Marcel Buric

The Starcevo Culture, the first agricultural community in northern Croatia has been archaeologically documented by more than 60 permanent settlements. They are mostly located in the southern Pannonian basin of the river sava. Favourable natural conditions of the region enabled high population density during the early and middle neolithic and so far a great number of archaeological traces. Various aspects of the Starcevo Culture have often been discussed in archaeological literature but its stone production has been neglected although the new technology of producing stone artifacts, the techniques of abrading and polishing were usually emphasized as one of the important neoolithic features. Polished stone implements, specifically the last-shaped wedges, flat axes and chisels have generally been noted in all areas of the Starcevo Culture distribution. The polished stone implements from the Starcevo settlements, such as Vinkovci-Hotel, Zadubravlje, Slavonski Brod-Galovo, Pepelana have ...

The horse is central to many Indigenous cultures across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. However, when and how horses were first integrated into Indigenous lifeways remain contentious, with extant models derived largely from colonial records. We conducted an interdisciplinary study of an assemblage of historic archaeological horse remains, integrating genomic, isotopic, radiocarbon, and paleopathological evidence. Archaeological and modern North American horses show strong Iberian genetic affinities, with later influx from British sources, but no Viking proximity. Horses rapidly spread from the south into the northern Rockies and central plains by the first half of the 17th century CE, likely through Indigenous exchange networks. They were deeply integrated into Indigenous societies before the arrival of 18th-century European observers, as reflected in herd management, ceremonial practices, and culture.

The chaîne opératoire of Neolithic Korenovo ceramics is poorly known, as hitherto potsherds from only three sites, Malo Korenovo, Tomašica in central Croatia, and Becsehely–Bukkaljai dűlő in Hungary have been analysed archaeometrically. Korenovo is considered the southernmost aspect of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK). In this paper, the ceramic assemblage from Kapelica-Solarevac and Kaniška Iva (Central Croatia) will be discussed. Kapelica-Solarevac and Kaniška Iva are the only two sites in which Starčevo and Korenovo ceramics have been found together in closed contexts. Twenty potsherds from the Kapelica-Solarevac and Kaniška Iva assemblages were analysed using polarised microscopy and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDX). In combination with equivalent data from 49 Korenovo ceramics from Tomašica and Malo Korenovo, the results offer an insight into the practices of Korenovo potters and show the lack of exchange of technological knowledge between K...

During the rescue excavations in the periphery of the village Petrijevci (Eastern Croatia), a set of Neolithic figural plastic findings was discovered (with F. Vukoja as a field team member and author of the MA thesis supervised by the Author). The group of findings consists of six fragments of “Vinča-like” type figurines, discovered in the Sopot cultural area. In the paper, an attempt of cultural and typological determination will be presented, with some references to the question of the Late Neolithic figural plastics in Croatia.

Rad donosi osnovna obilježja kasnoneoliticke/ranoeneoliticke vincanske kulture, najprije u njezinu maticnom prostoru, a potom obrađuje i njezinu prisutnost u istocnoj Hrvatskoj te njezin utjecaj i važnost na formiranje kasnoga neolitika u spomenutom podrucju. U drugom dijelu rada analizira se nastanak i razvoj metalurgije u okvirima vincanske kulture i opcenito njezin utjecaj na razvoj metalodobnih zajednica eneolitika.

The idea for this volume arose from the international conference entitled "Northern Greece and Southeastern Europe during the Neolithic period. An interaction zone", held in Thessaloniki (Greece), June 2014, under the auspices of the Humboldt Foundation. The conference focused on three different though related topics including "Dynamics of the environment", which serves as the base for this volume. The geographical area in question is crucial to understanding of both the spread of agriculture into Europe and the subsequent profound social changes that eventually culminated in the hierarchical organization of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age societies. The Neolithic of Southeastern Europe, spanning at least three millennia, was a time of great transformations in cultural landscapes, settlement organization, animal and plant management, dietary habits, and production and circulation of material culture. Similarities in material culture suggest contacts between sub-regions, albeit of variable intensity, scale and mode over space and time. Despite its importance as the core area where new ideas and adaptations emerged before spreading towards central and northern Europe, few volumes published in the last decades have focused on this region (e.g. Bailey 2000, Halstead 1999, Halstead and Frederick 2000, Whittle 1996), and none of these embraces the north, central and southern Balkans together with the north Aegean (northern Greece). The exception to this is recently published volume by Ivanova et al (2018). Importantly, only one of the volumes focuses on environmental issues (Halstead and Frederick 2000). This volume aims to fill this lacuna, by presenting new results in the study of human-environment relationships during the Neolithic across this broad region. The study of this complex relationship is interdisciplinary by definition, which is clearly reflected in the volume. Drawing on mainstream archaeology and a range of other disciplines (e.g. chemical analysis of resinous materials combined with charcoal and pollen analysis; isotopic analysis of dietary preferences; aDNA signatures), eleven articles present the latest research on early Neolithic farmers in the Aegean and the Balkans and the environment in which they settled and developed crop and animal husbandry. Given that the human-environment relationship has a central position in the constitution of culture, in most articles the environment is not seen solely as a natural reality, but equally as a result of human agency, as manifested in the choice of particular ways of its exploitation.

... Since the beginning of the study of the lithic raw material the largest problem ... It is necessary to apply a non-destructive method, which Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis proved to ... in the same manner: imports to continental part originate from Carpathian source while obsidian ...

This paper analyzes a sampling of settlement patterns in the extreme eastern periphery of Croatia during the prehistoric period. The layout of present-day settlements from Vukovar to Ilok and the local, very specific relief, indicate a degree of mutual interaction. The combination of a series of components such as deep ravines (known locally as surduk) and high loess terraces indicates a unique structure which has been apparent from prehistory to the most recent history.

In the past fifteen years we have substantially improved our knowledge of the seafaring expeditions in the Mediterranean, based either on the indirect evidence of the navigation or on what we know about the earliest such ventures. This paper presents an overview of what is known about the earliest navigation in the Mediterranean and considers the origin of the first such ventures in the Adriatic as a specific part of the Mediterranean. It focuses on the problem of the navigation between the Italic and Croatian coasts, tackling the possibility of such maritime expeditions based on the distribution of the obsidian from the Aeolian Islands. It also ponders on the practical aspects of the use of sailing vessels in the Late Neolithic.

During three millennia of the Neolithic in southeastern Europe important changes in the social organization, everyday practices and beliefs formed a diverse and rich cultural landscape expressed in settlement patterns, architecture and numerous aspects of material culture. A growing body of data uncovered over the last few decades shows striking variety in settlement organisation, from single-layered, short-lived sites to long-lived tell settlements located in different geographical settings. In addition, small sites (e.g. 0.5 ha) and extended settlements also appear in most sub-regions. The aim of the volume is to bring together and present new data on the Neolithic of southeastern Europe, emphasising the organisation and use of space within the regions of northern Greece, the Balkan hinterland and northwestern Turkey. To this end, the individual chapters focus either on the intra-site organisation of recently excavated settlements or provide an up-to-date synthesis on the regional level, combining old and new data.

The paper discusses the contribution of S. Dimitrijević to
our knowledge of the Late Neolithic in eastern Croatia viewed
through his work at Babska. The research he conducted
there is connected to the entire opus of Dimitrijević’s archaeological activities in Slavonia and western Syrmia
and which yielded, among other things, the chronology of
the Starčevo and Sopot cultures in frame of continental Croatia.

Although the first systematic excavation of a
Neolithic site in Croatia was completed almost
120 years ago, we still lack a clear picture of its
absolute chronology. The Late Neolithic phase of
the whole Eastern Croatia shares the same destiny.
As an attempt to clarify the issue, several already
published and some more recent regional
absolute dates are presented and discussed in
the paper. Despite those dates, the Late Neolithic
chronology of the given area – embedded
in recently available archaeological data for the
Balkans – remains fairly vague.