Between the Vinča and Linearbandkeramik Worlds: The Diversity of Practices and Identities in the 54th–53rd Centuries cal BC in Southwest Hungary and Beyond

Abstract

Perhaps nowhere in European prehistory does the idea of clearly-defined cultural boundaries remain more current than in the initial Neolithic, where the southeast–northwest trend of the spread of farming crosses what is perceived as a sharp divide between the Balkans and central Europe. This corresponds to a distinction between the Vinča culture package, named for a classic site in Serbia, with its characteristic pottery assemblage and absence of longhouses, and the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), with equally diagnostic but different pottery, and its apparently culturally-diagnostic longhouses, extending in a more northerly belt through central Europe westward to the Dutch coast. In this paper we question the concept of such a clear division through a presentation of new data from the site of Szederkény-Kukorica-dűlő. A large settlement in southeast Transdanubia, Hungary, excavated in advance of road construction, Szederkény is notable for its combination of pottery styles, variously including Vinča A, Ražište and LBK, and longhouses of a kind otherwise familiar from the LBK world. Formal modelling of its date establishes that the site probably began in the later 54th century cal BC, lasting until the first decades of the 52nd century cal BC. Occupation, featuring longhouses, pits and graves, probably began at the same time in the eastern and western parts of the settlement, starting a decade or two later in the central part; the western part was probably the last to be abandoned. Vinča pottery is predominantly associated with the eastern and central parts of the site, and Ražište pottery with the west. Formal modelling of the early history of longhouses in the LBK world suggests their emergence in the Formative LBK of Transdanubia c. 5500 cal BC followed by rapid dispersal in the middle of the 54th century cal BC, associated with the ‘earliest’ (älteste) LBK. The adoption of longhouses at Szederkény thus appears to come a few generations after the start of this ‘diaspora’. Rather than explaining the mixture of things, practices and perhaps people at Szederkény with reference to problematic notions such as hybridity, we propose instead a more fluid and varied vocabulary, encompassing combination and amalgamation, relationships and performance in the flow of social life, and networks; this makes greater allowance for diversity and interleaving in a context of rapid change.

Discrepancies between archaeological and 14C-based chronologies: problems and possible solutions

“…The difference between conventional and AMS dates from Trebur strengthens this idea, as later contaminations had probably been removed much better from material for the AMS dates than from the bigger pieces for conventional dates (Spatz 1999.217). It is further reinforced by a fourth date from the Mohelnice well (Schmidt, Gruhle 2003.56; KN-4339: 6580±75 BP, not included in the data list by Jakucs et al 2016), which has an uncalibrated age 300 14 C-years older than the mean of the other dates. It is the only one that fits with the dendrochronological age (87.7% probability: 5641-5461 cal BC, 7.7%: 5451-5377 cal BC), so we may assume that for this sample the removal of contaminations was much more successful than for the samples dated in the 1970s, and that contamination by water may play an important role even in an undisturbed context.…”

Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers

“…These are combined with 58 radiocarbon dates from the literature 4,5,7,17,18,26,29,30,44,45 . We report the 95.4% calibrated confidence intervals (CI) from OxCal (ref.…”

“…We note that while the simulated data are generated under a model of gene flow from an unadmixed hunter-gatherer source population into a series of farmer populations in a single line of descent, observed admixture could also be influenced by flow in the other direction (from farmers to hunter-gatherers) or could reflect immigration of new farmer populations (either via their own previous hunter-gatherer admixture or new admixture between farming populations with different proportions of hunter-gatherer ancestry). Based on archaeological evidence, such a scenario is possible, for example, for the introduction of hunter-gatherer ancestry into TDLN from Southeastern European farmers via the dispersal of the northern Balkan Vinča or Sopot cultures to Transdanubia 14,29,30 .…”

Krugovi i keramika kroz stoljeća

“…previously, the prevailing view was that this was precisely the early phase of the transition from Ia to Ib stage (marković 1985b: 52; 1994). In recent papers Ražište type (or simply Ražište) is dated to the very beginning of vinča A (Jakucs et al 2016;botić 2018).…”