The volume presented here compiles twenty-one papers from two international conferences: ‘The Transition from the Neolithic to the Eneolithic in Central and South-Eastern Europe in the Light of Recent Research’, Timişoara, Romania, 2011, and ‘Relative vs Absolute Chronology of the Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin and South Eastern Europe’, a session held at the nineteenth Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Plzeň, Czech Republic, 2013. The joining of the themes of the two initial events has resulted in a book that aims to present new research results on the Neolithic and Eneolithic in southeastern Europe (in broad terms), with special focus on issues related to the chronology and dynamics of cultural processes.
From a geographical-historical viewpoint, the papers cover, from south to north, the territory of central and eastern Macedonia (current northern Greece and the Republic of Macedonia/FYROM), the northeast Balkans (Bulgaria), the central and northwest Balkans (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia), the Carpathian Basin (Hungary and the current Romanian regions of Banat and Transylvania), as well as some regions located east of the Carpathians and in the northwest of the Black Sea (eastern Romania, Ukraine). Chronologically, all papers—except one—refer to the Late Neolithic and to the early stages of the Eneolithic/Chalcolithic/Copper Age. In this review, I will group the contributions according to the criterion of regionality.
The Early Neolithic is treated in the first contribution. D. Stojanovski, T. Nacev, and M. Arzarello discuss the pottery discovered at the site of Grnčarica (Republic of Macedonia/FYROM) which, from a typological viewpoint, has the characteristic features of the so-called ‘monochrome phase’ of the Balkan Neolithic. The two AMS radiocarbon dates, which have been obtained in two different laboratories, are placed in the time frame between the fifty-seventh and fifty-fifth centuries cal bc. This age determination is in contradiction with the generally accepted chronology of the monochrome phase, situated before 6100 cal bc. Of the possible explanations―i.e. (a) rejecting the radiometric dates; (b) accepting the radiometric dates and rejecting the established Neolithic relative chronology; (c) introducing a transitional stage of cultural development―the authors seem to tip the balance in favour of the latter. In this case, the discoveries from Grnčarica could represent a relatively long period of transformation of pottery between the Early and Middle Neolithic, a period which could be chronologically placed between the current Anzabegovo-Vršnik I and Anzabegovo-Vršnik II phases.
What stands out in the following papers of this volume are the different preferences of representatives of different archaeological schools in their use of the terms Neolithic, Chalcolithic, or Copper Age as well as the differences in the manner in which these concepts are understood, in a chronological sense and from the point of view of cultural and historical contents. When it comes to northern Greece (i.e. eastern Macedonia), S. Papadopoulos and N. Nerantzis mention a Late Neolithic and a Final Neolithic that continues until 3200 bc and is directly followed by the Early Bronze Age. Late Neolithic II (4800–4500 bc) is first of all defined by the appearance and spread of graphite-decorated and black-on-red painted pottery, and the Final Neolithic (4500–3200 bc) by the development of metallurgy and the increase of metal objects (copper, gold, silver). Regarding the territory of Bulgaria (contribution by Y. Boyadzhiev), a long process of transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic is assumed to have taken place, during which migrations, contacts between ethnic groups of different origins, and armed conflicts are said to have played an important role. The development of metallurgy is accepted as the first criterion for the beginning of the Chalcolithic period, but periodization is based on cultural criteria, and especially on the evolution of pottery styles. Thus, for the beginnings of the Early Chalcolithic (4900/4850–4600/4550 bc), the main criterion is the appearance of graphite-painted pottery (i.e. the same criterion which was established in eastern Macedonia for the beginning of the Late Neolithic II).
A group of studies refers to the northern regions of the Balkan Peninsula. The Late Neolithic–Eneolithic transition in Serbia is illustrated by a presentation of the results of new research carried out in the Kolubara mining basin (contribution by M. Blagojević). The transition to the Eneolithic takes place here in the period of the late Vinča culture and is marked by the first migrations and expansions in search of the oldest metal—copper. Among the most representative and intensely researched sites, the large flat (single-level) settlement from Crkvine-Stubline (Serbia), dating from the Vinča D2 phase, stands out. Geomagnetic mapping (paper by A.N. Crnobrnja) has revealed that the houses were aligned in regular rows and formed several clusters grouped around empty areas (‘squares’). This spatial organization model reflects the social structure of the community.
Starting from some of the newer discoveries made in the Kolubara basin, B. Jovanović and M. Blagojević refer to the so-called Bratislava-type lids, which are linked to the spread of copper metallurgy and to the mediating role of the Boleráz-Cernavoda III culture along the Danube corridor. It should be noted that the authors attribute this culture to the Early Copper Age, even if in the archaeological literature it is usually assigned to the Late Copper Age, or as a transition period to the Bronze Age.
The northwestern Balkan regions (Croatia, Slovenia) are the subject of two studies by M. Sraka and by L. Čataj. These discuss the Neolithic–Eneolithic transition and the Middle Eneolithic Lasinja and Retz-Gajary cultures (end of the fifth to the first half of the fourth millennium bc). Terminology and issues of relative and absolute chronology are discussed. A significant number of new radiocarbon data, which are also analysed and interpreted based on Bayesian modelling, are published.
In his study of early copper metallurgy from the central Balkans, S. Lukić notes that, despite the fact that the appearance of copper metallurgy is judged as a defining criterion of the Eneolithic period, copper artefacts are not given due consideration in the definition of archaeological cultures or in the delimitation of cultural phases. These are mainly outlined based on pottery typologies. At the same time, Lukić points out the groundlessness of technological determinism, according to which metallurgy triggered the social stratification process within Neolithic communities. He highlights the fact that the emergence of copper metallurgy was in itself a consequence of complex social processes. In the research on early metallurgy, a change of paradigm is required, due to the fact that the culture-historical approach and the concept of archaeological culture are inadequate to explain the development of the social and technological processes mentioned.
Overcoming cultural criteria and highlighting the role of the development of metallurgy in defining the southeast European Copper Age is also the purpose of D. Diaconescu's study. While Lukić’s contribution is mostly theoretical, Diaconescu discusses the typology and chronology of the Pločnik- and Čoka-type copper hammer-axes, taking into account the social contexts in which these heavy copper artefacts were used. The author believes that the beginning of the Copper Age in southeastern Europe is marked just by the production of hammer-axes and by their deposition in graves as prestige objects (e.g. in the Varna necropolis and in the cemeteries of the Tiszapolgár B1 phase from Tibava and Vel'ké Raskovce). Based on the Bayesian modelling of the new AMS radiocarbon data, the estimated time span in which the two types of copper hammer-axes were used lies c. 4700–4300 cal bc.
The dynamics of cultural development within the Carpathian Basin are the subject of several studies. Situated in the south of Hungary, the Sárköz region played the role of a contact corridor throughout the sixth to fifth millennia bc in terms of mediating innovative ideas and cultural goods from the northwest Balkans towards central and western Europe, along the Danube valley. A first review of the results of recent research conducted on this important contact area (including new excavation results from Fajsz-Garadomb, Tolna-Mözs, and Alsónyék-Bátaszék) is presented by E. Bánffy, I. Zalai-Gaál, T. Marton, K. Oross, A. Osztás, and J. Petrasch—one out of two German-language contributions in the book. The authors establish four stages of cultural impact (Stimulation) during the Neolithic and in the first part of the Copper Age. The latter of these impacts, which determined the restructuring of the late Lengyel culture, within which social structure and economy gradually acquired Chalcolithic characteristics, is manifested in the dissolution of the Vinča Complex (Vinča-Kreis), in the development of the Tiszapolgár culture, and in stimulations due to long-distance connections in terms of purchasing new raw materials, such as copper.
Problems relating to the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Early Copper Age in the central part of the Carpathian Basin are discussed in three papers which, in an attempt to overcome the unilinear evolutionary paradigm and the supraregional perspective, focus on one microregion of the Tisza Plain. A. Gyucha, W.A. Parkinson, and R.W. Yerkes search for new explanations for transformation phenomena which took place relatively quickly towards the middle of the fifth millennium bc in the Körös region of the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld). In the authors’ opinion, the dissolution of the tell-based nucleated settlement organization system can be linked to the overexploitation of natural resources in densely inhabited areas, and especially to deforestation, which took place during the Neolithic. This phenomenon could have contributed to the appearance of smaller autonomous settlements, in larger numbers, in formerly uninhabited or sporadically occupied areas. The authors draw attention to the fact that the absolute chronological data show that changes in material culture—the formation of the Tiszapolgár cultural phenomenon—took place at a different pace in the different regions of the Alföld.
In his contribution, F. Horváth aims to explain the contradictions between the previously established typo-chronology and the available radiocarbon dating of some archaeological assemblages on the basis of pottery of the Proto-Tiszapolgár and/or Tiszapolgár type. According to Horváth, the pace of transformations was quicker in the Körös Region and in the northern Alföld; the existence of the Tisza culture ended faster in these regions and it passed gradually on to the Early Copper Age, at a time in which the late phase of the Tisza culture still survived in the southern Alföld (at Hódmezővásárhely-Gorzsa, for example). In light of these remarks, the author questions the general validity of the Proto-Tiszapolgár phenomenon as an ethno-cultural unit of the Late Neolithic–Early Copper Age transitional period in the Tisza Plain.
P. Raczky, A. Anders, and Zs. Siklósi reach similar conclusions. However, they start from research carried out in the settlement complex in the area called Polgár Island (Upper Tisza region). The new series of AMS radiocarbon determinations and Bayesian analyses revealed that the life in the two neighbouring tells, i.e. Polgár-Csőszhalom and Polgár-Bosnyákdomb, came to an end nearly simultaneously. Nonetheless, while the Polgár-Bosnyákdomb site was dated in the Proto-Tiszapolgár period on the basis of stylistic analysis of the pottery, the ceramics discovered in the tell from Polgár-Csőszhalom are of a Late Neolithic type, having no traces of the Proto-Tiszapolgár pottery style. Consequently, the use of Proto-Tiszapolgár-style pottery was not simultaneous in space and time and, consequently, does not represent a distinct chronological horizon. In the authors’ opinion, the Proto-Tiszapolgár concept should be removed from archaeological discourse. This study also analyses the new AMS radiocarbon data and the results of their Bayesian modelling, related to the Tiszapolgár-Basatanya cemetery and to other sites with archaeological ensembles representative of the Early and Middle Copper Age. According to the results obtained, the pottery styles which were typologically defined as being characteristic of the Tiszapolgár-Bodrogkeresztúr transitional phase, of the Bodrogkeresztúr culture, and of the late Bodrogkeresztúr-Hunyadi-halom culture (perceived as successive) were used simultaneously in the studied sites, in the timespan between c. 4300 and 4000 cal bc. Even if the overlapping of age determinations could be attributed to certain distortions in the calibration, the observed phenomenon calls for the reconsideration of the contextual role and the chronological and social implications of pottery styles.
The macroregions of Banat and Transylvania in the eastern Carpathian Basin are not only distinguished by the wealth of discovered copper artefacts, but also by the existence of copper ore deposits and by the evidence of local processing of metal. From this consideration alone, G. and C.-M. Lazarovici suggest that the term ‘Copper Age’ is more appropriate than ‘Eneolithic’ to designate the new period. In another single-authored contribution to the volume, G. Lazarovici expresses the opinion that the appearance of the Copper Age in Banat and Transylvania was determined by successive migrations from the southwest, a phenomenon which he calls ‘the Vinča C shock’ (p. 245). The idea that the beginning of the new epoch in the territory of present-day Romania took place in the period and under the influence of the Vinča C culture is also embraced in N. Ursulescu's contribution, the difference being that instead of the term Copper Age, Ursulescu prefers the term Eneolithic.
F. Draşovean contributes to the volume with a substantial paper on the relative and absolute chronology of the Late Neolithic–Early Eneolithic from the same macroregion, i.e. Banat and Transylvania. Through the corroboration of comparative stratigraphic data and related radiocarbon dating, processed through Bayesian modelling, the author analyses the synchronisms between the habitation levels of seventeen well-researched sites. Thus, a series of synchronisms could be established between the different phases of the Vinča, Banat, Turdaş, Zau, Foeni, Petreşti, and Iclod cultures. The results of this analysis are synthesized in a chronological table (p. 139). From the author's analyses, one result is that the development of the Turdaş culture occurred in parallel with the Vinča C2–C3–D phases, and that the end of this culture coincided with the penetration of the Foeni group from Banat into Transylvania. Given its chronological position, the Foeni group could contribute not only to the genesis of the Petreşti culture in central Transylvania, but also to the formation of the Ariuşd (-Cucuteni) culture from the southeast of the same province.
Two contributions are also dedicated to the great Precucuteni-Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex from the east-Carpathian and northwestern Black Sea area. In a general presentation, referring to eastern Romania, C.-M. Lazarovici considers the Precucuteni culture to be representative of the Late Neolithic, and the Cucuteni culture representative of the Copper Age, despite the fact that most Romanian archaeologists include both cultures in the Eneolithic. In this context, the author also discusses the relative and absolute chronology of the two cultures, taking into account the available radiocarbon dates (see below). The new research conducted on the Copper Age Tripolye (Trypillia) culture is illustrated by the study by K. Rassmann, M. Videjko, D. Peters, and R. Gauss, who present the results of large-scale geomagnetic prospections carried out at the mega-sites of Taljanky and Maydanetske (Ukraine). New data on the dimension and general organization of settlements, on the size, inner structure, and probable function of architectonic units were obtained. The issue of chronology is not part of the objectives of this paper, yet the differences between the absolute dating of the Precucuteni–Cucuteni cultural phases, on the one hand, and of the Tripolye periods, on the other (regarded as synchronic from the viewpoint of relative chronology), as they appear in the two papers discussed above, deserve to be taken into consideration (cf. pp. 78, 93–94, 111): Precucuteni III: 4750–4600/Tripolye A: 4500–4200; Cucuteni A1-3: 4600–4150/Tripolye B I: 4200–4000; Cucuteni A4: 4300–4050/Tripolye B II: 4000–3800; Cucuteni A–B and B: 4100–3600/3500/Tripolye C I: 3800–3600 cal bc.
At the end of the volume, perhaps by way of a conclusion, W. Schier attempts to answer the question posed by the title of his paper: ‘The Copper Age in Southeast Europe: Historical Epoch or Typo-chronological Construct?’ Referring to the history of this topic, the author mentions that the idea of a Copper Age was first suggested by Hungarian archaeologist Ferenc Pulszky (Schier indicates the year 1884, but the correct date is 1876; cf. Pulszky, Reference Pulszky1877). The topic was developed in a book with the same title, published by Pulszky several years later in Hungarian and German (Pulszky, Reference Pulszky1883, Reference Pulszky1884). One century later, the Copper Age as a general historical epoch was (re)introduced in the German-language archaeological literature through the ‘isochronological’ perspective of the monumental Handbuch der Vorgeschichte (Müller-Karpe, Reference Müller-Karpe1974) and, later on, through Jan Lichardus’ attempts to outline a pan-European Copper Age (e.g. Lichardus, Reference Lichardus and Lichardus1991: 763–800).
In the first part of his paper, Schier critically reviews the archaeological practice of building comparative chronologies. In the second part, the criteria which Lichardus believed to be defining for the Copper Age are analysed. As Schier shows, most of the arguments from that time are no longer valid, firstly due to the fact that the progress made in the field of absolute chronology invalidates the simultaneity of several phenomena (the evolution of complex tell settlements, the development of metallurgy, the burial of people with high social status, etc.), as was presumed three decades earlier. In light of current documentation, the cultural, social, and economic transformation processes, which took place in the fifth to fourth millennia bc, are rather characterized by regional variability as opposed to general uniformity. Schier believes that the concept of the Copper Age as an historical epoch must be abandoned; even the terms Eneolithic/Chalcolithic should only be used as terminological conventions, without culture- historical or holistic implications. The author recommends using an absolute timescale as the frame of reference when studying, comparing, and interpreting cultural change and transformation processes.
In conclusion, I would like to remark upon some general trends, such as the repeatedly expressed reservations concerning the culture-historical paradigm and the doubts related to the applicability of the concept of archaeological culture in interpreting the process of Neolithic–Eneolithic transition and explaining the appearance of copper metallurgy. It is no less true that the alternatives offered (with the exception of the role of ecological factors) are often too vague and frequently remain on an abstract, theoretical level. Another marked tendency is the reference to the absolute chronological data offered by the latest-generation AMS radiocarbon measurements and Bayesian modelling. These data, even if they are often in contradiction with the previously established typo-chronology, are accepted by most archaeologists without too much criticism. The contradictions revealed between the new radiocarbon dates and the existing information, offered by archaeology's own research methods, stimulated the re-consideration of the traditional paradigm of homogeneous, unilinear evolution over wide areas, and placed in the foreground the idea of (micro)regional variability of cultural process dynamics. This change in vision, apart from the wealth of new data put into circulation by Schier and Draşovean's substantial volume, is without doubt, an important gain for research into the beginnings of the metal ages in southeastern Europe.
