The Early Neolithic tell of Vrbjanska Čuka in Pelagonia

Abstract

Vrbjanska Čuka is a tell site in the region of Pelagonia (Macedonia) established 8000 years ago by the Neolithic communities. Later it was used as an agricultural unit during the Roman era and the Middle Ages when it was also employed as a burial area. The excavations performed in the 1980s and during the last five years indicate a Neolithic farming society that constructed large buildings made of daub in a settlement enclosed by a circular ditch. The buildings had many clay structures, such as ovens, granaries, bins and grinding areas for processing cereals and bread production. The Neolithic communities used sophisticated fine pottery and modeled figurines and altars, while the stone tools were mainly used for cutting trees, harvesting and grinding. Apart from the cereal-based food (einkorn wheat, emmer wheat or barley), the inhabitants of Vrbjanska Čuka consumed lentils, peas and a variety of gathered wild fruits, while cattle, caprovine, mussels, fish and wild game meat was also part of a diet, as well as the dairy products. This paper will be a summary of a variety of data provided from the current international and multidisciplinary research of the site that involves excavation, prospection, geomagnetic survey, study of material culture, examination of architecture, radiocarbon dating, geoarchaeological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, lipid and use-wear analyses, as well as the topographic and 3D modeling. The recent knowledge on Vrbjanska Čuka provides novel understanding of the Early Neolithic in Pelagonia and contributes to the more extensive research of first farming societies in the Balkans.

New research on crop diversity of the early farmers in southeastern Europe (ca. 6400 − 5700 bce)

“…Naked wheat seems to be slightly better represented from both Vlaho and Veluška Tumba, since for Vrbjanska Čuka only one find is identified with certainty, even though this is the best investigated of all three sites. It is possible that this difference in representation of naked wheat reflects cultural choices that are also demonstrated in the material culture, which is less like those of Vlaho and Veluška Tumba (Valamoti 2017;Naumov et al 2020Naumov et al , 2021a. It is nevertheless also possible that as people moved northwards through the valley, einkorn became more important and some other crops such as naked wheat less so, as a response to the more continental environmental conditions.…”

“…The Early Neolithic tell sites of Vrbjanska Čuka near Prilep and Veluška Tumba near Bitola were first excavated in the 1970s and the new excavations, incorporating various techniques including archaeobotanical analysis started in 2016 and 2019, respectively (Naumov et al 2020(Naumov et al , 2021a. The third site mentioned in this paper, Vlaho near Živojno, was identified in the 20th century but was never excavated until the first test trench was opened in 2021 (Naumov et al 2021b).…”

“…6400/6300 cal bce are a few centuries earlier than for Vrbjanska Čuka and Veluška Tumba (ca. 6000 cal bce) (Table 1; Naumov et al 2021aNaumov et al , 2023. The occupation of this settlement seems to have ended approximately at the time when the other two were starting to be inhabited at about 6000 bce, and they were inhabited for about 300-400 years, until ca.…”

“…All three sites had a very rich material culture typical of the Pelagonian Early Neolithic, including figurines, house models, tablet "altars", painted pottery, stone and bone tools and so on. Many buildings with robust daub walls were discovered, normally containing architectural features like pits, ovens, hearths, basins and platforms for the storage and processing of cereals and other foodstuffs (Naumov , 2021a(Naumov , b, 2023.…”

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“…granaries, bins, ovens and circular grinding areas), buildings made of unburnt wattle-and-daub, and a few others with deep foundation trenches for their walls (Figure 2). The inhabitants of Vrbjanska C ̌uka consumed a diversity of aquatic and domesticated terrestrial resources (Naumov et al 2018b).…”