Bisserka Gaydarska

New perspectives on the Varna cemetery (Bulgaria) – AMS dates and social implications

The research team of this new project has begun the precision radiocarbon dating of the super-important Copper Age cemetery at Varna. These first dates show the cemetery in use from 4560-4450 BC, with the possibility that the richer burials are earlier and the poor burials later in the sequence. The limited number of lavish graves at Varna, representing no more than a handful of paramount chiefs, buried over 50-60 years, suggests a stabilisation of the new social structure by the early part of the Late Copper Age.

The Social Context of the Emergence, Development and Abandonment of the Varna Cemetery, Bulgaria

In this article we outline some of the key characteristics of the social structure of the Climax Copper Age in the eastern Balkans and the contributions of the Varna cemetery to those developments. We continue by examining the implications of the new series of 21 AMS dates from the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, which represent the first dates for the Varna Eneolithic cemetery on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Representing the first phase of the AMS dating project for the Varna I cemetery, these dates have been selected to provide a range of different grave locations, ranges of grave goods, and age/gender associations. We conclude by addressing the question of the unexpectedly early start of the cemetery, as well as its apparently short duration and relatively rapid demise.

Houses in the Archaeology of the Tripillia—Cucuteni Groups

The excavation of burnt, and occasionally unburnt, houses forms a key element of the story of Tripillia–Cucuteni archaeological excavations, since the domestic zone in these groups was much more developed than the mortuary domain. In the 2,000-year period of development across a wide area from the Carpathians to the Dnieper valley, there were considerable changes in the ways that houses were designed and built and, especially, in the agglomerations which they formed. There is also much evidence for the transformations of structures originally designed as domestic dwellings into workshops, ritual centres and places with specialised storage facilities. Nonetheless, these changes were nothing but variations on a dominant theme of household and house continuity, which forms the principal embodiment of principles and practices in the longue duree for these groups.

The making of chalcolithic assembly places: Trypillia megasites as materialized consensus among equal strangers?

ABSTRACT In the last decade, we have witnessed a second methodological revolution in research into the Trypillia megasites of Ukraine – the largest sites in fourth-millennium BC Europe and possibly the world. However, these methodological advances have not been accompanied by parallel advances in the understanding of the nature and development of the megasites. New data have led to a ‘tipping point’ which leads us to reject the traditional interpretation of megasites as long-term centres permanently occupied by tens of thousands of people. The contention of the alternative approach is the temporary, short-term dwelling of much smaller populations at megasites such as Nebelivka. In this article, the authors present two alternative models for the gradual emergence of the highly structured plan of the Trypillia megasite.

Dan Monah. Anthropomorphic representations in the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. 2016. viii+444 pages, 6 colour and numerous bw 978-1-78491-232-1 paperback £55.

The last chapter is devoted to ‘agency’ and environmental change, and seeks to explain the “behaviour of rock art”, stating that “rock art may be the ideal subject for an exploration of prehistoric perception and cognition expressed in material culture” (p. 115). Could environmental changes have posed a threat to people’s worldviews and to the rock art through which they expressed and promoted their understanding of the world? Theories of material agency are used here, and the main argument is: if rock art has agency, then it is an active entity that can have effects on, and be affected by, society and even possibly elements of the environment.

A brief history of TAG

Readers will know that Antiquity, a long term supporter of TAG, now gives this most spontaneous and peripatetic of conferences a memory by hosting the ‘TAG Archive’ on its website. In this article Bisserka Gaydarska offers a preliminary analysis of TAG trends – how the subjects of talks and the speakers who gave them have changed over the past few decades. Readers are invited to comment on her findings and share their views with us by emailing us at editor@antiquity.ac.uk.