The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  * * *

  * Received May 2010, revised December 2011

  CHAPTER 28

  POTS AND POTTERS IN THE MESOLITHIC–NEOLITHIC TRANSITION IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE

  MIHAEL BUDJA

  INTRODUCTION

  POTTERY was once conceptualized by an interpretative triad suggesting that in the context of human social evolution, ‘lower barbarism’ (Neolithic) can be distinguished from ‘upper savagery’ (Mesolithic) by the presence of ceramic vessels (Morgan 1878), that territorial distributions of pottery types reflect ‘sharply defined archaeological cultural provinces’ (Kossinna 1911, 3), and that the invention of ceramic technology and pottery making was ‘the earliest conscious utilization by man of a chemical change … in the quality of the material … the conversion of mud or dust into stone’ in the Neolithic (Childe 1951, 76–77).

  Decades later, pottery assemblages from the initial European Neolithic settlements were related to genetically identified haplogroups within modern European populations which were believed to be legacies of prehistoric population movements across Europe (cf. Shennan, this volume). Two interpretative paradigms were dominant, one suggesting pioneer or leapfrog colonization, and the other ‘demic’ diffusion and a large Neolithic population replacement. Both are hypothesized to be associated with the spread of the agricultural frontier and painted pottery dispersal from central Anatolia via the Balkans and central Europe towards the Atlantic and Baltic coasts. The presence of pottery associated with hunter-gatherer communities in western Siberia, the Russian Plain, and northern Europe was overlooked by these approaches (cf. Gronenborn and Dolukhanov, this volume; Bartosiewicz and Lillie, this volume). Diverse forms of ceramic technology had been used by hunter-gatherers long before the transition to farming appeared, with ceramic figurines dating back to the Gravettian and Epigravettian complexes in central Europe, c. 30,000–27,000 BC.1 In western Siberia pottery was produced and distributed in hunter-gatherers’ communities within the time span c. 8300–6400 BC (Zakh 2006, 77), whilst further to the west in the western Urals and middle Volga River, the oldest pottery was contextualized in Elshanka (Yelshanian) small seasonal sites, scattered in a vast forest–steppe area. Vessels with conical and flat bases were made from silty clay tempered with organic matter, fish scales, and crumbled animal bones. They are decorated with imprints of pits, notches, and incised lines. Dates on bone samples and carbonized food residues range between 7070 and 6509 BC (Zaitseva et al. 2009, 799–800, tab. 1; Vybornov et al. 2013). Around the same period, the earliest pottery production in the Near East was embedded in farming social contexts. This painted pottery dates to 7066–6840 BC (Özdoğan 2009; Nieuwenhuyse et al. 2010).

  Initial pottery distribution in western Eurasia thus shows two almost contemporary but geographically distinct trajectories. The northern is embedded in hunter-gatherer contexts in East European Plain; the southern is associated with the well-developed farming economy in the Near East. The early pottery distribution in south-east Europe has long been suggested to be related to the latter and associated with the massive Near Eastern human immigration and the transition to farming in the region, and this chapter reassesses that conclusion. In south-eastern Europe pottery appeared at c. 6500–6030 BC in different social contexts, whilst in Thessaly it was found in farmers’ settlement contexts; in the northern Balkans it appeared in both hunter-gatherer and farming communities.

  REGIONAL PATTERNS AND CERAMIC TECHNOLOGY

  The composition of the ceramic fabric and the shape and ornamentation of vessels suggest regional patterning in pottery-making techniques. The pottery assemblages in the earliest settlement contexts on the Peloponnese and the most southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula consist of monochrome red slipped pottery (i.e. coated with a clay slip that, when fired, gives the vessel a red surface), and ‘a very limited use of painting’ (Perlès 2001, 112; see also Krauß 2011, 119) (Fig. 28.1). By contrast, painted vessels were clearly the first to appear in the settlements in northern and eastern Balkans, where painted vessels comprise from 0.2% to just less than 10% of the total quantity of ceramics (Budja 2009, 126; Krauß 2011, 122). Annual pottery production has been estimated at between 12 and 13 pots at Franchthi and 25 to 90 pots at Nea Nikomedeia (Perlès 2001, 214; Pyke and Yiouni 1996, 185). The distributions of ceramic items, such as female figurines, sometimes exaggerated in form, stamp seals, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and polypod vessels, which do indeed connect south-east Europe and western Anatolia, supporting the perception of migrating farmers and the gradual distribution of the ‘Near Eastern Neolithic package’ (Lichter 2005; Özdoğan 2008, 2011). Yet it is worth remembering that the beginning of the Neolithic in south-eastern Europe was marked neither by stamp seals nor ceramic female figurines. No single stamp has been found in the Thessalian EN I (c. 6500–6430 BC) and none of the clay figurines can be securely dated to it. Figurines do appear in secure contexts in the EN II (c. 6350–6200 BC) and stamp seals can securely be dated to EN III/MN I in the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula and on Peloponnesus (Reingruber 2011a, 301; 2011b, 135). When figurines appeared in south-eastern Europe, they remained highly schematized, sometimes to the extent that their identification as anthropomorphic is debatable (Vajsov 1998, 131; Perlès 2001, 257; for a general overview, see Hansen 2007).

  FIG. 28.1. The ‘Monochrome’ and painted pottery in the Aegean early Neolithic

  (from Theocharis 1973. Plate IV).

  The earliest pottery productions are embedded in time spans at c. 6500–6200 BC in the southern Balkans and Peloponnesus, at c. 6440–6028 BC in the northern and eastern Balkans, and at c. 6330-6030 BC in the Adriatic (Perlès 2001; Thissen 2005, 2009; Reingruber and Thissen 2009; Budja 2009, 2010; Reingruber 2011a, b). Whilst pottery in the southern Balkans was found in farmers’ settlement contexts only, it appeared in the northern Balkans in both hunter-gatherers’ and farmers’ settlements (Perlès 2001; Budja 2009). At Lepenski Vir, for instance, pottery was found within trapezoidal built structures (nos 4, 24, 36, and 54) associated with hu
nter-gatherers’ burial practices including burial of neonates and secondary burial (or deposition) of human and dog mandibles (Budja 1999, 2009; Garašanin and Radovanović 2001; Stefanović and Borić 2008; cf. Borić, this volume).

  The pottery assemblages in south-east Europe show local and regional differences in making techniques, vessel shaping (Thissen 2009), and ornamenting (Schubert 1999, 2005). Combined petrographic and chemical compositional analysis of clay and ceramic matrix show clearly indicate differences in pottery productions. Pottery in the northern Balkans was consistently manufactured according to a single recipe, using non-calcareous micaceous clays with a matrix characterized by alluvial, well-sorted, fine quartz sand, with feldspar, and heavily tempered with organic matter (i.e. chaff). In the Adriatic, pottery was heavily tempered with crushed calcite on the eastern coast, and with mineral resources (e.g. flint) and grog (recycled pottery) on the western coast (Spataro 2011). In the Aegean, pottery was from the beginning made locally in a number of sites and exchanged regularly between nearby settlements. Some fine ware paste recipes show that pottery may have been transported a distance of around 200km and that have been part of maritime exchange networks. The unchanging ceramic matrix in some cases reflects significant continuity in pottery technology during the early Neolithic (Tomkins et al. 2004; Quinn et al. 2010).

  In general terms, two basic ornamental principles are recognizable in south-east European early Neolithic pottery. In southern parts of the region (Thessaly and Peloponnesus) ornamentation appeared in a red and black colour. Further to the north, in Macedonia, white was added, and in northern and eastern regions of the Balkans white ornamentation dominated in the earliest pottery assemblages. A similar regional pattern is seen in motif distributions, as dots and grids dominate the northern and eastern Balkans, and triangles, squares, zigzags, and floral motifs the southern Balkans and Peloponnesus. A similar regionalization was recognized in the differences of the composition of the plant suites and in the varieties of Neolithic wheat compositions within these areas (Perlès 2001, 62; Colledge et al. 2004; Kreuz et al. 2005; Coward et al. 2008). Whilst painted motifs are limited to the Peloponnesus, the Balkans and the southern Carpathian Basin, cardium-impressed ornamentation marks the pottery of the Adriatic coast. It is not before the middle Neolithic that painted pottery appeared on the eastern Adriatic coast (Müller 1994; Schubert 1999).

  INTERPRETATIVE PARADIGMS FOR THE ORIGINS AND DISTRIBUTIONS OF SOUTH-EAST EUROPEAN NEOLITHIC POTTERY

  The appearance of pottery has long been studied in conjunction with the appearance of new populations. Whilst Neolithic pottery was hypothesized as a universal indicator of both ‘cultural identities’ and ‘distributions of ethnic groups’, early studies focused on the morphological characteristics of Neolithic skeletal remains as indicators of Neolithic population dynamics. Gordon Childe (1939, 17) linked pottery with potters who were ‘early colonists’ or ‘immigrants from South-Western Asia’ who produced ‘unpainted and coarse and chaff-tempered vessels’ on the Balkans and ‘extremely fine burnished and painted ware in the Peloponnese’ (Childe 1958, 58–60, 86–88). Carleton Coon (1939) introduced a migration model in which the local hunter-gatherers (the ‘Alpines’) failed to survive the ingress of migrating newcomers (the ‘Mediterraneans’). Coon’s migration model was never recognized in archaeology, although the migration of ‘Mediterraneans’, the concept of blending populations, the cultural and population frontiers have remained focal points in interpreting the European Neolithic (e.g. Pinhasi and von Cramon-Taubadel 2009). More recently, it has been suggested that new strontium isotope data from the Danube Gorges in the northern Balkans indicate the physical ‘differences between populations’ and, a ‘dramatic increase in the numbers of nonlocal, first-generation migrants’ since at Lepenski Vir, as of the sample of 45 individuals, there are five nonlocal individuals associated with the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition phase at 6200–6000 BC (Borić and Price 2013, 3299, 3301). Four of these five are female and Borić and Price suggest that women moved to the region as part of an ongoing social exchange and population blending in the context of the spread of Neolithic communities through south-eastern Europe along a route from western Anatolia, the Bosphorus, Thrace and along the Black Sea coast into the Danube (Borić and Price 2013, 3302).

  Pottery production has also been proposed as ‘the most obvious diagnostic element’ for tracing ‘waves of migrations’ from Asia Minor (Schachermeyr 1976, 43–46). In the most influential interpretation in the 1960s, south-eastern Europe was recognized as a ‘western province of the Near Eastern peasant cultures’, created by the processes of colonization and acculturation’ (Piggott 1965, 49–50; see also Rodden 1965). This assertion was grounded on the identification of ‘common traditions in pottery styles’ between the regions and in the distribution of ‘oriental stamp-seals’ and female figurines, and ‘sometimes of animals, which may relate to religious cults’. Nandris (1970, 193, 202) suggested that this dispersal marks early Neolithic ‘cultural unity’, which was ‘greater than was ever subsequently achieved in this area of south-east Europe, down to the present day’. In this context, Greece was suggested as being the location of the ‘foundation’ and ‘construction of the main features of Neolithic culture’ in Europe (Theocharis 1973, 58). ‘Monochrome’ and painted pottery thus achieved paradigmatic status as cultural and ethnic markers of the Neolithic diaspora, in which farming ‘oriental’ communities dispersed across the Peloponnese and Thessaly. By the end of the Aegean early Neolithic, the diaspora had supposedly spread to northern regions, and farming communities were established in the Balkans and Carpathian basin. A wave of migrations along the Vardar and Morava rivers, marked by the spread of white and red painted pottery, was hypothesized.

  Cultural and ethnic distinctions were based on styles of pottery, and thus changes in cultural or ethnic groups were based on ‘typological comparability and comparative stratigraphy’ (Milojčić 1949; Parzinger 1993). Whilst red and white painted pottery was believed to indicate an Anatolian population and culture, coarse pottery was perceived as something so local to the Balkans that ‘we do not believe that this primitive pottery was introduced from Asia Minor’ (Theocharis 1967, 173; cf. Thissen 2000, 163). Pottery assemblages with ‘impresso’ decoration made with fingernail and shell impressions, or by pinching clay between finger and thumb, and ‘Barbotine’ pottery with the application of a slip in the form of thick patches or trails comprise the most popular types of pottery in the Balkans (Fig. 28.2). These were explained simply as showing ‘a clear regression in pottery production’ (Milojčić 1960, 32). In Thessaly, this pottery was linked to an interruption in the ‘painted ware tradition’ (Nandris 1970, 200). Milojčić-von Zumbusch and Milojčić (1971, 34, 151) have suggested the interruption was associated with ‘barbarian local production’ brought into the region by a migrating population from the north, and marked by ‘burnt layers’ and settlement destruction in northern Thessaly at the end of the early Neolithic. Meanwhile, it was hypothesized that white painted pottery marked ‘a breakthrough’ by Anatolian ‘ethnic components’ and early Neolithic cultures from Thessaly to the northern Balkans and the Carpathian Basin (Garašanin 1979; Pavlu 1989; Garašanin and Radovanović 2001, 121–122). Differences in decorative motifs and ornamental composition were thought to constitute clusters of cultures in the region: ‘Anzabegovo-Vršnik’ in the southern Balkans (Fig. 28.3), ‘Starčevo/Körös/Criş’ in its central and northern areas, and ‘Kremikovci’, and ‘Karanovo’ in its eastern parts (Schubert 1999; Krauß 2010). A parallel trajectory towards the Adriatic and the central and western Mediterranean was recognized in distributions of ‘Impresso (Cardial)’ pottery (Fig. 28.4) and associated cultures (Parzinger 1993; Müller 1994).

  FIG. 28.2. The ‘Barbotine’ pottery with the application of a slip in the form of thick patches or trails of clay

  (From Jovanović 1968, sl. 1).

  FIG. 28.3. The early Neolithic pottery from Anzabegovo-Vršnik culture (a,
Anzabegovo, southern Balkans) and Starčevo (b, Donja Branjevina, northern Balkans) culture.

  FIG. 28.4. The ‘Impresso (Cardial)’ pottery with decoration made with marine shell impressions (from Marjanović 2009, sl. 75).

  A similar migratory event was hypothesized in a ‘leapfrog’ or ‘salutatory’ demographic model that suggests migrations from one suitable environment to another. Van Andel and Runnels (1995) suggested that Anatolian farmers had moved towards the Danube and Carpathian Basin after reaching demographic saturation in Thessaly, which they had settled first. They thought the Larissa plain in Thessaly was the only region in the southern Balkans that could provide a secure and sufficiently large harvest for the significant population growth that led to the next migratory move north. It was calculated that farmers needed 1,500 years to reach saturation point and to migrate to the northern Balkans. The rate of spread was first calculated from the small series of radiocarbon dates available at the time. Clark (1965a, 1965b) allocated dates to three temporal zones running from the Near East to Atlantic Europe and covering the time span from 5200 BC to 2800 BC. He suggested that the south-east–north-west gradient of the dates reflected ‘the gradual spread of the Neolithic way of life’ and associated material culture from the Near East across Europe. This conclusion was later based on much bigger series of standard radiocarbon dates covering the seventh millennium in south-eastern Europe and the sixth millennium BC in western Europe (Breunig 1987; Biagi et al. 2005).