Staša Babić

The Balkans as a Temporal Denominator – The Discourse of Balkanism in Serbian Archaeology

The idea of universal linear course of time is an important element of the basic framework of reference of the archaeological research into the past. However, even the fundamental theoretical premises of the discipline, such as the conceptualization of time, may be changed and differently interpreted, depending upon the social and cultural context of research. The history of archaeology in Serbia testifies that, contrary to the generally implicit linear course of time, the regional past is seen as a series of repetitions, stagnations and detours, implying the assumption of a different, a-historical course of time in the Balkans. This narrative is especially noticeable in the works dealing with the role of the Classical Greek-Roman civilization in the Balkan past. The ambivalence of the leading narratives in Serbian archaeology towards the presumed sources of the European culture corresponds to the images of the Balkans identified by M. Todorova as the discourse of Balkanism.

Atenica: In search of lost pyre

Symbolic and cult practices of a community undoubtedly play an important role in the formation of funerary contexts. On the other hand, in the absence of written records on these practices, archaeologists are inclined to base their interpretations upon generalized and simplified ideas on “primitive cults”, such as “solar cult”. In this line of inference, technical aspects of the record are neglected in order to obtain the preconceived symbolic “messages”. Among the princely graves of the Central Balkans, the mounds in Atenica near Cacak have long represented the only example of this type of funeral investigated in the course of systematic archaeological excavations; therefore, numerous researchers have devoted special attention to the construction of these tumuli and the possibilities of interpretation of the rites performed there. In this respect, special significance is assigned to the so-called “ritual area” of the mound II – three rectangular areas bordered by rows of pebbles, with conical pits filled by dark earth, fragments of pottery and burnt bones. The interpretations have ranged from the ideas about cremated human sacrifice, over a replica of a sanctuary, to the complex symbolic of solar cult, expressed in numeric regularities. On the other hand, since the buried individuals are cremated, the areas defined as funerary pyres have been identified in both mounds – relatively small crescent-shaped areas of pebbles with traces of burning. Practical incongruence stemming from this interpretation has remained unexplored, in the effort to link the complex ritual of cremation to the symbolic ideas perceived as appropriate for the cultural context of the Atenica burials – human sacrifice, solar cult. In the circular line of argument, more or less implicitly, these ideas have been applied as the starting premises for the wider interpretation of the cult practices of the community whose exceptional members were buried under the mounds near Cacak.

False Analogy: Transfer of Theories and Methods in Archaeology (The Case of Serbia)

As an academic discipline, archaeology is deeply rooted in the cultural, social, and political practices of Western Europe of the nineteenth century. The emergence of local scholarly communities in other parts of the continent tends to be described as a process that saw the even spread of ideas and concepts in their original form. This further implies a uniform, unilinear sequence of paradigms (culture-historical, processual, postprocessual), each with their own internal logic. However, more often than not, these transfers of disciplinary knowledge from one academic community to the other have introduced distortions of the original concepts, designed to meet the demands of the different cultural and intellectual traditions and research agendas. In this article, we explore the foundation of academic archaeology in Serbia and of the pivotal figure in this process – Miloje M. Vasic, educated at German universities and considered to be the first academically trained archaeologist in the country. His adaptatio...