One of the research goals of the AHRC-funded “Early urbanism in Europe?: the case of the Trypilli... more One of the research goals of the AHRC-funded “Early urbanism in Europe?: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites, Ukraine” Project was the better understanding of how Trypillia houses burned down in order to aid our understanding of the taphonomy of house remains excavated at the Trypillia BII mega-site of Nebelivka. For that reason, the Project decided to build two 2/3 size Trypillia experimental houses – one single-storey and one two-storey – in order to compare the burnt remains of the two types of houses. In the first part of this article, we explain the construction methods of the two 4 x 3m houses and the resources utilized to build them. In the second part, we provide an account of the burning of the two-storey house and explain the principal results of the experiment. In conclusion, we seek to define the specific contribution of the Nebelivka experiment not only to the history of Trypillia house-burning but the wider debate of deliberate house-burning.
For over a century, excavations on Trypillia sites in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as on Cucuteni... more For over a century, excavations on Trypillia sites in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as on Cucuteni sites in Romania, have revealed few obvious signs of architectural differentiation among the huge numbers of domestic houses. Now, for the first time, a new generation of geophysical prospection methods used to investigate mega-sites has revealed uncommonly large Trypillia structures which merit the name 'mega-structures'. The first three such mega-structures were identified in geophysical prospection in 2009 at the mega-site of Nebelivka, Kirovograd Domain, Ukraine. This article provides a preliminary report on the excavation of the largest mega-structure in the summer 2012 season. This building, covering an area of 600m², must rank as one of the largest structures ever built in prehistoric Europe.
The research team of this new project has begun the precision radiocarbon dating of the super-imp... more The research team of this new project has begun the precision radiocarbon dating of the super-important Copper Age cemetery at Varna. These first dates show the cemetery in use from 4560-4450 BC, with the possibility that the richer burials are earlier and the poor burials later in the sequence. The limited number of lavish graves at Varna, representing no more than a handful of paramount chiefs, buried over 50-60 years, suggests a stabilisation of the new social structure by the early part of the Late Copper Age.
This chapter introduces the fragmentation premise — the idea that the deliberate breakage of a co... more This chapter introduces the fragmentation premise — the idea that the deliberate breakage of a complete object and the re-use of the resultant fragments as new and separate objects ‘after the break’ was a common practice in the past. It also summarizes the main implications of the fragmentation premise for the study of enchained social relations and of the creation and development of personhood in the past. Enchained relations connect the distributed elements of a person's social identity using material culture. These concepts of fragmentation, enchainment and fractality are used to think through some of the earliest remains of objects in the world. Following the philosopher David Bohm, the discussion supports the co-evolution of fragmentation in both consciousness and in objects, and compares Bohm's three-stage ideas to Mithen's model of cognitive evolution and Donald's model of external symbolic storage.
The first phase of the Trypillia mega-sites' methodological revolution began in 1971 with aer... more The first phase of the Trypillia mega-sites' methodological revolution began in 1971 with aerial photography, magnetic prospection, and archaeological excavations of huge settlements of hundreds of hectares belonging to the Trypillia culture in Ukraine. Since 2009, we have created a second phase of the methodological revolution in studies of Trypillia mega-sites, which has provided more significant advances in our understanding of these large sites than any other single research development in the last three decades, thanks partly to the participation of joint Ukrainian-foreign teams. In this paper, we outline the main aspects of the second phase, using examples from the Anglo-Ukrainian project ‘Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites', working at Nebelivka (also spelled ‘Nebilivka’), and the Ukrainian-German project ‘Economy, demography and social space of Trypillia mega-sites', working at Taljanky (‘Talianki’), Maydanetske (‘Maydanets...
Summary. What can students of the past do to establish the predominant land-use and settlement pr... more Summary. What can students of the past do to establish the predominant land-use and settlement practices of populations who leave little or no artefactual discard as a testament to their lifeways? The traditional answer, especially in Eastern Europe, is to invoke often ...
In this article we outline some of the key characteristics of the social structure of the Climax ... more In this article we outline some of the key characteristics of the social structure of the Climax Copper Age in the eastern Balkans and the contributions of the Varna cemetery to those developments. We continue by examining the implications of the new series of 21 AMS dates from the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, which represent the first dates for the Varna Eneolithic cemetery on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Representing the first phase of the AMS dating project for the Varna I cemetery, these dates have been selected to provide a range of different grave locations, ranges of grave goods, and age/gender associations. We conclude by addressing the question of the unexpectedly early start of the cemetery, as well as its apparently short duration and relatively rapid demise.
A new radiocarbon dating programme for the sequence excavated by M. Vasic at the Neolithic site V... more A new radiocarbon dating programme for the sequence excavated by M. Vasic at the Neolithic site Vinca-Belo Brdo, Serbia, was designed within the framework of Bayesian chronological modeling. A total of 85 radiocarbon measurements are now available from 82 samples from known depths through the sequence at Vinca. The supplementary information provided here – Vinca_Vasic_age_depth_final.oxcal – presents the CQL2 code explicitly defining the age depth model.
Introduction: the scope of this paper This paper, dedicated to the memory of István Zalai-Gaál, p... more Introduction: the scope of this paper This paper, dedicated to the memory of István Zalai-Gaál, presents formally modelled date estimates for the sequence of Lengyel funerary pottery in western Hungary, eastern Austria and south-west Slovakia. It is an extension of the dating and modelling already carried out by the project, The Times of Their Lives (ToTL), on the major Lengyel aggregation, including burials, at Alsónyék-Bátaszék in south-east Transdanubia (OSZTÁS et al. 2016a; 2016b; BÁNFFY et al. 2016).
There is a considerable mix of models for house durations in the literature on Neolithic Europe. ... more There is a considerable mix of models for house durations in the literature on Neolithic Europe. This article presents a summary of a formal chronological model for the Neolithic tell of Uivar in western Romania. We provide estimates of house duration and relate houses to other features of the development of this tell, from the later sixth to the mid-fifth millennium calbc. Three wider implications are discussed: that the house must be contextualized case by case; that house duration gives powerful insights into the sociality of community; and that houses, surprisingly often taken rather for granted in Neolithic archaeology, should be fully integrated into the interpretation of Neolithic histories. From what perspective, anthropocentric or relational, that may best be done, is open to question; while it may be helpful to think in this case in terms of the lives and vitality of houses, the ability of people to create and vary history should not be set aside lightly.
One of the research goals of the AHRC-funded “Early urbanism in Europe?: the case of the Trypilli... more One of the research goals of the AHRC-funded “Early urbanism in Europe?: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites, Ukraine” Project was the better understanding of how Trypillia houses burned down in order to aid our understanding of the taphonomy of house remains excavated at the Trypillia BII mega-site of Nebelivka. For that reason, the Project decided to build two 2/3 size Trypillia experimental houses – one single-storey and one two-storey – in order to compare the burnt remains of the two types of houses. In the first part of this article, we explain the construction methods of the two 4 x 3m houses and the resources utilized to build them. In the second part, we provide an account of the burning of the two-storey house and explain the principal results of the experiment. In conclusion, we seek to define the specific contribution of the Nebelivka experiment not only to the history of Trypillia house-burning but the wider debate of deliberate house-burning.
For over a century, excavations on Trypillia sites in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as on Cucuteni... more For over a century, excavations on Trypillia sites in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as on Cucuteni sites in Romania, have revealed few obvious signs of architectural differentiation among the huge numbers of domestic houses. Now, for the first time, a new generation of geophysical prospection methods used to investigate mega-sites has revealed uncommonly large Trypillia structures which merit the name 'mega-structures'. The first three such mega-structures were identified in geophysical prospection in 2009 at the mega-site of Nebelivka, Kirovograd Domain, Ukraine. This article provides a preliminary report on the excavation of the largest mega-structure in the summer 2012 season. This building, covering an area of 600m², must rank as one of the largest structures ever built in prehistoric Europe.
The research team of this new project has begun the precision radiocarbon dating of the super-imp... more The research team of this new project has begun the precision radiocarbon dating of the super-important Copper Age cemetery at Varna. These first dates show the cemetery in use from 4560-4450 BC, with the possibility that the richer burials are earlier and the poor burials later in the sequence. The limited number of lavish graves at Varna, representing no more than a handful of paramount chiefs, buried over 50-60 years, suggests a stabilisation of the new social structure by the early part of the Late Copper Age.
This chapter introduces the fragmentation premise — the idea that the deliberate breakage of a co... more This chapter introduces the fragmentation premise — the idea that the deliberate breakage of a complete object and the re-use of the resultant fragments as new and separate objects ‘after the break’ was a common practice in the past. It also summarizes the main implications of the fragmentation premise for the study of enchained social relations and of the creation and development of personhood in the past. Enchained relations connect the distributed elements of a person's social identity using material culture. These concepts of fragmentation, enchainment and fractality are used to think through some of the earliest remains of objects in the world. Following the philosopher David Bohm, the discussion supports the co-evolution of fragmentation in both consciousness and in objects, and compares Bohm's three-stage ideas to Mithen's model of cognitive evolution and Donald's model of external symbolic storage.
The first phase of the Trypillia mega-sites' methodological revolution began in 1971 with aer... more The first phase of the Trypillia mega-sites' methodological revolution began in 1971 with aerial photography, magnetic prospection, and archaeological excavations of huge settlements of hundreds of hectares belonging to the Trypillia culture in Ukraine. Since 2009, we have created a second phase of the methodological revolution in studies of Trypillia mega-sites, which has provided more significant advances in our understanding of these large sites than any other single research development in the last three decades, thanks partly to the participation of joint Ukrainian-foreign teams. In this paper, we outline the main aspects of the second phase, using examples from the Anglo-Ukrainian project ‘Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites', working at Nebelivka (also spelled ‘Nebilivka’), and the Ukrainian-German project ‘Economy, demography and social space of Trypillia mega-sites', working at Taljanky (‘Talianki’), Maydanetske (‘Maydanets...
Summary. What can students of the past do to establish the predominant land-use and settlement pr... more Summary. What can students of the past do to establish the predominant land-use and settlement practices of populations who leave little or no artefactual discard as a testament to their lifeways? The traditional answer, especially in Eastern Europe, is to invoke often ...
In this article we outline some of the key characteristics of the social structure of the Climax ... more In this article we outline some of the key characteristics of the social structure of the Climax Copper Age in the eastern Balkans and the contributions of the Varna cemetery to those developments. We continue by examining the implications of the new series of 21 AMS dates from the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, which represent the first dates for the Varna Eneolithic cemetery on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Representing the first phase of the AMS dating project for the Varna I cemetery, these dates have been selected to provide a range of different grave locations, ranges of grave goods, and age/gender associations. We conclude by addressing the question of the unexpectedly early start of the cemetery, as well as its apparently short duration and relatively rapid demise.
A new radiocarbon dating programme for the sequence excavated by M. Vasic at the Neolithic site V... more A new radiocarbon dating programme for the sequence excavated by M. Vasic at the Neolithic site Vinca-Belo Brdo, Serbia, was designed within the framework of Bayesian chronological modeling. A total of 85 radiocarbon measurements are now available from 82 samples from known depths through the sequence at Vinca. The supplementary information provided here – Vinca_Vasic_age_depth_final.oxcal – presents the CQL2 code explicitly defining the age depth model.
Introduction: the scope of this paper This paper, dedicated to the memory of István Zalai-Gaál, p... more Introduction: the scope of this paper This paper, dedicated to the memory of István Zalai-Gaál, presents formally modelled date estimates for the sequence of Lengyel funerary pottery in western Hungary, eastern Austria and south-west Slovakia. It is an extension of the dating and modelling already carried out by the project, The Times of Their Lives (ToTL), on the major Lengyel aggregation, including burials, at Alsónyék-Bátaszék in south-east Transdanubia (OSZTÁS et al. 2016a; 2016b; BÁNFFY et al. 2016).
There is a considerable mix of models for house durations in the literature on Neolithic Europe. ... more There is a considerable mix of models for house durations in the literature on Neolithic Europe. This article presents a summary of a formal chronological model for the Neolithic tell of Uivar in western Romania. We provide estimates of house duration and relate houses to other features of the development of this tell, from the later sixth to the mid-fifth millennium calbc. Three wider implications are discussed: that the house must be contextualized case by case; that house duration gives powerful insights into the sociality of community; and that houses, surprisingly often taken rather for granted in Neolithic archaeology, should be fully integrated into the interpretation of Neolithic histories. From what perspective, anthropocentric or relational, that may best be done, is open to question; while it may be helpful to think in this case in terms of the lives and vitality of houses, the ability of people to create and vary history should not be set aside lightly.
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