Settlement and coastal/inland interaction in the Iron Gates Mesolithic: PHASE 1 - SURVEY

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Ivana Radovanovic and an international team of colleagues will conduct one field season of a targeted survey and test excavations of the Mesolithic sites in the Danube Iron Gates hinterlands in Serbia. This initial phase will provide the basis for a long-term research project, which will explore the material record in the full context of hunter-gatherers' land-use, mobility, and interactions in this part of the Carpathian-Danubian region. Archaeological evidence gathered in previous decades from the coastal Mesolithic Iron Gates includes unique hunter-gatherers' residential, aggregation and ceremonial sites used by a variety of groups over seven millennia. More exact data are needed to infer if material culture content, change, and phases of abandonment of these sites correspond directly to a climate change induced deterioration of environmental resources, or if the population movement, contact and ensuing competition over resources were a more important factor that led to risk management strategies such as a greater seasonal mobility and greater emphasis on exploitation of resources in the hinterlands. It is necessary to bring together this previously explored record and the new data from the Iron Gates inland sites that this survey and the subsequent studies will provide. The initial phase in 2011 focuses on systematic archaeological and geoarchaeological survey, mapping, small test excavations and data collection from the caves and rock-shelters in the Iron Gates hinterlands along with previously unexplored open-air artifact concentrations in the coastal areas that contain Postglacial and Early Holocene deposits. The further long-term research will help clarify chronostratigraphic, paleoecological, and material culture correlations among these sites and allow assessing a finer resolution of cultural and social dynamics in the area, as well as a more accurate assessment of the causes of Mesolithic cultural and social change from a diachronic perspective. Although this research will contribute to understanding of the Mesolithic interactions in one geographical area, the utility of its results will be applicable to general anthropological research of hunter-gatherers and their economic, social and cultural responses to environmental change, population movements and contact. The project will help to further reanimate scientific dialogue between Serbian and international scholars that was broken during Yugoslavia's 1990s disintegration. During the current phase and through subsequent research, this project will provide team members from the US, Serbia, and The Netherlands with an important co-mingling of approaches and methodologies. Dr. Radovanovic's archaeological research and academic experience related to both Serbian and US practices will provide an important bridge for this international collaboration. Students from both countries will be active members of the team. They will contribute to data collection while gaining critical experience in survey and excavation techniques, mapping, methods of data analysis, report preparation, and cooperation strategies as members of a multinational team. In the long-term, this research will result in a monograph, papers and conference presentations that will interest scholars and students in various fields of the sciences and humanities, including archaeology, socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, material culture studies, geography, environmental studies, palaeoecology, and palaeontology.