Living Well Together

Eurasia in Prehistory by Oxbow publishers (2008)

Living Well Together?

Settlement and Materiality in the Neolithic
of South-East and Central Europe

Edited by Douglass Bailey, Alasdair Whittle and
Daniela Hofmann

What is the book about? (external link to David Brown Book Co.)

Table of contents (internal link)

Overview by Lolita Nikolova

Also published as Best of Balkan scholarly prehistory: Living Well Together?

Douglass W. Bailey, Alasdair Whittle and Daniela Hofmann (eds.). (2008). Living well together? Settlement and Materiality in the Neolithic
of South-East and Central Europe. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 178 p. text and illustrations. ISBN 978-1-84217-267-4. Available from www.
oxbowbooks.com

Basic key terms: Balkan Prehistory, bi-refringent fabric in pottery, crop-husbandry, flat settlements, grog (chamotte or crushed pottery),
household morphology, intensive cultivation of fixed plots, intergenerational transmission of culture, landscape, LBK, Neolithic, petrographic
analysis, phenomenology, pioneer communities, prehistoric household, social entities, tells, viewshed analysis, etc

Prehistoric sites’ record base: Bylany, Brunn, Ecsegfalva, Endrőd, Foeni-Salaş, Gorgan, Gura Baciului, Ilipinar, Jásztelek, Kaposhomok, Lăceni,
Măgura, Menteşe, Miskovice, Mold, Plosca, Polgár-Csőszhalom, Rakitovo, Şeuşa La-Cărarea Morii, Strögen, Szarvas, Szentgyörgyvölgy, Ţigăreşti,
Vedrovice, Vităneşti, etc.

The book includes 15 contributions to the prehistoric archaeology of northwest Anatolia, and Southeast and Central Europe. It demonstrates the
recent state of household archaeology in this region and the tendency to separate the settlement archaeology from the archaeology of burial
customs in favor of an obvious attempt for deeper scholarly analysis. Because of still not well defined subject of prehistoric household
archaeology as a relatively independent research discipline, we provide this review with an initial theoretical scheme (Scheme 1) to be followed to
understand how the different authors contributed to the general development of our knowledge on the prehistoric households in Eurasia. For this
purpose several themes can be distinguished: multi-scale case studies, economic and social household archaeology, archaeogenealogy and
theory.

We will begin with the case studies Menteşe – Ilipinar (the Marmara basin, Northwest Turkey), Polgár-Csőszhalom (Eastern Hungary) and Uivar
(Western Romania). All four settlements are key records for Prehistory of Eurasia and require high attention.

Jacob Roodenberg and Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg focused on the leading archaeological characteristics of the Neolithic settlement model
represented by Menteşe and Ilipinar in northwest Anatolia (pp. 8-16). For many years Ilipinar has been accepted as the archaeological hallmark
of the initial development of the Neolithic in Anatolian-Balkan region. At the same time, the earliest abt 1 m thick cultural layer from Menteşe from
c. 6400 cal BCE pre-dated Ilipinar according to the excavators, so both sites represent a long cultural period of development of the settlement
pattern in the eastern Marmara basin covering a period of one thousand years. The main idea of the authors is that Menteşe and Ilipinar prove
the region of Marmara as a passageway for agricultural migration towards Europe (p. 14). We can learn from the excavations that the local
Neolithic model includes a combination of mud-slab, post-wall and mud-brick boundary arch-planned buildings that may have encircled the village
of Ilipinar VI (dated from 6840/6775±60/50 BP). The living space in case of two-store type buildings was less than 32 sq. m, while a published
plan of a burnt post-wall building (Ilipinar X) points to some elements of the house interior (an andiron, a hearth, ash pits, charred seeds, a
grinding slab, etc.). Valuable information about the diet and village burials makes the Neolithic model more complete and in fact confirms the
existed in the literature concept of Balkan-Anatolian (in fact Anatolian-Balkan) cultural complex since northwest Anatolia was an active contact
zone for cultural continuity and interrelated communities in this important south pass of Eurasia (cp. pp. 12-14). Regretfully, we still do not have
research on the social psychological environment of the earlier Neolithic population and the everyday function of the different components of the
material culture including the pottery. As a rule, the similar pottery is an indicator of active interactions, but in the case of the Balkans and
Northwest Anatolia in some periods we have specific situations. For instance, during Early Bronze Age there is a system of similarity of pottery but
in Northwest Anatolia was missing corded ware. For this reason, it is possible to believe that not always the pottery is the definer of the cultural
contacts and interactions and there are periods in which the interacted data are beyond the pottery.

Close to the theoretical scale of the Anatolian case study is the modeling of the spatial differentiation at Polgár-Csőszhalom tell (Eastern
Hungary) by Pal Ráczky and Alexandra Anders (pp. 35-53). This is one of the most comprehensive and richly illustrated chapters in the book, with
an excellent combination of theoretical analysis and selected empirical material. This case study itself is extremely interesting since it represents
one of the common tell types for the Balkans and Eastern Central Europe – low tells, characterized by 3-4 m thick cultural layer and a diameter
abt 100 m. Although Upper Thracian valley is popular with relatively big tells like Karanovo and Dyadovo, since Early Neolithic small tells (e.g. Early
Neolithic Dubene-Pishtikova mogila, and Early Bronze Dubene-Sarovka) had been distributed together with the high Balkans tells. The tell of
Polgar-Csőszhalom is also typologically similar to the Late Copper Age Vinitsa, Golyamo Delchevo and other tells in the Lower Danube. Ráczky and
Anders consider the tells in the Great Hungarian Plain as “central places and markers of space and time that had symbolic significance that stood
in addition to their importance as monuments of habitation within their respective cultures” (p. 36). After critically review of the most popular
theories on tells and the relationship between tells and open (the so-called horizontal) settlements, the authors turned to some basic
characteristics of the settlement pattern and material culture in the Carpathian basin.

Some of the remarkable features of the prehistoric cultural pattern were the ditches or the ditches in combination with palisade. Ráczky and
Anders summarize data on the Linear Pottery culture and Lengyel culture as a continuity pattern in Central Europe. They accept the meaning of
Rondell as markers of separation of communal sacred space from the space of the everyday life (p. 39), but also their astronomical definitions.
A system of concentric ditches and palisades (diam. 190 m) surrounded the tell of Polgár-Csőszhalom. It was documented by archaeomagnetic
mapping that revealed four entrances. The tell consisted of 16 houses which were burnt down and rebuilt several times within the period
between 4840 and 4560 cal BC according to the authors, based on radiocarbon dates. The excavations also documented a thin-level settlement
with 126 buildings of which 62 houses with post-structures, as well as 68 wells, 328 pits and 124 burials. The size of the whole complex (28 ha)
makes for the time being Polgár-Csőszhalom and exceptional site in great Hungarian Plain (28 ha).

Ráczky and Anders discussed in details the similarities and differences between the tell and the open settlement and concluded that the tell
houses must have been the locations for unusual, non-mundane activities” (p. 42). Our understanding is that possibly future very precise
comparative analyses with different cultural regions and pattern may show that in fact on the tell lived a specific social group recognized as social
leaders, elite or eventually direct descendants of the initial community. The missing refuse pits on the tell may indicate the garbage had been
thrown and burned in the ditch. Still it is unclear which site was founded first – the developed as a tell village or the open settlement. The
radiocarbon dates make them synchronous. If this is the case, we need to believe that the migrated social group came possibly with a
differentiated social structure and tell-ditch central place was specifically planned for leaders and cults. This hypothesis can be supported for
instance, by the fact that on both living places were discovered burials. The necklaces of Spondylus beads found in some graves shows the
community was with dynamic cultural contacts. Of the numerous archaeological data we would point to the sacrificial pit discovered in a well with
deposits of more than 80 vessels, anthropomorphic figurines (Tisza and Lengyel cultures) discovered on both living places and the numerous
small copper beads discovered only in the area of the circular ditch system (pp. 42-44). Although in Hungary the burials in villages are typical, we
will wait with interest the full publication of this site to see if all discovered graves in the open village (123 in the proximity of 79 houses) were
synchronous with the houses or some of them postdated them. As in other cases, the graves Polgár-Csőszhalom are with very strong gender
specification including body position and burial goods.

In their conclusions, Ráczky and Anders stressed on the non-residential function of the tell which can be explained by the fact that they believe
that there was no linear correlation between wealth and age and the age/gender patterning is of an egalitarian society. However, they believe
that additional social rules related to status complemented the described structure and there was incipient social stratification (p. 49). By all
description of the site and material, the absence of violence and pointing to the community, social integration and communal rituals, we believe
both authors answered positively the question of the book whether the late Neolithic inhabitants of Polgár-Csőszhalom lived together.
One more very interesting case study represents Wolfram Schier – Uivar, a let Neolithic – early Eneolithic fortified tell site in western Romania (pp.
54-67). The site is located 40 km west-south-west of Timişoara dated from Vinča C (the first half of the fifth millennium cal BCE) (p. 65).
The plan of the tell produced by high resolution Cesium magnetometry (Plan 1, p. 55) revealed more than 70 burnt houses and a system of five
concentric ditches with V-shaped cross-section, c. 5-6 m wide and 1.5-2.5 m deep, between which were palisades. All 10 discovered houses from
the first four excavation seasons (2001-2004) were burnt. One of the burnt houses is reconstructed as a rectangular three room wattle-and-
daub house (p. 54-55). Negatives of split wooden planks were discovered in the cultural layer of the westernmost of the three rooms that allows
Schier to conclude that in this part of the house was a second floor.

The excavations in 2005 documented unburnt house structures as well (pp. 58-60). Very essential is the analysis of the wooden samples that
included hazel, ash, alder and poplar and the observations that makes the author to believe that there was a deliberate forest management. It is
also offered a reconstruction of the building processes that can be very useful for the experimental archaeology. Ritual practices, numerous finds,
environmental evidence and economic activities are reported briefly (pp. 60-65) that make additionally the site of Uivar a key record for the
European prehistoric household archaeology. Together with the author we can share the opinion that the tell settlements in the Carpathian basin
are complex spatial entities (p. 65) and just to add that the today’s state of household archaeology makes very important the look at the
prehistoric settlements not just as a treasure of material evidence to be precisely documented. They were a place of continuing past everyday life
of communities of interacted people which behavior wealth and social multi-dimensions need to be reconstructed anthropologically. Remarkably
no settlement burial was reported, for the time being. Absence of data about violence, competition and conflicts make us believe that community
of Uivar was a part of prosperous Vinča C culture which is one of the picks of the Eurasian prehistoric development in the time of the first
progress of the copper metallurgy. However, the fortification system and possible future analyses may reveal more complex and controversial
everydayness that usually the archaeological records show at first view. We still need to learn more about Uivar as a site on the crossroad of
Balkan and Central European civilizations from the fifth millennium cal BCE.

Economic and social household archaeology is represented by a series of contributions to the prehistoric Greek household (Stella Souvatzi, pp. 17-
27), Early Neolithic pottery production (Michela Spataro, pp. 91-100 and Elisabetta Starnini, pp. 101-107), mobile economy (Haskel J. Greenfield
and Tina Jungsma, pp. 108-130), crop husbandry (Amy Bogaard, Joanna Bending and Glynis Jones, pp. 131-138).

Stella Souvatzi approaches the household dynamics and variability in Greek Neolithic (pp. 17-27). Her framework is “the household as process, as
a dynamic social entity that encompasses a number of practices, social relations, antagonisms and daily routines, and which relates dialectically
with both individuals (the household members) and the community” (p. 18). This thesis is lately widely developed in her special monograph on
Neolithic household in Greece (A Social Archaeology of Households in Neolithic Greece, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008). In this
contribution she focused on household variability, morphology, activity, and ideology (Scheme 2) based on rich empirical material from Neolithic
Greece. While the reader can see more arguments in the recently published monograph of Souvatzi, and the scheme can be updated and
developed, in this review we will point to her principal thesis about Neolithic Greece: Neolithic is characterized “by an increasing focus on
communal organization and dependence on larger society” (p. 25). This is one of the key problems of social archaeology and
archaeoanthropology and certainly will be in focus of many future research studies. For the time being, we would just add the point that we may
need to think eventually for corporate societies within the prehistoric complex social systems, as well as to analyze in depth how the idea about
communal organization relates to the archaeological signs of equality and inequality, since the latter can be in some cases invisible or masked.
As Souvatzi stresses “although there is household autonomy and relative dominance of household-based organisation, there are also signs of
considerable dependence on a larger society-based organization” (p. 25). To support the author’s point, we would point to one of most visible
characteristics - the unified ceramic styles over large territories during the Neolithic. We do need further research to understand in depth the
complex relationships among the households within the multi-scale communities, which Souvatzi frames in her conclusion as an association
between synchronic and diachronic socio-cultural variability (p. 25).

In the context of Souvatzi’s theoretical approach, the study of Michela Spataro on the Early Neolithic pottery production of Criş culture in Romania
(pp. 91-100) shows the benefits of integration of the natural sciences with good archaeological knowledge to provide cultural anthropological
conclusions.

The span of studied samples from two important sites (Gura Baciului [see the map in p. 109] and Şeuşa La-Cărarea Morii) is very large – about
800 years or even more, from a region of the longest duration of the first Balkan painted ceramic style (Transylvania). In contrast to Thrace where
the painted pottery had been gradually abandoned starting since the second quarter of the sixth millennium cal BCE, in the Northern Balkans that
style continued another several centuries. Reasonably, Michela Spataro has been searching for scientific arguments to learn more about the style
in technological terms and how the conclusions can be embedded in the construction of cultural anthropological explanation models. Based on
petrographic analyses, the author attempts to see whether there are differences in the technology of everyday pottery and cult objects of Criş
communities, as well as diachronic and regional changes in recipes. She paid special attention to the organic material which was widely used by
Criş potters but was not documented in the sample of the anthropomorphic figurine and also was not emblematic for some other distance
cultures from the western Balkans. Spataro presumes that even agricultural base could influence the pottery recipe “as a fundamental aspect of
the early Neolithic economic subsistence strategy of this region” (p. 98). She also explains the conservatism by the transmission of the well suited
recipe from generation to generation through a specific group of artisans (Scheme 3). Among the conclusions is also the thesis that the
technology of pottery production “spread rapidly from the south-east in a single wave of diffusion” (p. 97).

The research of Spataro would most probably stimulate further expansion of this direction of pottery analyses in the Balkans, and of
interpretation that may also includes other types of records. On the whole, the scientific results from the analyses can be integrated in many
multi-level research studies and especially about enculturation in Balkan Prehistory since the transmission of tradition in such seasonal activity as
the pottery could be a result of household pattern of education. Also, although the archaeologists usually focus on pottery as a primary record for
prehistoric cultures, we keep in mind that there is a whole block of cultural heritage that we either cannot destructure and we may but very
hypothetically – it is the oral culture, dances and the art of perishable materials which are especially popular in the traditional societies. Then, we
still do not have very expressive answer the questions how important was pottery in the Neolithic population – was it a alive culture or more
technological component of the everydayness while the cultural consciousness was mostly directed towards the folklore feasts, tales, mythology
and other artistic expression within ritual and entertainment activities. By all circumstances the Spataro’s scientific analysis of pottery is a first-
class source for advance in the cultural anthropological research.

Elisabetta Starnini represented her archaeometric research on the pottery from Körös (pp. 101-107). The samples originate from the five most
important according to the author Neolithic settlement in the Körös valley: Szarvas 8, Szarvas 23, Endrőd 6, Endrőd 39 and Endrőd 119.
Haskel J. Greenfield and Tina Jungsma expanded our knowledge on cultural pattern of the Early Neolithic population of Starčevo culture in
Romanian Banat based on data from Foeni-Salaş (pp. 108-130). They contributed to the big discussion in Balkan Prehistory about the function of
some prehistoric pits by suggesting five particular characteristics (p. 115, see S cheme 4 ). According to the excavation, a pit complex was
reconstructed as a cluster of five small pit-houses arranged in a semicircle around a larger pit-house (p. 125). The author proposed that Foeni-
Salaş was a short-term settlement (a year or two at most, p. 127) of a community that practiced mobile economies, “with a high reliance on
domestic pastoralism in combination with a smaller element of wild and domestic plant use” (p. 126).

The Körös site of Ecsegfalva provides abundance of evidence for the subsitence economy of the population in eastern Hungarian Plain. Amy
Bogaard, Joanna Bending and Glynis Jones analyzed the paleobotanical data (pp. 131-138) to address three key questions: shifting versus fixed-
plot culticvation in Körös crop husbandry; the intensity of cultivation and the timing of sowing (p. 133 sq.). The authors suggest that the
dominance of annual taxa and the absence of any woodland species “provide strong evidence against shifting cultivation” (p. 133). They
concluded further that the cultivation at Ecsegfalva involved fixed plots and intensive management such as manuring or maddening, careful tillage
and weeding (p. 134), while the presence of autumn-germinating taxa points to some autumn sowing of crops (p. 134). According to the authors,
in the surrounding area of Ecsegfalva there was enough high dry land that would support intensive cultivation of several households (p. 134).
Further, they have been trying to make generalization in comparing Körös and Linear Band Pottery (LBK according to abbreviation in German)
cultures by contrasting the continuity in crop husbandry to the animal husbandry” “a shift from the Balkan pattern of sheep(/goat)-based
husbandry in the Körös culture to the central European pattern of cattle-based husbandry in the LBK” (after Halsted, Benecke and Bartoziewicz)
(p. 135). As even the research of Greenfield and Jongsma in the reviewed book showed, the cattle were abundant in Banat (p. 120) and this part
of the research of Bogaard et al. probably will be updated since the Balkan analogies are obviously based on incomplete data. Probably in future
they will also add their won arguments regarding the discussed issues of the female gender associations of the household cultivation and the
interrelation between the shifting of the homes and the cultivation plots (p. 136).

In a specific problem line of research we would distinguish the works that deal with archaeogenealogical topics: ancestors and settlement
histories (John Chapman, pp. 68-80) and inter-generational transmission of culture (Alena Lukes and Marek Zvelebil, pp. 139-150).
Chapman’s goal is “to fill a major gap in research into Neolithic settlement: the definition of founder communities” (p. 69). This approach is by
borrowing the idea of Brück and Goodman about pioneer and secondary households and trying to expand it over the settlement history of the
earliest Neolithic settlements from the Balkans. However, the objective difficulty for his agenda is the fact that the prehistoric sites in the Balkans
are usually investigated over limited areas or the excavations are incompletely published. Chapman proposed the hierarchical classification
scheme of the single-household site, hamlet and village based on limited data and controversial interpretations (pp. 69-76).

Of principal importance is the contribution of Alena Lukas and Marek Zvelebil who posed extremely important for the prehistoric cultural
anthropology problem of the inter-generational transmission of culture (p. 130 sq.) based on data about the origin of the Linear Band Pottery.
They analyzed three approaches - migrationistic, indigenistic and integrationistic (p. 140 sq.) and focused on the preliminary results from the
analysis of the data from Vedrovice (Czech Republic) (p. 143 sq.). Both authors point to the absence of unique vessel shapes in pottery or
decoration and at the same time a heavy reliance on wild fauna of the Vedrovice population and documented Mesolithic traditions in the stone
tool industry and “continued reliance on Mesolithic trade networks and sources” (p. 146). Lukas and Zvelebil also provided valuable theoretical
scheme for discussion and consideration by comparing the public domain and the private domain (pp. 146-147) and concluded that people and
their action and not descriptive lists of material culture to be the main focus of research (p. 146). Although extreme and raising contra-arguments,
the point embedded in our understanding the view that the archaeologists have the methodological and theoretical means to go beyond the
empirical level of documentation and analysis of the material culture and to analyses the past as a live social system. This view completely
corresponds to the Bourdieu’s idea about the transmission of culture shared by Bogaard et al. according to which social reproduction occur in the
everyday habits of living (p. 131).

The last groups of chapters are different case studies in which prevail other theoretical problems. Each of the topics today occupies less or more
independent place in the archaeological science: landscape and settlement pattern (Radian-Romus Andreescu and Pavel Mirea, pp. 28-34), tell
mapping and habitual visibility (Steven Trick, pp. 81-90), migration and adaptation (Eszter Bánffy, pp. 151-163) and the genesis of archaeological
cultures (Eva Lenneis, pp. 164-178).

The synthesis of Andreescu and Mirea is a comprehensive contribution to Prehistory of the Lower Danube basin since it includes numerous data
from Muntenia about tell sites which appeared according to the authors at the end of the sixth millennium cal BCE and were especially typical of
the Gumelniţa culture from later fifth millennium cal BCE. Both authors distinguished three groups of tells: 80-100 / 10-12 m, 30-60 / 3-6 m and 20-
30 / 1-3 m (diameter / height) (p. 29). Beyond the dimensions the authors focused on location and visibility and especially pointed to the fact that
the visibility is a variable and some of the tells were visible from short distance only (p. 30). It is worth mentioning the case study of Vităneşti
where were documented three other sites around the tell (p. 31 sq.) (Southern Romanian Archaeological Project). For the time being, Gumelnita
B1 habitation was archaeologically documented. Complimentary, Steven Trick provides results of his research into tell landscape using Geographic
Information System (GIS). He focused on six tells located in the Vedea, Teleorman and Claniţa valleys (Figure 1, p. 83) and provides a valuable
diagram of the directionality of visibility from the case-study tells (Figure 3, p. 85). His framework of research has philosophical background in the
phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty focused on the nature of the engagement with the world (p. 87), as well as the
Gibson’s concept of affordance that Stick reasonably thinks that we may “gain insights into people’s everyday lives in terms of the nature of the
activities in which they were engaged” (p. 87). In such way Trick offers extremely important frame of the household archaeology one of the goal
of which is to examine zones “for a sorts of stimuli that people were regularly exposed to” (p. 87) since these stimuli have the positive effect on
the everyday behavior, respectively on the positive social psychology of people.

In the focus of Eszter Bánffy is the Mesolithic – Neolithic transition in western Transdanubia. The author analyzed archaeological data that
according to her show adaptation of the Mesolithic population including the so-called transitional settlement at Pityerdomb, near the village of
Szentgyörgyvölgy (p. 158). As in other researchers’ methodology, usually the flint industry is connected with the local Mesolithic population. The
pottery resembled Starčevo, but there were also discovered two houses in 33 m distances one from another that have analogies in the central
European older Linear Band Pottery (p. 158). In other words, Bánffy represents a hybrid model with multidirectional lines of cultural analogies
which nature probably needs actualization of the whole theory of interpretation of the transition to sedentary agricultural pattern in Eastern
Central Pattern in terms of enculturation and socialization in the context of dynamic social environment. A step in this direction is the hypothesis
of the author that demand for salt was the reason for the intensive contacts of Transdanubian population with northwest German early Neolithic
groups.

Eva Lenneis closes the scientific journey from Anatolia through the Balkans till Central Europe with a comprehensive review of the recent data on
the early Linear Band Pottery culture and concluded that local indigenous populations played an important role during the genesis of LBK. She
expressed five arguments including the suggestion that the people knew well the regions where they founded settlements, the LBK house model
has no analogies outside the area of distribution of this culture and there are specific settlement pattern and different social tradition (p. 176).
Theoretically, all arguments do not concern the nature of social practices and social behavior of early human societies and can be compared with
Balkan case study where there are also considerable household difference with Anatolia and the Aegean but the migration model dominates in
the historiography.

In our opinion the title of the reviewed book is of utmost importance for its success since the question Did people live well together in the
Neolithic? sharpens the reader’s attention to be active through all the book. Most of the authors did not answer directly that question, but they
represent materials and theses to make the reader think how the people lived in Past, and specifically in Neolithic. Together with Douglass Bailey
and Alasdair Whittle we can appreciate the research in depth on the specific topics, even if their summary chapter (pp. 1-7) shows - in compare to
this review, each of the paper creates different associations based on the different academic cognitive maps. What Bailey and Whittle name first
or interim reports (p. 1) we may name a first collective presentation of some basic recently investigated sites in Northwest Turkey, Bulgaria,
Romania and Hungary that in fact recognizes the exclusive place of this book in the specialized historiography of the early 21st century. Another
very essential problem that both editors pose is whether we should have a consensus with respect to familiar and much repeated terms (p. 4).
The book answers positively this question and as Bailey and Whittle impressively demonstrated, it also gives new directions of development of
the theoretical thinking (pp. 4-5). Today’s level of archaeology as a science is more an extension of the meaning of the terms and the depth of
research of the problems than terminology innovations with the same limitation of analysis as the similar previous ones, or toward what Bailey
and Whittle profoundly name “new style of analysis” (p. 5). However, both do not question the interpretation of Polgár-Csőszhalom as two sites
of which one was a residence while the tell – communal (p. 6), that makes us add that beyond the new style of analysis the 21st century
archaeology needs to develop as a collective science without the heavy pressing mound of the authorities’ opinions. Reasonable critics or
updates should stimulate fruitful discussions and new ideas as invitation for scholarly friendship and collaboration. And vise versa – we need to
be careful because of opportunity of unreasonable critics, manipulated contents and coalition of authors and hidden censorship.

In conclusion we would like to stress on the fact that for the long time the interdisciplinary archaeology had been recognized mostly as a field of
research that has integrating the professional skills of specialists of excavations, geophysics, physical anthropology, paleoosteology,
paleobotanics and natural sciences. The social and symbolic interpretations were reserved mostly for the excavators as last chapters of their
books or small or bigger paragraphs in their articles. The development of archaeology as a complex discipline increases the specializations so that
archaeocultural anthropology has been growing within the archaeological interpretation research as an independent branch. The Douglass W.
Bailey’s “Prehistoric figurines” (Kindle edition, 2007) demonstrates the advantage of such progress in research on Balkan Prehistory. The
reviewed book combines both tendencies – special archaeoanthropological studies (e.d. Stella Souvatzi) and social interpretation archaeology by
leading excavators (.e.g. Jacob Roodenberg, Pal Raczky, Wolfram Schier, etc.). But it is also an invitation for social psychologists, specialists in
sociologies, semiotics of cultures, ethnography and other related disciplines to join the archaeological teams, as well as archaeologists to bridge
through double major different humanitarian disciplines in order to develop the archaeocultural anthropology of prehistoric Eurasia and a
multidisciplinary anthropological science. All together the authors participants demonstrate the multidirectional approach to Past by the 21st
century archaeologists and the general changing direction at least in the literature – from a variety of theoretical “schools” toward a variety of
problems and elaboration a common global methodology.

Finally we can answer the question: Did the people of Neolithic live well together? Our impression is that they really lived well together, so we
may need further contributions to answer the next question: Why did our distant ancestors live well together?

Link to the recommended by International Institute of Anthropology free iTune lecture by Professor Douglass W Bailey: Art to archaeology t o
archaeology to art

© 2009-2010 International
Institute of Anthropology

© 2009-2010 Lolita Nikolova,
PhD
created: 12-31-09. Last
updated: 7-22-2010.

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Other new books and articles on Neolithic of Southeast and Central Europe

Bailey, Douglass. 2007. Balkan Prehistory. Kindle edition.

Bailey, Douglass W. 2005. Prehistoric figurines. Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic. Routledge. London
and New York. (Kindle Edition 2007)

Gergova, Diana (Main editor). 2008. Archaeological Discoveries and Excavations during 2007. Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences. National Archaeological Institute with Museum. Sofia. 790 p.

Gheorghiu, Dragos. 2008. Stratified Society in the South-Eastern European Chalcolithic. In The Archaeology of
Semiotics and the Social Order of Things, edited by George Nash and George Children. Oxford: BAR. BAR
International Series 1833.

Kreen-Leeb, Alexandra, Karina Grömer and Peter Stadler, eds. 2006. Ein Lächeln für die Jungsteinzeit. Festschrift für
Elisabeth Ruttkay, edited by . Archäeologie Österreichs 17/2/2006

Nikolov, Vasil, ed. 2008. Praistoricheski solodobiven tsentur Provadia-Solnitsata. Razkopki 2005-2007. (Provadia-
Solnitsata Prehistoric Salt-Producing Center. The 2005-2007 Excavation Seasons). National Institute of Archaeology
and Museum. Sofia.

Nikolova, Lolita. 2008. Toward the Development of the Balkan Cultural-Chronological Scheme of the Neolithic and
Copper Age (in Bulgarian with English Abstract). In: Gergova, Diana, resp. ed. Phosphorion. Studia on Honorem
Mariae Cicikova, 48-65. Professor Marin Drinov Academic Publishing House. Sofia.

Nikolova, Lolita, John Fritz and Jude Higgins, eds. 2005. Prehistoric Archaeology & Anthropological Theory and
Education. International Institute of Anthropology. Salt Lake City & Karlovo. Reports of Prehistoric Research
Projects 6-7.

Articles online on Neolithic of Southeast Europe:

Bentley, R. Alexander, Lounes Chikhi and Douglas T. Price. 2003 The Neolithic transition in Europe: comparing
broad scale genetic and local scale isotopic evidence. (Research)
Publication: Antiquity
Date: Saturday, March 1 2003
http://www.articlearchives.com/science-technology/biochemistry-genetic-biochemistry/170963-1.html

Biagi Paolo and M ichela Spataro, 2005. New Observations of the Radiocarbon Chronology of the Starčevo-Criş and
Körös Cultures, in Nikolova L. et al., eds., Nikolova L. et al., eds, Prehistoric Archaeology & Anthropological Theory
and Education, 35-40. International Institute of Anthropology, 121-122. Salt Lake City & Karlovo. Reports of
Prehistoric Research Projects 6-7. (link to a .pdf file)

Biagi Paolo, Stephen Shennan and M ichela Spataro. 2005. Rapid Rivers and Slow Seas? New Data for the
Radiocarbon Chronology of the Balkan Peninsula, in Nikolova L. et al., eds, Prehistoric Archaeology & Anthropological
Theory and Education, 41-50. International Institute of Anthropology. Salt Lake City & Karlovo. Reports of
Prehistoric Research Projects 6-7. [link to a .pdf file]

Nikolova, L olita. 2007. Toward Evolutionary Model of Gradual Development of Social Complexity among the Neolithic
Pottery Communities in the Balkans (Cultural-Chronological and Cultural-Anthropological Problems). In: Spataro,
Michela and Paolo Biagi (eds), "A Short Walk through the Balkans", 89-102. Società per la preistoria e protostoria
della regione Fruili-Venezia Guilia. Quaderno 12

Link to Art to archaeology
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Overviews by Lolita
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