Specific Targeted Research Project on the Formation of Europe:
Prehistoric Population Dynamics and the Roots of Socio-Cultural Diversity
Institute of Archaeology
Jagiellonian University
The First Neolithic Sites
in Central/South-East
European Transect
Volume II
Early Neolithic (Starčevo-Criş)
Sites on the Territory of Romania
Edited by
Sabin Adrian Luca
Cosmin Suciu
Published by Archaeopress
Publishers of British Archaeological Reports Gordon House
276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED England
bar@archaeopress.com www.archaeopress.com
BAR S2188
The First Neolithic Sites in Central/South-East European Transect. Volume II: Early Neolithic
(Starčevo-Criş) Sites on the Territory of Romania
© Archaeopress and the individual authors 2011
ISBN 978 1 4073 0743 5
Printed in England by Blenheim Colour Ltd All BAR titles are available from:
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71–78.
Some as pects of the ear li est Neo lithic chipped stone as sem blages
of Transylvania and the Banat (Ro ma nia)
Paolo Biagi
Ca’ Foscari Uni ver sity, De part ment of An tiq uity and Near East ern Sciences, Dorsoduro 3484/D - 30123 Venezia, Italia; pavelius@unive.it
IN TRO DUC TION
This pa per dis cusses the ear li est Neo lithic chipped stone as sem blages of two re gions of pres ent-day Ro ma nia: Transylvania and the Banat. Its scope is to up date the avail -able ev i dence on a topic still in suf fi ciently stud ied, and point out the im por tance of 1) the work able raw ma te ri als ex ploited by the ear li est FTN Criº Cul ture farm ers who set -tled in the re gion at the turn of the 8th–7th mil len nium uncal BP, and their cir cu la tion net work, 2) the typology of the chipped stone tools, and their ra dio car bon chro nol ogy.
The sub ject is of ma jor im por tance for the un der stand ing of the Neo lithic spread into the Bal kans and Cen tral Eu -rope (Mazurié de Keroulain 2003). In ef fect the or i gin of the first farm ing com mu ni ties in southeast ern Eu rope, and Ro -ma nia in par tic u lar (Monah 2002), has of ten been stud ied mainly “du point de vue de la struc ture stylistique de la
ceramique néolithique et de l’origine prob a ble des plantes cultivées et des animaux domestiqués” (Koz³owski 1982,
131), a tra di tion still deeply-rooted (Lazarovici 1995, 2006), apart from very few ex cep tions, un til the end of the 1960s (Tringham 1968).
In this re spect Transylvania and the Banat played a very im por tant role, be cause of their geo graphic lo ca tion, mid -way be tween south-east ern Eu rope and the Pannonian Plain (Jarman et al. 1982, fig. 107; El Susi 1996, fig. 1), de lim -ited as they are, by the Dan ube, in the south, the Carpa-thians, in the east, the river Tisza, in the west, and crossed by a unique hydrographical sys tem that in cludes, among the oth ers, the three Criº, the Mureº and the Olt, all wa ter courses of key im por tance for the Neolithisation of the Carpathian ba sin.
RAW MA TE RIAL PRO CURE MENT
AND CIR CU LA TION
Thanks to the sys tem atic work con ducted by E. Comºa, mainly dur ing the 1960s and 1970s (Comºa 1968; 1971a; b; 1976), at pres ent we have a ba sic knowl edge of the raw ma te rial sources ex ploited by the Neo lithic farm ers of Ro ma -nia. Al though the above au thor did not pay much at ten tion to the ex ploi ta tion and use of the work able ma te rial dur ing
the dif fer ent Neo lithic pe ri ods, nev er the less he was very ac -cu rate in de scrib ing and lo cat ing the var i ous flint sources, de fin ing their dis tri bu tion net work all over Ro ma nia, and re cog nis ing the im ported ma te rial from neigh bour ing trans-Carpathian ter ri to ries. He cen tred his work mainly on flint, al though he also con trib uted to the study of ob sid ian prov e -nance and cir cu la tion.
He was also the first to pro vide an an a lytic de scrip tion of the dif fer ences be tween “Bal kan” and “Banat” flint, and to point out that, while the dis tri bu tion of the first is mainly con fined to Dobrogea and Oltenia (Comºa 1976, 240), the sec ond is spread all over the Banat, it is known from a few Criº Cul ture sites of this re gion, and its sources are to be found in the Poiana Ruscã Moun tains (Comºa 1971b), close to the course of the Bega, as also Al. Pãunescu (1970, 85) had re ported only one year be fore. Fur ther more, in a more re cent pub li ca tion on the Neo lithic of Ro ma nia, he presen-ted a de tailed map of the flint sources and their sup posed routes of dis tri bu tion, ac cord ing to the ar chae o log i cal ev i -dence avail able at that time (Comºa 1987, 25).
Still now a days one of the most ac cu rate de scrip tions of a Criº Cul ture chipped stone as sem blage from the Banat is that writ ten by Al. Pãunescu (1979) on the lithics from Cuina Turcului, a cave that opens along the Ro ma nian bank of the Dan ube, not far from the Iron Gates. Ac cord ing to this au thor, the Early Neo lithic oc cu pa tion of this multilay -ered site yielded a rich as sem blage of some 13,000 artefacts made from flint of dif fer ent colours, as well as a small per -cent age of ob sid ian (5%) and quartz ite (1%) (see also Bãl-tean 2005).
It is im por tant to point out that, in a more re cent pa per, Al. Pãunescu (1987, 89) pro vides lit tle in for ma tion on the knappable rocks ex ploited for mak ing tools by the Early Neo lithic set tlers of the Banat and Transylvania, sim i larly to what re ported by G. Lazarovici (1993, 245) in his sum mary pa per on the Neo lithic pe riod the study area. Even poorer are the data pre sented by the same au thor (Lazarovici 1979, 28) for the Banat, and N. Vlassa (1976, 206), for Transyl van ia, in their still fun da men tal works on the Neo lithic pe -riod in the two re gions, as well as by D.W. Bailey (2000, 124) in the most re cent sum mary vol ume on the pre his tory of the Bal kans.
Paolo Biagi: Some as pects of the ear li est Neolithic ...
From this point of view, of greater rel e vance is the pa -per on the small chipped stone com plex from Foeni-Salaº, in the Ro ma nian Banat (Green field & Draºovean 1994; Greenfield & Josma 2008). This site yielded only 34 arte-facts ob tained from sev eral raw ma te ri als, among which are also ob sid ian, quartz and quartz ite, most of which are sup posed to come from ex og e nous sources, most prob a bly lo -cated far ther to the east and south-west of the site (Kuijt 1994, 90).
The prob lems re lated to the raw ma te rial pro cure ment and their cir cu la tion, greatly im proved dur ing the last de -cade thanks to: 1) the me thod i cal work, still un der way, by O. Crandell (2005; 2006), and his anal y sis of the chipped stone as sem blage from Limba Bordane near Alba Iulia, in Transylvania (Crandell 2008; 2009), 2) a sys tem atic pro-gramme of char ac teri sa tion of the ob sid ian artefacts from the Banat and Transylvania Neo lithic sites by P. Biagi et al. (2007a, b), and 3) the re cent dis cov ery of Early Neo lithic Bal kan flint sources and work shops at Nikopol, in Bul garia, close to the course of the Dan ube (Biagi & Starnini 2010b, c).
Thanks to the above con tri bu tions it has been pos si ble to map sev eral pre vi ously un known out crops of work able stones along the Mureº river val ley (Crandell 2008, fig. 8), un der stand their ex ploi ta tion by late Criº Cul ture farm ers, pro pose gen eral mod els of pro cure ments from short and long-dis tance sources (Biagi et al. 2007a), and re de sign the prob a ble routes through which these raw ma te ri als were traded as far as the Banat and Transylvania (Biagi & Star-nini 2010c), fol low ing mod els that are still in suf fi ciently known, but seem to re call well-de fined pro cure ment and dis tri bu tion pat terns, ac cord ing to the dif fer ent pe riod (see also Biagi & Voytek 2006, 182–185).
Re vert ing to the pro cure ment of longdis tance raw ma -te rial, namely ob sid ian and Bal kan flint, we can no tice that the Early Neo lithic FTN pop u la tions of the study re gions ex ploited two dis tinct ex og e nous sources. The prov e nance of the first has al ways been de bated by the Ro ma nian ar -chae ol o gists, who of ten sug gested a lo cal, Cãlinesti-Oaº, or a south ern, Melian, prov e nance for this raw ma te rial (Cãr-ciumaru et al. 1985; Maxim 1999, 53; Boroneanþ 2005, 24), al though sci en tific char ac teri sa tions, made also in the coun -try, have started to dem on strate their Carpathian prov e -nance (Constantinescu et al. 2002; Culicov et al. 2009). In ef fect the anal y sis of some eighty ob sid ian spec i mens so far con ducted on sam ples from sev eral Neo lithic and Chalcoli-thic sites in Tran- syl van ia and the Banat re vealed that the Carpathian ob sid ian sources were the only ones ex ploited, in vari able ways and in ten sity, ac cord ing to the dif fer ent pe -ri ods, fol low ing mod els whose knowl edge we still have to im prove (Biagi et al. 2007a; b; Biagi & Voytek 2006). The new data con firms the al ready known gen eral im pres sion ac cord ing to which ob sid ian from Melos had an ex clu sive “Aegean” cir cu la tion, and that it dis tri bu tion never spread north of con ti nen tal Greece (Torrence 1984; 1986, fig. 20). Bal kan flint is an other im por tant allochtonous ma te rial whose source has long been dis cussed in sev eral pa pers (see for in stance Gurova 2008; Gurova & Nachev 2008). The re -cent dis cov ery of Bal kan flint out crops and work shops at Nikopol (Bul garia), close to the course of the Dan ube (Biagi & Starnini 2010b), has shed new light on the pro cure ment of this high-qual ity flint that was widely dis trib uted in the Bal kan Pen in sula dur ing the Early Neo lithic (Biagi & Star-nini 2010c).
All these data point once again to the im por tance of the lithic as sem blages in the un der stand ing of the ac tiv ity ra -dius of the Criº set tle ment sites, the mo bil ity pat tern of the dif fer ent com mu ni ties, and their in ter re gional con tacts (Lech 1997), given the ex cel lent knowl edge of the ter ri tory and ex ploit able sources they had al ready achieved at the very be gin ning of the Neo lithic. In this re spect lithics are re vealed to be very sen si ble ter ri to rial and func tional in di ca -tors, op pose to pot tery, whose early pro duc tion seems to have been al most ex clu sively lo cal, and fol lowed the same man u fac tur ing for mula (Spataro 2008; Starnini 2008). Fig. 1. Ap prox i mate lo ca tion of the FTN Criº Cul ture sites
men tioned in the text: 1 – Cuina Turcului, 2 – Foeni-Salaº, 3 – Limba Bordane, 4 – euºa-La Cãrarea Morii, 5 – Gura Baciului, 6 – Ocna Sibiului-Triguri, 7 – Miercurea Sibiului-Petriº. OB – Tokaj Mt. ob sid ian sources, BF – Nikopol, Bal kan flint out crop.
THE EAR LI EST FTN CRIª CUL TURE
SITES
The ab so lute chro nol ogy of the ear li est FTN Criº cul -ture sites of Ro ma nia, and the ra pid ity of dif fu sion of the Neolithisation pro cess in the two study re gions, have al -ready been dis cussed in sev eral pa pers, al though many prob lems still re main open to ques tion (Biagi & Spataro 2004; Biagi et al. 2005; 2007b). Among these are the ra dio -car bon de ter mi na tions from the Ser bian Starèevo sites of Grivac and Blagotin (Bogdanoviæ 2008), at least one cen tury older than ex pected, and the slightly too re cent ra dio -car bon date from Cîrcea in Oltenia (Nica 1977; 1991; Bronk Ramsey et al. 2009) and Mãgura in Muntenia, all sites that yielded both ob sid ians and Bal kan flint tools (Mirea 2005; Andreescu & Mirea 2008; Bogosavlieviæ-Petroviæ 2008), that un doubt edly com pli cate the un der stand ing of the routes fol lowed by the spread of the Neo lithic in the cen tral Bal -kans (Biagi & Spataro 2005; Bocquet-Ap pel et al. 2009; Thissen 2009).
The ra dio car bon ev i dence from Transylvania and the Banat in di cates that just a few sites are to be at trib uted to the end of the 8th and/or the very be gin ning of the 7th mil len -nium uncal BP (Biagi & Spataro 2004; Biagi et al. 2005). As al ready re ported, they show vari able en vi ron men tal lo -ca tions, of ten close to salt out crops (Biagi et. al. 2007a), as is the case also for the Neo lithic and Chalcolithic sites of other ter ri to ries of Ro ma nia (Cavruc & Dimitroiana 2006).
It is un for tu nate that the lithic as sem blages from most of the above sites have not been stud ied in better de tail. How ever, Ocna Sibiului-Triguri (Paul 1995, Taf. XI), Gura Baciului (Lazarovici & Maxim 1995, 156–158), and euºaLa Cãrarea Morii (Ciutã 2000) (Fig. 1) have all yielded ob -sid ian and/or Bal kan flint artefacts, al though the prov e nance of the ob sid ian spec i mens has of ten been mis in ter -preted (Ciutã 2005, 94–95).
In this re spect, of ma jor im por tance are the re sults from the ex ca va tions still un der way at Miercurea Sibiului-Petriº, a multi-lay ered, open-air site, whose Criº ho ri zon has been
ex ca vated over a sur face of some 750 sq. m. (Fig. 2), along the south ern ter race of the Secaº tor rent, a south ern trib u tary of the Mureº. The site showed three main phases of oc cu pa -tion: it was first set tled by early FTN Criº cul ture farm ers, later by Vinèa Mid dle Neo lithic peo ples and, around the be -gin ning of the Chalcolithic, by a Petreºti com mu nity (Luca
et al. 2006; 2008).
A poor chipped stone as sem blage has been re cov ered from the Criº struc tural re mains, which con sist of pits of dif fer ent size and func tion, ra dio car bon dated be tween 7131±34 (OxA-19739) and 6920±70 uncal BP (GrN28521) (Ta ble 1 and Fig. 3); they show that the first oc cu pa -tion at Miercurea took place at the turn of the 8th–7th mil len -nium uncal BP, and lasted (un)in ter rupted (?) at least 200 years. The archaeozoological (El Susi 2007; Luca et al. 2009), archaeobotanical (Nisbet 2009), and ma te rial cul ture re mains (Biagi et al. 2007a) in di cate that farm ing was prac -tised at the site.
The chipped stone as sem blage col lected from the FTN Criº struc tures is very poor. It con sists of only 37 artefacts, among which are bladelet and flakelet cores, 1 end scraper, sim ple and backed re touched blades, and sickle blades (Ta -ble 2). The raw ma te rial em ployed co mes from a va ri ety of Paolo Biagi: Some as pects of the ear li est Neolithic ...
73 Fig. 3. Miercurea SibiuluiPetriº: Pro file of Pit 35 with the lo -ca tion of the soil sam ple from which two -cary op ses of Triticum and Hordeum were col lected and ra dio car bon-dated (pho to graph by P. Biagi).
lo cal, me dium- and long-dis tance sources. Out of 37 arte-facts, 6 (16.2%) are made from ob sid ian (5 Carpathian 1, Kašov or Cejkov, Slovakia, and 1 Carpathian 2E, Mád, Hungary), 9 (24.3%) from Bal kan flint (Nikopol, Bul garia) (Fig. 4), 1 (2.7%) from Banat chert (Poiana Ruscã Mt. [Luca
et al. 2004, Map 4]) and 8 (21.6%) from grey si lici fied
sand stone, whose out crops are lo cated be tween Sebeº and Oraºtie (Crandell pers. comm. 2009). It is not sur pris ing that 15 (40.5%) out of 37 artefacts come from long-dis tance sources (Barfield 2004).
DIS CUS SION
The ty po logi cal char ac ter is tics of the Criº cul ture chipped stone as sem blages were first sum marily de scribed by Al. Pãunescu (1970) and E. Comºa (1971a) at the be gin ning of the 1970s. The first au thor, who based his de scrip -tion mainly on the finds from Cuina Turcului, pointed out the re cur rence of sym met ri cal and asym met ri cal tra pezes of small and large size – ob tained by frac ture, with out us ing microburin tech nique (Koz³owski 1982, 155), rare seg -ments, unretouched blades, re touched flakes, scrap ers,
pie-ces esquillées, pris matic, py ram i dal and polyhedrical cores.
He also re called the “Tar de noi sian” back ground of the as sem blages, mainly due to the re cur rence of trap e zoidal geo -met ric micro liths, and the pres ence of sickle blades with oblique sickle gloss. E. Comºa’s ob ser va tions were rather sim i lar, al though he dis tin guished be tween Starèevo and Criº in dus tries, re marked on the im por tance of the role played by the endscarpers in the first, and no ticed that trap e zoidal geometrics con tin ued to be man u fac tured also dur -ing the Ciumeºti and Dudeºti cul tures (Comºa 1971a, Fig. 1). An up dat ing pa per on the topic has been writ ten re cently by A. Boroneanþ (2005), who had al ready pointed out the in con sis tency of the term “Tar de noi sian” for the Late Mesolithic com plexes of Ro ma nia (Boroneanþ 2003–2004),
al though it is still widely uti lised by a few Ro ma nian au -thors (see C²rciumaru 2006, 247–250), as it was im prop erly used in sev eral west ern coun tries un til not too long ago (Clark 1958).
Traceological anal y ses re cently made on a few Körös tra pezes con trib uted to the un der stand ing of the func tion of these tools, which, con trary to what is known of the Late Mesolithic spec i mens, had been used mainly for cut ting (Starnini 2001; Domboróczki et al. 2010), sim i larly to what is al ready known for other geo met ric micro liths from other parts of Eu rope (Biagi 1995, 49).
The im pres sion is that the gen eral struc ture of the ear li -est Neo lithic Criº chipped stone as sem blages re calls that of most lithic com plexes of the ear li est farm ers of other parts of Eu rope (see for in stance Tringham 1968: fig. 10; Mazurié de Keroulain 2003; Kaczanowska & Koz³owski 2008), in which the ap pear ance of the first pot tery com mu ni ties is ac com pa nied by the ex ploi ta tion of mul ti ple knappable ma te -ri als, among which are high-qual ity ones, and the pres ence of pol ished stone axes/adzes (Tringham 1971, 75). In our case the ear li est farm ers of the Banat and Transylvania were “largely re li ant on north ern Bul gar ian flint in the south and
ob sid ian from the Carpathians to the north of its range”
(Barfield 2004, 69), two lithic re sources whose ex ploi ta tion im plies dif fer ent so cial be hav iours, given that, while Bal kan flint was mined within the ter ri tory ex ploited by the Criº cul ture com mu ni ties, as the finds from Nikopol would sug gest (Biagi & Starnini, 2010b), ob sid ian “bombs” were col -lected from the sur face from a moun tain re gion, lo cated well be yond the or di nary ac tiv ity ra dius of the early sev enth mil len nium uncal BP FTN farm ers (Biagi et al. 2007a, 140).
The so cial com plex ity of Neo lithic flint min ing in Eu -rope, and the in volve ment of spe cial ised crafts men, has been de scribed by M.E.Th. De Grooth (1997, 73), while L.H. Barfield (2004, 65) has mainly re lied on the rel e vance of the sys tem atic re cur rence of flint in dus tries “char ac ter
-ised by high qual ity blades and a range of geo met ric and blade-based tools, among which sickle blades are a ma jor item ... that lead to the for ma tion of the cul tural iden tity cen -tred around this eco nomic re source” at the be gin ning of the
Neo lithic, and their long dis tance trade (see also Barfield 1993).
Ac knowl edge ments
The au thor is very grate ful to Pro fes sor J.K. Koz³owski (Jagiellonian Uni ver sity, Kraków, PL), Dr. C.I. Suciu (Sibiu Uni -ver sity, RO) and M. Spataro (Brit ish Mu seum, Lon don, UK) who in vited him to pre pare this pa per for pub li ca tion. Spe cial thanks are also due to Dr. O. Crandell (Babeº-Bolyai Uni ver sity, ClujNapoca, RO) and E. Starnini (Ar chae o log i cal Su per in ten -dency, Genoa, I) for the re vi sion of the orig i nal text and the use ful sug ges tions, Pro fes sors S.A. Luca (Sibiu Uni ver sity, RO) and I. Paul (Alba Iulia Uni ver sity, RO) for pro vid ing ob sid ian artefacts for XRF anal y sis, and Dr. S. Colledge (In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy, UCL, UK) for the new OxA ra dio car bon dates.
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Ta ble 2
Miercurea Sibiului-Petriº: Main char ac ter is tics of the chipped stone artefacts from the FTN Criº oc cu pa tion struc tures and layer (af ter Biagi et al. 2007b with vari a tions)
Pit/layer Raw material Typology (Laplace, 1964) Dimensions
(mm) State of preservation
Analytical method-analysis n.
fig. 4
Pit 9 Carpathian 1 obsidian microflakelet 21×29×6 complete, corticated XRF-4/2009
Pit 10 flint microbladelet (23)×(10)×4 fragment, burnt
Pit 10 opaque chert prismatic (?) flakelet core 30×34×16 complete
Pit 10 "Balkan" flint truncation 39×13×4 complete n. 9
Pit 14 "Banat" chert flakelet (33)×25×8 fragment
Pit 19 "Balkan" flint retouched blade 44×15×5 complete n. 1
Pit 19 "Balkant" flint hypermicroflakelet 11×5×2 complete n. 7
Pit 19 Carpathian 2E obsidian hypermicroflakelet 11×15×3 complete XRF-103
Pit 20 light grey flint sickle bladelet (20)×15×5 fragment, corticated
Pit 21 red radiolarite microflakelet 21×26×11 complete, corticated
Pit 21 "Balkan" flint bladelet (25)×14×5 fragment n. 8
Pit 21 light grey silicified sandstone microflakelet 13×12×3 complete, corticated
Pit 21 "Balkan" flint end-scraper 15×13×5 complete n. 6
Pit 26 "Balkan" flint microbladelet (20)×10×2 fragment n. 3
Pit 26 "Balkan" flint sickle bladelet (24)×12×4 fragment n. 2
Pit 27 brown radiolarite retouched blade 60×28×10 complete, corticated
Pit 28 light grey silicified sandstone flakelet 26×38×10 complete, corticated
Pit 38 light grey silicified sandstone flake 59×49×25 complete, corticated
Pit 47 brown radiolarite subconical bladelet core 45×40×32 complete, corticated
Pit 47 light grey silicified sandstone blade (32)×18×4 fragment
layer brown radiolarite subconical bladelet core 35×42×33 corticated
layer brown radiolarite retouched blade 40×21×7 complete, corticated
layer light grey silicified sandstone flake 54×35×18 complete, corticated
layer brown radiolarite flakelet 42×35×9 complete, corticated
layer light grey silicified sandstone flakelet 36×30×9 complete
layer light grey silicified sandstone flake 53×33×16 complete, burnt
layer light grey silicified sandstone flakelet 35×30×8 complete
layer brown radiolarite flakelet 21×33×10 complete
layer brown radiolarite crested blade 31×14×5 distal fragment
layer radiolarite flakelet (31)×18×3 fragment, burnt
layer "Balkan" flint microflakelet 18×13×5 complete
layer "Balkan" flint retouched blade 38×19×7 complete n. 4
layer "Balkan" flint cut vegetation bladelet (22)×18×4 mesial fragment n. 5
layer Carpathian 1 obsidian microbladelet (11)×11×2 mesial fragment LA-ICP-MS-1
layer Carpathian 1 obsidian retouched blade (24)×15×2 proximal fragment XRF-102
layer Carpathian 1 obsidian microflakelet 20×17×2 complete XRF-101
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