Forager-Farmer Encounters in the Balkans: Spatial Distribution of the Lepenski Vir Culture

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

In the Fall of 2004, with the support provided by the National Science Foundation, an international team of archaeologists, geologists and speleologists under the supervision of Dr. Dusan Boric will conduct research in the Danube Gorges region of the north-central Balkans, in present-day Serbia. The project examines the nature of culture contact and exchange in the transition to agriculture in south-eastern Europe, which remains one of the central questions of European Prehistory. The exploratory research to be conducted in this region focuses on an unexplored area between Mesolithic foraging groups found along the Danube banks and more inland Early Neolithic farming settlements in the surrounding regions of the Balkans. After the initial discovery of a very rich archaeological sequence of Mesolithic settlements along the Danube banks in the Iron Gates/Danube Gorges region in 1965 and their subsequent rescue excavations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, no field-work has been conducted in this area. On the basis of the material culture found at extensively excavated Mesolithic/foraging sites on the Danube, there is evidence of significant diffusion of Early Neolithic pottery and other portable items characterizing the Early Neolithic/farming communities with the staring date of around 6300 BC. These data speak to the contact and exchange between two different culture groups. However, very little is known about the nature of this contact between foragers and farmers since the area of the Danube Gorges hinterlands, away from the Danube banks and the region beyond the cliffs of the gorges, remains archaeologically unexplored. Consequently, the current project seeks to conduct an archaeological survey and explore the area between foraging and farming settlements. The survey area encompasses the karstic landscape of the Miroc Mountain Plateau in Serbia that is characterized by numerous caves and rockshelters, which are the primary targets. Research strategy is designed to proceed in three phases: 1) to survey the existing caves and rockshelters in order to provide a 'short-list' of the most promising among the existing sites for an archaeological exploration; 2) to core sediments of six caves/rockshelters in order to determine their stratigraphies and the nature of sedimentation in them; and 3) to excavate test pits in two caves that provide the most promising stratigraphies of Mesolithic-Neolithic periods. The project has the potential to provide vital new data that would make a significant impact on the current discussion with regard to the transition to farming in southeastern Europe. On the theoretical level the project will provide the possibility to examine some of the central questions of archaeological and anthropological theory, namely the questions of culture identity, contact and exchange between different populations and cultural phenomena. On a broader level this research project will bring together professors and students from the host country (Serbia) and international researchers, and provide the Serbian university students with the opportunity to learn and train with archaeologists who were trained at USA and UK universities.