Continuity and change in pottery manufacture between the early and middle Neolithic of Romania
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Continuity and change in pottery manufacture between the early and middle Neolithic of Romania Michela Spataro
Received: 14 July 2013 / Accepted: 19 November 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract This paper provides the first scientific comparison between pottery production in the early Neolithic Starčevo-Criş and middle Neolithic Vinča cultures of south-eastern Europe. The author investigates whether Starčevo-Criş pottery technology was transmitted to the succeeding Vinča culture, which in other respects was more complex and technologically advanced. The study compares pottery production at two sites, in different regions of Romania, which were occupied in both periods. Samples of 102 pots from the Starčevo-Criş and Vinča phases at Parţa, located in Romanian Banat, and Miercurea Sibiului Petriş in Transylvania, were analysed petrographically and geochemically. There are only minor differences found in the pottery technology between the two sites within each phase, but there were significant changes in pottery technology between the Starčevo-Criş and Vinča cultures. These changes are more subtle than might have been expected, however, given the rapid developments in other aspects of material culture. Keywords Ceramic technology . Temper . Firing . Starčevo-Criş . Vinča . Archaeometry
Introduction Two archaeological phenomena, the early Neolithic StarčevoCriş and the middle Neolithic Vinča cultures, occupied the same region of south-eastern Europe (Childe 1929; Chapman 1981). The Starčevo/Starčevo-Criş/Criş/Körös culture (earlier sixth millennium cal BC ; Biagi et al. 2005; Criş and Körös are M. Spataro UCL Institute of Archaeology, London, UK M. Spataro (*) Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, The British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG, UK e-mail: [email protected]
synonyms in Romanian and Hungarian for the same river) covered Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, eastern Croatia, Romania, Moldavia and part of Hungary. The Vinča culture (later sixth– earlier fifth millennium cal BC ; e.g. Borić 2009) covered almost the same area, concentrating in the alluvial plains and terraces of the Danube from Slavonia to north-western Bulgaria (Chapman 1981). The transition between Starčevo-Criş and Vinča cultures has long been discussed (Markotić 1984; Brukner 2006; Draşovean 2006; Horváth 2006). Vasić (1930–36), seeing correlations between the type-site, Vinča-Belo Brdo, and Troy, regarded the Vinča culture as the product of immigration from the Anatolian/Aegean region. Childe (1929) and Renfrew (1969) viewed Vinča-Belo Brdo as the link between the western Anatolian and south-eastern European cultural sequences. More recently, Leković (1990) and Makkay (1990) linked the origins of Vinča to contacts between the central Balkan Starčevo-Criş culture and sites to the south-east [e.g. the Bulgarian Karanovo III group (Hiller and Nikolov 2000) or sites in Anatolia (Garašanin 1979, 1982)], but the evidence was inconclusive. A precise chronology for the transitional peri
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