than a widely
distributed status item circulating among various local elites of the Chalcolithic. However, the
sudden appearance of an alien burial rite at this time in Southeastern Europe also markedly
similar to that of the steppes does suggest an intrusive population. Yet, some East European
archaeologists like Istvan Ecsedy have regarded it as only a limited Pontic presence in
Southeastern Europe which was conservative in retaining certain cultural traits from the steppes.
The horse does appear to have been domesticated first in the Western Eurasian steppe
based on both archaeological (Anthony et. al 1991) and genetic (Warmuth et al 2012) evidence.
New evidence from Pietrele (Ludwig et al. 2009) shows that there may have been domestic
horses there c. 4300 B.C. based on genetic evidence that shows there were alleles of 2 colors,
Bay and black, that hints at selective breeding but this does not necessarily mean domestication,
it could be random mutation. But if it was domesticated, they could have been from the Pontic
steppes. Horses do not really begin to show up regularly in the lower Danube until after 3500 in
the Cernavoda III culture. We also see evidence that they were being ridden by bit-wear analysis
(Anthony 2007). This gives the possibility that they were used as transport by the steppe
pastoralists’ early incursions into the Eastern Europe but large waves of warriors seems unlikely.
For Gimbutas, the domestic horse was the primary cause for their emergence from the steppes.
The horse very well may have been domesticated by 4200 B.C. but did not enter southeast
Europe before 3500 BC. It is perhaps safer to envision them as rather peaceful pastoralists
simply moving with their herds and flocks gradually on foot in the early stage of their
migrations, looking for greener pastures and coming into contact with the more settled
agriculturalists exchanging goods and ideas and inter-mixing.
The crisis in the lower Danube valley coincides to the late Cucuteni A3/Tripolye B1,
around 4300-4000. (Even though this is the same culture, it has different names in the two
different countries its remains are found in, Cucenteni is the name in Romania and Moldova,
Tripolye in Ukraine). This phase was marked by a dramatic increase in the construction of
fortification, ditches and earthen banks around the settlements. There was also a dramatic
increase in the number of settlements from Tripolye A to Tripolye B, nearly 10 fold! There was
not, however a significant expansion of the area settled, although some migration to the east
occurred. Anthony (2007: 231) thinks that this might be the result of refugees fleeing from the
towns of the Gumelnita culture. There is also evidence for at least one Tripolye B1 settlement
being attacked, Drusty 1. Here more than 100 flint arrowheads were found around the walls of
three excavated houses as if they were attacked.
There is also evidence of increased contacts and coexistence with steppe cultures.
Cuceteni C ware was shell-tempered like steppe pottery. It appeared in Tripolye B1 settlements
on the southern Bug valley. It might have become common as a course kitchenware along with
traditional grog tempered wares (ground up ceramic sherds). Many have the steppe type
manufacture and decoration but with traditional forms. It may have been adopted from the
steppe people because of its increased resistance to heat shock and hardening at lower
temperatures, saving fuel (Anthony 2007: 233). They obviously had contacts with the steppe
Sredny-Stog culture as they were neighbors and whether this appearance of Sredny-Stog-like
pottery was by imitation or the actual presence of steppe people is not known. The presence of
polished stone mace-heads as possible symbols of power also is strongly suggestive of close
steppe contacts but by and large the old traditions were maintained and they bypassed the
collapse in the Lower Danube by almost 1000 years.
Bankoff and Winter (1990), Bailey (2000), Whittle (1996) and a number of Eastern
European archaeologists such as Tsonev and Sirikov (1995) don’t necessarily see these changes
as being the result of mass migrations but rather a long process of internal developments and re-
structuring perhaps with influences occurring due to the increased external contacts with other
regions such as Anatolia and the Pontic Steppes and Caucasus. But mainly the changes were due
to the increased trade and contacts within Balkans. The increased intra-regional contacts
established in the Balkans in the Chalcolithic would have facilitated any changes to spread
throughout the region, exchanging new ideas and materials to give the impression of transregional homogeny as seen in the Balkan-Danubian complex of the EBA. The chronology does
seem to lend support to this view due to the longevity of the Transitional Phase throughout the
4rth millennium. Still, the question remains as to what triggered such dramatic changes in the
first place. Why were so many settlements abandoned in the late 5th millennium and new burial
rites emerging?
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Post by Admin on Mar 14, 2022 20:05:09 GMT
Dennell (1978) demonstrated how tell settlement and abandonment may have solely been
based on anthropomorphic changes to the ecology. He showed that there was a relationship
between the duration of tell village existence (as measured by tell height) and the amount of
fertile arable land within 2 km of the village. The larger sites (both in area and in continuity of
occupation and re-occupation) such as Karanovo, developed in areas with larger amounts of
potentially arable land; smaller sites were associated with areas dominated by land better suited
to grazing. Thus he showed that at least in south-central Bulgaria, the fertility of the soil was a
major factor in the location of villages and their long-term existence. Dennell presents a pattern
that is appealing to explain the abandonment of the tells due to over use of the arable land in
some areas with limited arable soil. This explanation does not account for the other social
changes seen later nor why in northern Bulgaria where the fertile alluvial soils are most abundant
in the Danube Valley that we find the highest rate of settlement abandonment and almost no
resettlement or new settlements in the area. I think this is a good model that can be empirically
tested in other areas. It is a usable theory.
Andrew Sherratt’s model to explain the social changes seen in the Early Bronze Age in
Southeast and Central Europe based on “The Secondary Products Revolution” is worth
considering. Its stronger points are that the diffusion (from the Near East or Caucasus) or local
development of technology such as the wheel and plow in the 4th millennium was revolutionary
for agriculture and allowed for new areas to be exploited, leading to settlement changes.
Whether the wheel was introduced to Europe via Anatolia, the North Pontic steppes, or of local
invention, its appearance would have had important changes in transportation, trade, and the
local economies of the mid fourth millennium. The introduction of the horse around this same
time from the steppes was also revolutionary. However, the weakness of the model comes from
new evidence that suggests that secondary animal products such as dairy and wool were used
much earlier at the time those animals were first domesticated in the Neolithic revolution in the
Near East as early as the 9th millennium B.C. not later in the 4th millennium (Helmer, D. and
Vigne J.: 2007). Recent findings, based on the analysis of lipid residue in prehistoric pottery
from two agricultural sites in central and eastern Europe dating to the Early Neolithic (5900-
5500 cal BC) are best explained by the presence of milk residues (Craig et al. 2005). It shows
that dairying featured in early European farming economies. The authors suggest that dairying,
perhaps of sheep or goats, was initially practiced on a small scale and was part of a broad mixed
economy. However, that wooly-sheep were introduced into Europe from the Near East in the
early part of the 4th millennium BC has been maintained, along with the wheel. But these appear
too late to have begun the decline of Gumelnita-Karanovo cultures c. 4200. Perhaps during the
4th millennium dairying, and wool did become much more utilized in a more pastoral economy,
thus qualifying as a “revolution” but this would have occurred later. Though it hardly seems that
an increase in sheep herding for wool would have caused, on its own, a major shift in settlement.
Bréhard and Bălășescu (2012) demonstrated that the rise of tell sites, specifically in the
Gumelnita culture was associated with an increase in animal exploitation in the late Eneolithic,
in particular, sheep pastoralism. According to observations at three Romanian tells, sheep
exploitation became more homogenized and specialized. “We can presume that pastoral systems
functioned on a local or regional scale.” (3180). They propose that the appearance of
homogenous and specialized practices for sheep is linked to the development of the tell site.
This contrasts with the usual view that these nucleated settlements were the result of more
sedentary agricultural planting practices. The mature, optimum weight sheep were brought to
the tell to be slaughtered and lambing took place off – site. These practices were part of a larger
pastoral system on a regional scale they say. They do not jump to this conclusion, but it is
possible that this increasing emphasis on pastoralism could have eventually caused settlements to
disperse
These pastoral practices along with the technological developments and the horse could
very well have caused economic changes and increased mobility that led to the abandonment of
tells. In the new, smaller communities, craft specialization in making decorated pottery would
subsequently have lost its importance as social identity shifted. Increased mobility and
transhumance from increased pastoralism brought about by a “Secondary Products Revolution”
or otherwise, would have likely led to the widespread adopted use of more simple, crude,
undecorated, utilitarian pottery traditions. A stronger emphasis on pastoralism could likely have
led to increased male-dominance in society. Likewise, the large cemeteries would have been
abandoned. Yet, still, it is hard to deny the apparent influence of steppe burial mound customs
and human and animal sacrifices that were not known before, but perhaps these can be explained
as a product of local development as Chapman (1997) suggested, though the outside influence is
hard to deny.
The kurgans could be a borrowed tradition from contacts with the steppe peoples used to
honor elites, continuing perhaps a tradition gradually developing in Eneolithic societies of
increasing hierarchy and social elites. Burials with horses were part of this process that elites
controlled early access to horse breeding and power and so chose to be buried with their
valuables just as they did at burials like at Varna. Wealth became more centered on ownership
of horses and cattle. The structure of society shifted. Or the value of pure copper fell as it
became more common to mix it with other metals to make alloys. With the advent of the Bronze
Age and its unfolding, metallurgy became increasingly more complicated and geared towards
warfare, especially in the Near East. The Kurgans could have been territorial markers of
individual tribal and clan chiefs in an increasingly warlike society. Whether this is due to waves
of warriors from the steppes subjugating the native population and bringing a more warlike,
patriarchal society with them is still debatable, but it seems that increasing trade and interregional contacts developed in the Chalcolithic brought in outside innovations and changes that
brought on a restructuring of society. And climate change could have been a factor in it as well.
Paleo-climatic studies do indicate that there was an optimal period that was warm and
wet throughout the Neolithic and Eneolithic that ended in the fourth millennium when we really
begin to see the large scale abandonment of the tells in the Balkans. This process may have
begun in the 6th millennium (Steig, 1999). This is an interesting coincidence. There are strong
correlations in paleoclimatic studies that indicate that the climate became colder and dryer
beginning at the end of the 5th millennium. For example, the 5.9 kiloyear event was one of the
most intense aridization events during the Holocence. It occurred around 3900 BCE, ending the
Neolithic Subpluvial and probably initiated the most recent desertification of the Sahara region
(Claussen et. al 1999). One chronological inconsistency with the collapse date range comes from
paleoclimatic analyses of soils buried under Eneolithic and Bronze Age kurgans from the
Caspian steppe (Shishlina et. al, 2009). These data show that the climate was favorable up until
the mid 3rd millennium cal B.C. Before this in the favorable years annual precipitation was high
and the climate was humid and warm. At about 2600, there was abrupt aridization and extremes
between winter and summer temperatures, precipitation decreased and the steppe became almost
semi-desert. This date for the climate change comes too late to be of relevance to the
Chalcolithic cultural collapse. This evidence, unfortunately is damaging to that hypothesis.
Drier conditions could very well have affected the subsistence practices which supported
the dense network of tell sites in Southeast Europe and encouraged a more dispersed and pastoral
economy mixed with some agriculture. The occurrence of many sites being found at higher
elevations and hilltops could have been useful for exploiting the marginal zones that were more
suitable to grazing sheep, goats, and cattle as Dennell (1975) suggested. It may also have been,
as Dennell also suggested, that the most productive and arable land was over-exploited and its
settlers were forced to use more marginal areas which were best supplemented with grazing
livestock. Todorova claimed that rising sea levels throughout the climatic optimum could have
been the cause for the abandonment of the Varna necropolis and others along with their
corresponding populations along the Black Sea coast the second half of the 5th millennium.
Climatic change and catastrophe to explain the downfall of powerful civilizations has
become popular in recent years, perhaps due to the evidence of global warming in the present.
Average global temperatures do appear to go through regular cycles of ups and downs every
1500 years or so which are themselves part of even larger patterns of ups and downs over much
longer intervals. Even changes of a few degrees can have serious consequences on agricultural
yields. One example of climate catastrophe that was widely popularized was Harvey Weiss’
theory that aridization and sandstorms brought about the end of the Akkadian Empire (Weiss
1993). This comes from evidence of a sterile layer of wind blown dust from one site in Syria and
Weiss hypothesis remains controversial.
These theories of ecological degradation, overexploitation, and internal changes have
their own weaknesses. As David Anthony noted: “The evidence for ecological degradation is
slight, and the proposed massive shift in economy seems an extreme solution to a problem of
localized ecological degradation near settlements. Hundreds of sites were abandoned, and many
long-standing traditions were terminated, in crafts, domestic rituals, decorative customs, body
ornaments, housing styles, living arrangements, mortuary customs, mining, and metallurgy. The
conjunctions of so many terminations suggests a catastrophic event, not a gradual evolution.”
(Anthony 2009: 51)
It is worth noting that many current models in archaeology attempt to explain the spread
a new cultural manifestation in every possible way other than migrations. “Exchange systems,
prestige chains, peer-polity interactions, similar cultural evolution or internal structural
reordering independent of external stimuli are frequently advanced against former models of
culture changes that instinctively sought to introduce a new people with every new pot or burial.”
(Mallory 1989: 166). This is norm for the prehistorians because any archaeologist working
within historical periods finds so much evidence in written records and archaeology that large
scale folk migrations took place that to deny that they took place in prehistory is ridiculous.
Even if we find meager evidence in the archaeological record of migration does not rule it out.
This is an issue which cannot be ignored. Accepting a hypothesis of migration and invasion is
not taking the easy way out of a problem of prehistory. It is a logical explanation based on
empirical evidence along with historical analogy. It is also a normal process of human culture.
Nevertheless, we are left to wonder even if such migrations took place creating hybrid and even
Indo-European speaking cultures; was this the cause of the cultural change and settlement
abandonment or just a result of it?
Many see Cernavoda I as one of the first cultures of the Balkans to exhibit features of the
“Transitional Phase” marking the end of the Chalcolithic cultures in the Balkans. It shows
obvious signs of early influences from the steppes to the East, whether by diffusion or migration.
Its location in the lower Danube valley would have been a very probable route for such
exchanges. In some ways with its stone and bone tools and in ceramic forms and burnishing it
shows signs of some cultural continuity with the previous Gumelnita culture, and so led
Gimbutas to label it as a “hybrid” culture, part of the earliest wave of migration of people from
the steppes. On the other hand, not everyone is in agreement that Cernavoda pottery shows any
connections with steppe cultures like the Sredny Stog. Manzura (1999: 100) says the only
parallels are restricted to the corded ornamentation and “mostly concerned with the earlier
Cernavoda I materials and those from Derievka, one of the latest sites in the steppe Copper Age.
That is why even chronologically such connections look totally unacceptable.” He does point
out that there is a stronger resemblance between Cernavoda I and Ceceti C pottery.
Nevertheless, its pottery is still very different from the previous highly decorated pottery of the
Gumelnita people. The use of shell temper into mostly plain gray ware with some rope or cordstyle additions is diagnostic and similar in manufacture to Late Sredny-Stog and Early Yamnaya.
It likely was part of a progressive migratory movement coming from the east. Its habitations
were situated on mountainsides or in the highlands on hilltops, sometimes reoccupying the
Gumelnita culture settlements and often surrounded by ditches. Stone scepters exhibiting a
horse head are common and replace the diverse anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines from
previous cultures of the Chalcolithic and Neolithic in the region. Funeral rites also show
incursions of people from the Pontic and Caspian steppes. Burials and graves are under funeral
mounds or flattened pits, both isolated and grouped into a Necropolis. Weapons became an
important component of grave goods in Europe in this phase, something that Gimbutas attributes
to the warlike nature of the first Indo-European people from the steppe. It wasn’t until 1968 that
the three “phases” of the Cernavoda culture became identified separate cultures, each
individualized typologically at different sites. It also became apparent that Cernavoda III was
older than Cernavoda II (Morintz, Roman 1968, 92-97). Cernavoda III clearly no longer showed
signs of any continuity from the Chalcolithic cultures and became part of the so-called BalkanDanubian complex, relatively homogenous group of cultures characterized by ceramics with
twisted decorations, the use of ochre, scepters in zoomorphic forms, and burial under grave
mounds. Many asked, how can the spread of an archaeological phenomenon over such a large
are be explained?
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