The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  A striking case of gendered social persona is the connection of tools/weapons with male burials. Although their exact position varies, axes, adzes, or sickles were often found around the head or shoulders, an iconographic ideal shared by contemporaneous figurines. Two examples from the late Neolithic Tisza culture site of Szegvár-Tűzköves are particularly telling: the famous ‘Sickle God’ (Fig. 49.6a) is a seated figure of a man holding a sickle over the right shoulder, whilst another seated but fragmented figurine also shows a man holding something over the right shoulder, perhaps the miniature shaft-hole clay axe found in the same context (Fig. 49.6b) (Korek 1987; Trogmayer 1992). This position echoes evidence from burials across south-east Europe. Perhaps the clearest example comes from the Vinča culture site of Gomolava, where the deceased were always placed crouched on their left and with sickles or horseshoe stone adzes over their right shoulders (Borić 1996). In the early and middle Copper Age, copper axes and adzes were placed in these same positions (e.g. Fig. 49.4a). Instead of seeing these objects only as status symbols, we can envision them as indices of particular types of gendered persons, as norms depicting stereotypical practices such as harvesting, wood-cutting, and warring. There might have been important mythical (cf. Makkay 1978) and religious dimensions to the placement of these objects, which indicate widely shared classifications of people across south-east Europe, based on idealized taskscapes particularly pertinent to male individuals. Recently, a group of 30 (male?) figures with bird-like faces holding shaft-hole axes on their right shoulders and one larger figure holding a mace (Fig. 49.6c) was discovered in a domestic context at the Vinča site of Stubline in Serbia (Crnobrnja et al. 2010). This could be interpreted as a mythological scene, a reification of taskscapes, and/or a statement about politics and warfare.

  FIG. 49.6. Tisza culture male figurines with a sickle (a) and axe (b) placed on right shoulders, Szegvár-Tűzköves, Hungary

  (photo: Zoltán Pápai, Koszta József Múzeum, Szentes); (c) group of late Vinča culture figurines with a mace-head and axes placed on right shoulders, Stubline, Serbia (courtesy A. Crnobrnja).

  Body ornaments are largely absent from early–middle Neolithic burials, but become more frequent in the last centuries of the sixth millennium BC. As with tools and weapons, beads of ‘exotic’ raw materials like Spondylus shell or copper have frequently been taken as indications of higher status, or hereditary status when associated with children. There is an overwhelming gendered division regarding the types of ornaments found in burials: Spondylus and copper bracelets, and wild boar tusk pendants, are found in male burials; beads and appliqués of marble, Spondylus, Dentalium, limestone, clay, and red deer canines were more frequently buried with women and children. Hence different types of body ornaments were used to signal particular social messages, for example about life-stages of particular individuals (Sofaer Derevenski 1997, 2000), or their possible achievements and ‘fame’. Whilst bead-making, especially from exotic raw materials, required energy and resources, body decoration cannot be reduced to concerns about status, wealth, and social exchanges, or even to gender and age signalling. For instance, a whole genre of Amerindian myths is concerned with the origin of ornaments seen as bodily extensions or protective surfaces with important religious dimensions (e.g. Lévi-Strauss 1995). For the Nambikwara of Brazil, especially the ornaments worn by children are important for protecting or representing the soul of the wearer, and losing them could cause illness or death (Miller 2009). Ornaments can thus be seen as creating body surfaces with inscribed social messages regarding an individual’s social and age/gender standing, but can also act as extensions of one’s body. Body surfaces in life and death must have been inscribed by numerous messages, acting as interfaces between the individual and society, and differentiating diverse communities across Neolithic and Copper Age south-east Europe which, at the same time, shared similar myths and beliefs.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Adam Crnobrnja (Municipal Museum of Belgrade) for the permission to reproduce a photo of the figurine group from Stubline, Mária Béres (Koszta József Múzeum, Szentes) for photos of two seated figurines from Szegvár-Tűzköves and Dimitrij Mlekuž for the base map used in Figure 49.1. For very useful and detailed comments on earlier drafts of the chapter I am grateful to Chris Fowler, Daniela Hofmann, Zsuzsanna Siklósi, and Alasdair Whittle.

  NOTES

  1.In contrast to other chronological schemes, the label ‘middle Neolithic’ is used for the period following the earliest phase of the Neolithic in the Balkans and lasting from c. 5900–5400 BC, i.e. up to the appearance of the first late Neolithic tell sites in some areas, when a markedly different pottery production was introduced throughout the region. As with all chapters in this volume, dates given are cal. BC.

  2.There were 23 burials at Nea Nikomedeia, around 20 at Lepenski Vir and Malăk Preslavec, 17 at Ajmana, 13 at Karanovo and Trestiana, and 10 or 11 at Vinča, Szarvas-Szappanos and Gura Baciului.

  3.Some burials from the largely late Neolithic Dudești culture cemetery at Cernica or from Durankulak could be attributed to this phase, but this is unlikely (see below). In the southern Balkans, the presence of 14 cremation burials close to the Soufli magoula may indicate an intramural cemetery (Gallis 1982; Perlès 2001, 274; cf. Fowler 2004; Triantaphyllou 2008). Individuals of both sexes and various ages were accompanied by miniature vessels and broken pieces of pottery.

  4.A possible exception to this rule could be certain burials from the largely late Neolithic cemetery of Dudești culture at Cernica or certain burials from Durankulak could perhaps also be attributed to this phase, yet presently there are no indications for this (see below for the late Neolithic mortuary practices at these sites, cf. Lichter 2001, 39). In the southern Balkans, the presence of 14 cremation burials at Soufli close to magoula may indicate that this was an extramural cemetery (Gallis 1982; Perlès 2001, 274). Burning of human remains might have taken place in burning pits discovered in the same area. These burials at Soufli contained individuals of both sexes and various ages and were accompanied by miniature vessels and broken pieces of pottery.

  5.Only in the Poljanica culture were goods preferentially placed around the feet, see e.g. Todorova 1982.

  6.Here, several of the deceased were buried in coffins, e.g. at Hódmezővásárhely-Gorzsa II (Horváth 1987) and Vésztő-Mágor (Hegedűs and Makkay 1990).

  7.The term Copper Age is used here, but ‘Eneolithic’ is also common in the literature. The latter term stresses the evident continuities with the late Neolithic, but some authors have argued that the Copper Age should be seen as a separate historical epoch bringing important social changes (Lichardus and Echt 1991; Link 2006; Parkinson 2006). Furthermore, whilst copper use is clearly attested during the late Neolithic in various areas of south-east Europe (e.g. Borić 2009), it peaks in the millennium after around 4500 BC and various culture groups conventionally labelled ‘Copper Age’ lasted for around 2,000 years until the beginning of the earliest Bronze Age.

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