Balkan prehistory conjures up images of the Exotic and the Other in comparison with the better-known prehistory of Western Europe - often written in unfamiliar languages about lesser known places. Combined with the information revolution in archaeology, these factors have meant that no new synthesis of Old Europe has been written in the last 20 years. This has left a backlog of rich settlement data and object-rich landscapes which have rarely been presented in theoretically challenging ways. This material is an important, and greatly neglected, part of European prehistory.
This research monograph is a synthesis of the archaeology of South East, Central and Eastern Europe over four millennia (7000 – 3000 BC). The varied cultural development of the region is treated as a mosaic of local prehistories, in which people responded to major change and, in at least two cases – the development of farming and metallurgy - profound structural change through modifications of all the dimensions of their identities. Informed by a gendered perspective, this book seeks to structure the Mesolithic, Neolithic and the Chalcolithic periods in terms of a nested set of identities - the person, the household, the settlement and the regional network.
This book is intended for all those prehistorians who seek to expand their general knowledge of Old Europe, as well as undergraduates, postgraduates and specialists in Balkan prehistory. The book will also attract social anthropologists and sociologists with an interest in the creation and maintenance of nested social identities in the past.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Chapter 2 - Framing the enquiry
Chapter 3 - Foodways - foraging and agro-pastoral practices
Chapter 4 - Persons
Chapter 5 - Houses and households
Chapter 6 - Settlement planning
Chapter 7 - The mortuary zone
Chapter 8 - Long-term settlement dynamics
Chapter 9 - Networks
Chapter 10 - Change and continuity
Chapter 11 - Summary and conclusions
Author(s): John Chapman
Publisher: Sidestone Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 462
City: London
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Introduction
Introducing the research questions
The study region
The palaeo-environment
Temporality
The cultural framework
Research in social archaeologies
Research questions
Book contents
Chapter 2
Framing the enquiry
Introduction: living within the rules
Questions of scale
Basic terms
Relations
Settlements and the mortuary domain
The proliferation of objects
Chapter Summary
Chapter 3
Foodways – foraging and agro-pastoral practices
Introduction
Stage 1: catching and collecting, growing and tending
Stage 2: food allocation and storage
Stages 3-4: cooking and eating
Stage 5
Chapter Summary
Persons
Introducing some special persons
Life courses
The life course in death: mortuary costumes and personhood
Personal skills
Personhood and the production of images
Chapter summary
Chapter 5
Houses and households
Introduction: building an experimental ‘Neolithic’ house
Definitions and general issues
Building forager houses in Phases 1 (7000-6300 BC) and 2 (6300-5300 BC)
Phase 2 houses
Phase 3 houses
Phase 4 houses
Phase 5 houses
Chapter summary
Chapter 6
Settlement planning
Introduction
Settlement form
A diversity of site types
Planning at forager settlements?
Phase 2 settlements
Phase 3 – the spread of settlement planning
Phase 4 planning – the displacement of concentricity
Phase 5 – the triumph of concentricity in Eastern Europe
Chapter summary
Chapter 7
The mortuary zone
Introduction
The absent, the bone, the body and the cemetery
Cemeteries in Old Europe
Summary of Chapters 6 and 7: the mortuary and domestic domains
Chapter 8
Long-term settlement dynamics
Introduction
Settlement patterns by modern state
Bulgaria
The lands of ‘former Yugoslavia’ (Serbia, Republic of North Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Kosova and Bosnia – Hercegovina)
Settlement in Hungary
Settlement in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine
Chapter summary
Chapter 9
Networks
Introduction: an exotic pumice-stone
Settlement networks
Phase 1 networks
Phase 2 networks
Phase 3 networks
Phase 4 networks
Phase 5 networks
Chapter summary
Chapter 10
Change and continuity
Introduction
The emergence of farming: a network model
The onset of copper and gold metallurgy
The emergence of urbanism in the Ukrainian forest-steppe
Chapter summary
Chapter 11
Summary and conclusions
Summarising without writing a Grand Narrative
Research question (1): how to form relations
Research Questions (2 and 3): material culture and the settlement domain
In conclusion
Bibliography
Indices
General index
Index of people
Index of places
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