A large and complex lithic collection from Pelješac, a peninsula on the eastern Adriatic seaboard... more A large and complex lithic collection from Pelješac, a peninsula on the eastern Adriatic seaboard of southern Croatia, provides extensive information about raw materials, formal typology, and technology of flaked stone artifacts from the Early Neolithic up to the Iron Age. Most of the evidence comes from two stratified sites: a cave named Spila and the hillfort of Grad, both located on the Nakovana Plateau. The most conspicuous characteristic of the Nakovana lithic collection is continuity, both in production technology and in the choice of raw material. Changes are manifest in frequencies of lithic artifact classes, rather than in kinds of lithic artifacts. Virtually all the lithics are made of cherts imported from the Gargano Peninsula, which testifies to persistent trans-Adriatic connections throughout post-Mesolithic prehistory. Prismatic blades were brought to Nakovana as finished products. They are present from the Early Neolithic, their frequencies peak during the Copper Age, and they disappear from the record soon after the transition to the Bronze Age. An ad hoc flake-production technology is present throughout the sequence, but its importance diminishes as the prismatic blade technology takes over. After the disappearance of prismatic blades, Bronze Age lithic assemblages consist mainly of flakes and expedient flake-based tools. While the Nakovana sites did not yield any Mesolithic finds, comparison with other eastern Adriatic sites indicates that raw material procurement patterns changed radically at the time of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, which also coincided with the introduction of prismatic blade technology.
New radiocarbon determinations from Mesolithic, Neolithic, and/or Copper Age contexts at ten site... more New radiocarbon determinations from Mesolithic, Neolithic, and/or Copper Age contexts at ten sites are presented, bringing the number of absolute dates available for the East Adriatic to more than twice that of a decade ago. The dates show that, from 6000 BC onward, pottery styles (Impressed Ware, Danilo variants, Hvar, Nakovana, and Cetina) emerged, spread, and disappeared at different times, places, and rates within the region. The implications for models of the spread of farming and other features of Neolithic life are discussed. The continued usefulness of the threefold division of the regional Neolithic into 'Early', 'Middle', and 'Late' phases is found to be dubious.
Hvarski arhipelag i arheologija dalmatinskih otoka: od dinamične povijesti do kulturnog turizma, 2022
U ovom prilogu raspravlja se o arheološkoj građi prikupljenoj
s udaljenih jadranskih otoka koja s... more U ovom prilogu raspravlja se o arheološkoj građi prikupljenoj s udaljenih jadranskih otoka koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim dodirima i o porijeklu uvezenih litičkih sirovina na tim otocima i na drugim istočnojadranskim arheološkim nalazištima, uz oslanjanje na raspoložive radiokarbonske datume i paleogeografske rekonstrukcije.* Od posljednjeg glacijalnog maksimuma, prekojadranska povezivost prošla je kroz tri glavne faze, međusobno odijeljene dvjema ključnim tranzicijskim događajima – brzim širenjem Jadranskog mora i prijelazom na zemljoradnju. Tijekom prve faze, kada su suprotne strane Jadranskog bazena bile povezane kopnom Jadranske ravnice, građa ukazuje na prilično redovite dodire. Tijekom druge faze dodiri između suprotnih obala znatno prostranijeg Jadranskog mora bili su sporadični, ako ih je uopće bilo. Po dolasku zemljoradnje građa koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim dodirima postaje obilna i raznolika. To navodi na zaključak da je povezivost jadranskih kasnopleistocenskih i ranoholocenskih lovaca-skupljača bila pretežno kopnena. Pomorska povezivost postaje uobičajena upravo u vrijeme prijelaza na zemljoradnju.
Abstract - This paper discusses contacts between the eastern and western Adriatic coasts from the... more Abstract - This paper discusses contacts between the eastern and western Adriatic coasts from the time of transition to farming around year 6000 BC until the emergence of social elites in the 3rd millennium BC. Since those contacts would have required substantial navigational knowledge and technology, trans-Adriatic connectivity is inseparably linked to the history of seafaring. In the ever- changing natural and social environment of prehistoric Adriatic, the reasons for travel also were changing. Navigation took off abruptly around year 6000 BC, at the time of transition to farming. At first, travel was undertaken primarily in search of places to settle. Motives for travel changed after the establishment of farming villages. Rather than seeking new destinations, navigation now allowed the farming communities that were scattered around the Adriatic to remain in contact. Trans-Adriatic travel was undertaken not only to acquire locally unavailable raw materials, but also to maintain long-distance social networks. Yet another change came with the social transformations that marked the 3rd millennium BC, when clear evidence for social ranking appears for the first time in the archaeological record. Long-distance voyaging became crucial to prominent individuals for gaining and consolidating power, for creation and maintenance of social inequality.
Dairying in general, and the production of fermented milk products in particular, are farming str... more Dairying in general, and the production of fermented milk products in particular, are farming strategies that often involve the seasonal movement of herds. Recently published analyses of fatty acid residues on pottery and oxygen isotope analyses of ovicaprine teeth indicate that herders from the northern Dalmatian coast began to move their flocks to summer highland pastures in the second half of the 6th millennium BC, roughly at the same time when they began to make cheese. Results of that research, carried out on archaeological remains from lowland Neolithic villages, are supported and supplemented by the available evidence from highland sites located on Velebit Mountain. Seasonal vertical movement of shepherds began around the middle of the 6th millennium BC, about five centuries after farming first appeared in northern Dalmatia. This change in herd management strategy is roughly contemporaneous with other changes that reflect an intensification of subsistence practices. The spread of farming into the hinterland of Lika may be directly related to the beginning of transhumant pastoralism.
In this paper new palaeogeographic and archaeological data from the prehistoric cave Vela Spila o... more In this paper new palaeogeographic and archaeological data from the prehistoric cave Vela Spila on the island of Korčula in Croatia are combined with new realizations of two glacial isostatic adjustment models in order to present relative sea-level change scenarios confronting the inhabitants of the cave at different time slices and to show how they experienced and adapted to sea-level and climate change from the Late Pleistocene through the Holocene. Our results show that from the Late Upper Palaeolithic until the Mesolithic, humans in the study area would have experienced tens of metres of sea-level rise, at rates in some cases up to 12 mm per year, and, owing to the relatively flat morphology of the now submerged plains, hundreds of meters of horizontal coastline change in the plains to the north and south of the island. This evidence supports the hypothesis that the rapid loss of these plains likely contributed to the human abandonment of the cave after the Palaeolithic for about five thousand years, followed by significant changes in lifestyle and diet in the Mesolithic. Our results have important implications for the study of how past human groups, especially in vulnerable coastal areas, were affected by sea level, climate, and other environmental changes. Vela Spila represents a case study of how changing environment and rising seas can force significant alterations in human societies, even when there is no risk of inundation to settlement sites.
A large and complex lithic collection from Pelješac, a peninsula on the eastern Adriatic seaboard... more A large and complex lithic collection from Pelješac, a peninsula on the eastern Adriatic seaboard of southern Croatia, provides extensive information about raw materials, formal typology, and technology of flaked stone artifacts from the Early Neolithic up to the Iron Age. Most of the evidence comes from two stratified sites: a cave named Spila and the hillfort of Grad, both located on the Nakovana Plateau. The most conspicuous characteristic of the Nakovana lithic collection is continuity, both in production technology and in the choice of raw material. Changes are manifest in frequencies of lithic artifact classes, rather than in kinds of lithic artifacts. Virtually all the lithics are made of cherts imported from the Gargano Peninsula, which testifies to persistent trans-Adriatic connections throughout post-Mesolithic prehistory. Prismatic blades were brought to Nakovana as finished products. They are present from the Early Neolithic, their frequencies peak during the Copper Age, and they disappear from the record soon after the transition to the Bronze Age. An ad hoc flake-production technology is present throughout the sequence, but its importance diminishes as the prismatic blade technology takes over. After the disappearance of prismatic blades, Bronze Age lithic assemblages consist mainly of flakes and expedient flake-based tools. While the Nakovana sites did not yield any Mesolithic finds, comparison with other eastern Adriatic sites indicates that raw material procurement patterns changed radically at the time of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, which also coincided with the introduction of prismatic blade technology.
New radiocarbon determinations from Mesolithic, Neolithic, and/or Copper Age contexts at ten site... more New radiocarbon determinations from Mesolithic, Neolithic, and/or Copper Age contexts at ten sites are presented, bringing the number of absolute dates available for the East Adriatic to more than twice that of a decade ago. The dates show that, from 6000 BC onward, pottery styles (Impressed Ware, Danilo variants, Hvar, Nakovana, and Cetina) emerged, spread, and disappeared at different times, places, and rates within the region. The implications for models of the spread of farming and other features of Neolithic life are discussed. The continued usefulness of the threefold division of the regional Neolithic into 'Early', 'Middle', and 'Late' phases is found to be dubious.
Hvarski arhipelag i arheologija dalmatinskih otoka: od dinamične povijesti do kulturnog turizma, 2022
U ovom prilogu raspravlja se o arheološkoj građi prikupljenoj
s udaljenih jadranskih otoka koja s... more U ovom prilogu raspravlja se o arheološkoj građi prikupljenoj s udaljenih jadranskih otoka koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim dodirima i o porijeklu uvezenih litičkih sirovina na tim otocima i na drugim istočnojadranskim arheološkim nalazištima, uz oslanjanje na raspoložive radiokarbonske datume i paleogeografske rekonstrukcije.* Od posljednjeg glacijalnog maksimuma, prekojadranska povezivost prošla je kroz tri glavne faze, međusobno odijeljene dvjema ključnim tranzicijskim događajima – brzim širenjem Jadranskog mora i prijelazom na zemljoradnju. Tijekom prve faze, kada su suprotne strane Jadranskog bazena bile povezane kopnom Jadranske ravnice, građa ukazuje na prilično redovite dodire. Tijekom druge faze dodiri između suprotnih obala znatno prostranijeg Jadranskog mora bili su sporadični, ako ih je uopće bilo. Po dolasku zemljoradnje građa koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim dodirima postaje obilna i raznolika. To navodi na zaključak da je povezivost jadranskih kasnopleistocenskih i ranoholocenskih lovaca-skupljača bila pretežno kopnena. Pomorska povezivost postaje uobičajena upravo u vrijeme prijelaza na zemljoradnju.
Abstract - This paper discusses contacts between the eastern and western Adriatic coasts from the... more Abstract - This paper discusses contacts between the eastern and western Adriatic coasts from the time of transition to farming around year 6000 BC until the emergence of social elites in the 3rd millennium BC. Since those contacts would have required substantial navigational knowledge and technology, trans-Adriatic connectivity is inseparably linked to the history of seafaring. In the ever- changing natural and social environment of prehistoric Adriatic, the reasons for travel also were changing. Navigation took off abruptly around year 6000 BC, at the time of transition to farming. At first, travel was undertaken primarily in search of places to settle. Motives for travel changed after the establishment of farming villages. Rather than seeking new destinations, navigation now allowed the farming communities that were scattered around the Adriatic to remain in contact. Trans-Adriatic travel was undertaken not only to acquire locally unavailable raw materials, but also to maintain long-distance social networks. Yet another change came with the social transformations that marked the 3rd millennium BC, when clear evidence for social ranking appears for the first time in the archaeological record. Long-distance voyaging became crucial to prominent individuals for gaining and consolidating power, for creation and maintenance of social inequality.
Dairying in general, and the production of fermented milk products in particular, are farming str... more Dairying in general, and the production of fermented milk products in particular, are farming strategies that often involve the seasonal movement of herds. Recently published analyses of fatty acid residues on pottery and oxygen isotope analyses of ovicaprine teeth indicate that herders from the northern Dalmatian coast began to move their flocks to summer highland pastures in the second half of the 6th millennium BC, roughly at the same time when they began to make cheese. Results of that research, carried out on archaeological remains from lowland Neolithic villages, are supported and supplemented by the available evidence from highland sites located on Velebit Mountain. Seasonal vertical movement of shepherds began around the middle of the 6th millennium BC, about five centuries after farming first appeared in northern Dalmatia. This change in herd management strategy is roughly contemporaneous with other changes that reflect an intensification of subsistence practices. The spread of farming into the hinterland of Lika may be directly related to the beginning of transhumant pastoralism.
In this paper new palaeogeographic and archaeological data from the prehistoric cave Vela Spila o... more In this paper new palaeogeographic and archaeological data from the prehistoric cave Vela Spila on the island of Korčula in Croatia are combined with new realizations of two glacial isostatic adjustment models in order to present relative sea-level change scenarios confronting the inhabitants of the cave at different time slices and to show how they experienced and adapted to sea-level and climate change from the Late Pleistocene through the Holocene. Our results show that from the Late Upper Palaeolithic until the Mesolithic, humans in the study area would have experienced tens of metres of sea-level rise, at rates in some cases up to 12 mm per year, and, owing to the relatively flat morphology of the now submerged plains, hundreds of meters of horizontal coastline change in the plains to the north and south of the island. This evidence supports the hypothesis that the rapid loss of these plains likely contributed to the human abandonment of the cave after the Palaeolithic for about five thousand years, followed by significant changes in lifestyle and diet in the Mesolithic. Our results have important implications for the study of how past human groups, especially in vulnerable coastal areas, were affected by sea level, climate, and other environmental changes. Vela Spila represents a case study of how changing environment and rising seas can force significant alterations in human societies, even when there is no risk of inundation to settlement sites.
The 3rd millennium B.C. (henceforth 3rd MBC) is one of the most interesting and dynamic periods o... more The 3rd millennium B.C. (henceforth 3rd MBC) is one of the most interesting and dynamic periods of Adriatic prehistory. At the same time it is among the least well known. The lion’s share of what we do know (or think we know) about it is based on finds from burial mounds, the common, conspicuous and yet poorly understood monuments of the eastern Adriatic’s last three millennia of prehistory. This book covers only the early mounds found there, those that were built between roughly 3000 and 2000 B.C., a period marked in many parts of the Adriatic region by pottery styles called “Ljubljana-Adriatic” and “Cetina”. In traditional terms, it includes the end of the Eneolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age. One of the reasons why this period is so poorly known on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea has to do with the way the professional education of archaeologists there has been organized. Archaeology in general, and the teaching of prehistory in particular, has been split into archaeological periods ever since the academic establishment of the discipline. The Neolithic-Eneolithic period is taught by period-specialist instructors in courses separate from those dealing with the Bronze Age. There is not much interaction between archaeologists who cover the youngest part of “true prehistory” (the Neolithic and Eneolithic) and those who cover protohistory (the Bronze and Iron Ages). Little effort has gone into the investigation of the processes that evidently transformed Neolithic-Eneolithic traditions into Bronze Age and later ways of life. The 3rd MBC does not fully belong to either, and it tends to fall between the cracks. In a way, this book is an expansion of my previous book about the archaeology of Palagruža and the place of that extraordinary little island in the prehistory of the Adriatic. While studying its surprisingly rich 3rd MBC archaeological record, I became acutely aware how limited and unreliable was the information that we have from that period, and how much we had to rely on burial mounds. That information was often taken for granted, although most of it came from old excavations, accompanied by rather cursory descriptions of mound contents, contexts, and circumstances of discovery. Clearly, there was a lot of important information to be gleaned from the old excavation reports, but to make it usable, one had to recognize and eliminate a great deal of dubious data, conjecture, and mere guesswork. A substantial task, too expansive and complex to be undertaken in the Palagruža book, it is attempted now in a work devoted exclusively to the mounds. My primary aim is to identify more-or-less reliable information and discard the rest, and then to search for correlations and analyze the patterns in the reduced body of relatively trustworthy data. My second aim was to provide a source where illustrations of all finds from mounds attributable to the 3rd MBC would be presented in one place for easy reference and comparison. Most of those illustrations are scattered through countless papers published in local imprints with texts in Croatian and other closely related south Slavic languages, as well as in Albanian. This makes them difficult to consult for anyone beyond the local archaeological community; for many reasons, they deserve a wider readership. I did not group the illustrations on a mound-by-mound basis as “burial assemblages” or “closed finds”; most of them are neither one nor the other. Interested readers can find this information in the original publications, referenced below. Instead, I organized the illustrations by geographic, stylistic, chronological, context-related, and other criteria, the logic of which hopefully will become clear in the chapters that follow. Finally, I tried to tease out as much information as possible about the people who built the mounds and buried their dead in them, about who they might have been and how their societies may have been organized. This final task was severely constrained by the limited available data. Needless to say, the explanations and conclusions offered here need to be taken with a great degree of caution and treated as preliminary. They can only be very general and are subject to refinements, modifications, and possibly major corrections in the light of future field research. The book is simply and traditionally structured. The first chapter provides a general introduction, a brief history of research, and an outline of the methods used. It is followed by three geographically focused chapters that discuss in some detail mounds in the southeastern Adriatic, in the middle Adriatic (with a long section devoted to Ivan Marović’s seminal work around the sources of the Cetina River), and in other parts of the wider Adriatic region. The final chapter summarizes the diversity of those monuments, discusses the observed geographic and diachronic patterns, and offers some thoughts about the people and societies who built them.
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s udaljenih jadranskih otoka koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim
dodirima i o porijeklu uvezenih litičkih
sirovina na tim otocima i na drugim istočnojadranskim
arheološkim nalazištima, uz oslanjanje na raspoložive
radiokarbonske datume i paleogeografske rekonstrukcije.*
Od posljednjeg glacijalnog maksimuma, prekojadranska
povezivost prošla je kroz tri glavne faze, međusobno odijeljene
dvjema ključnim tranzicijskim događajima – brzim
širenjem Jadranskog mora i prijelazom na zemljoradnju.
Tijekom prve faze, kada su suprotne strane Jadranskog bazena
bile povezane kopnom Jadranske ravnice, građa ukazuje
na prilično redovite dodire. Tijekom druge faze dodiri
između suprotnih obala znatno prostranijeg Jadranskog
mora bili su sporadični, ako ih je uopće bilo. Po dolasku
zemljoradnje građa koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim dodirima
postaje obilna i raznolika. To navodi na zaključak
da je povezivost jadranskih kasnopleistocenskih i ranoholocenskih
lovaca-skupljača bila pretežno kopnena. Pomorska
povezivost postaje uobičajena upravo u vrijeme prijelaza
na zemljoradnju.
s udaljenih jadranskih otoka koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim
dodirima i o porijeklu uvezenih litičkih
sirovina na tim otocima i na drugim istočnojadranskim
arheološkim nalazištima, uz oslanjanje na raspoložive
radiokarbonske datume i paleogeografske rekonstrukcije.*
Od posljednjeg glacijalnog maksimuma, prekojadranska
povezivost prošla je kroz tri glavne faze, međusobno odijeljene
dvjema ključnim tranzicijskim događajima – brzim
širenjem Jadranskog mora i prijelazom na zemljoradnju.
Tijekom prve faze, kada su suprotne strane Jadranskog bazena
bile povezane kopnom Jadranske ravnice, građa ukazuje
na prilično redovite dodire. Tijekom druge faze dodiri
između suprotnih obala znatno prostranijeg Jadranskog
mora bili su sporadični, ako ih je uopće bilo. Po dolasku
zemljoradnje građa koja svjedoči o prekojadranskim dodirima
postaje obilna i raznolika. To navodi na zaključak
da je povezivost jadranskih kasnopleistocenskih i ranoholocenskih
lovaca-skupljača bila pretežno kopnena. Pomorska
povezivost postaje uobičajena upravo u vrijeme prijelaza
na zemljoradnju.
One of the reasons why this period is so poorly known on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea has to do with the way the professional education of archaeologists there has been organized. Archaeology in general, and the teaching of prehistory in particular, has been split into archaeological periods ever since the academic establishment of the discipline. The Neolithic-Eneolithic period is taught by period-specialist instructors in courses separate from those dealing with the Bronze Age. There is not much interaction between archaeologists who cover the youngest part of “true prehistory” (the Neolithic and Eneolithic) and those who cover protohistory (the Bronze and Iron Ages). Little effort has gone into the investigation of the processes that evidently transformed Neolithic-Eneolithic traditions into Bronze Age and later ways of life. The 3rd MBC does not fully belong to either, and it tends to fall between the cracks.
In a way, this book is an expansion of my previous book about the archaeology of Palagruža and the place of that extraordinary little island in the prehistory of the Adriatic. While studying its surprisingly rich 3rd MBC archaeological record, I became acutely aware how limited and unreliable was the information that we have from that period, and how much we had to rely on burial mounds. That information was often taken for granted, although most of it came from old excavations, accompanied by rather cursory descriptions of mound contents, contexts, and circumstances of discovery. Clearly, there was a lot of important information to be gleaned from the old excavation reports, but to make it usable, one had to recognize and eliminate a great deal of dubious data, conjecture, and mere guesswork. A substantial task, too expansive and complex to be undertaken in the Palagruža book, it is attempted now in a work devoted exclusively to the mounds. My primary aim is to identify more-or-less reliable information and discard the rest, and then to search for correlations and analyze the patterns in the reduced body of relatively trustworthy data.
My second aim was to provide a source where illustrations of all finds from mounds attributable to the 3rd MBC would be presented in one place for easy reference and comparison. Most of those illustrations are scattered through countless papers published in local imprints with texts in Croatian and other closely related south Slavic languages, as well as in Albanian. This makes them difficult to consult for anyone beyond the local archaeological community; for many reasons, they deserve a wider readership. I did not group the illustrations on a mound-by-mound basis as “burial assemblages” or “closed finds”; most of them are neither one nor the other. Interested readers can find this information in the original publications, referenced below. Instead, I organized the illustrations by geographic, stylistic, chronological, context-related, and other criteria, the logic of which hopefully will become clear in the chapters that follow.
Finally, I tried to tease out as much information as possible about the people who built the mounds and buried their dead in them, about who they might have been and how their societies may have been organized. This final task was severely constrained by the limited available data. Needless to say, the explanations and conclusions offered here need to be taken with a great degree of caution and treated as preliminary. They can only be very general and are subject to refinements, modifications, and possibly major corrections in the light of future field research.
The book is simply and traditionally structured. The first chapter provides a general introduction, a brief history of research, and an outline of the methods used. It is followed by three geographically focused chapters that discuss in some detail mounds in the southeastern Adriatic, in the middle Adriatic (with a long section devoted to Ivan Marović’s seminal work around the sources of the Cetina River), and in other parts of the wider Adriatic region. The final chapter summarizes the diversity of those monuments, discusses the observed geographic and diachronic patterns, and offers some thoughts about the people and societies who built them.