Nikola Tasic
Dragoslav Srejovic
Bratislav Stojanovic

Vinca

Centre of the Neolithic culture of the Danubian region

Belgrade, 1990

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Centre of the Neolithic culture of the Danubian region

• Geography and History of Explorations
• Vinca and its Culture
• The Vinca Archaeology Park
• Bibliography

Geography and History of Explorations

The Belo Brdo archaeological site in Vinca, on the right bank of the Danube, 14 km downstream from Beograd, covers some ten hectares of land. A high löss terrace and cultural layers are falling down towards periphery, thus forming a tell which rises high above the surroundings. The position of the site favoured permanent habitation, with a river on the one side for fishing and a valley of the Bolecica on the other, connecting Vinca with the hinterland rich in minerals and ores (Avala, Rudnik), hunting animals and fertile land. Geographical location of Vinca made its inhabitants mediators between the cultures blossoming in the south as far as the Aegean and in the north up to Central Europe. Significant events and changes in material and spiritual culture are mirrored in individual levels of cultural layers of some 10 meters of deposit accumulated through the long time people stayed in this area. It is understandable then that Vinca is singled out in the archaeological science as a reliable benchmark in examining the emergence and development of a number of Neolithic and Copper Ages cultures in the middle and south-eastern Europe.

The first archaeological excavation in Vinca was undertaken by Miloje M. Vasic in 1908 on some 400 m². The works were going on, except for minor intermissions, till the onset of the World War I. They were resumed as late as 1924, but for a while, since the war impoverished state did have but a modest capability of financing them. A lucky coincidence, which raised hopes, was an advertisement in "The Times" by Sir Charles Hyde, offering financial aid for "excavation of remains", which came into possession of M. M. Vasic through Alec Brown, a writer and a war comrade John Linton Myres, the then Oxford University professor. With good recommendation of the past excavations in Vinca and the help of British friends, considerable finance flew in and enabled resumption of works on a large scale. They were widely covered, particularly by the British press ("Birmingham Post", "Man", "Illustrated London News", etc.). Thus Vinca came into the focus of attention of archaeological science between 1929 and 1931, the site being visited by known science and culture personalities of Europe and the country (Ch. Hyde, J. L. Myres, W. A. Hurtley, Veselin Cajkanovic, Bogdan Popovic, to mention but a few).

The Prehistoric Vinca in four volumes (Beograd, 1932, 1936) and about 40 bibliographical articles written mainly by M. M. Vasic, marked the completion of the second stage of excavations.. Another 47 years should have passed to launch the Vinca works anew. The site bad been left to illegal excavations, to the profile destruction by various amateurs and collectors.

Only when the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts established a Committee on the Vinca Archaeological Excavations, and practically when Vasa Cubrilovic, the President, and Jovan Todorovic, Vice-president, took an interest in it, new excavations were undertaken, in 1978. At the outset, while the Bronze Age and the Middle Age layers were examined, the works proceeded under the guidance of Nikola Tasic in association with Gordana Vujovic. Since 1982 Neolithic layers have been worked on, under the responsibility of Milutin Garasanin and Dragoslav Srejovic.

The new excavations have started by methods unknown at the time of M. M. Vasic. These excavations in Vinca and publications thereon, simultaneously printed, opened up new possibilities in studying prehistory of the Danubian valley and south-east Europe. Graves of the Bodrogkeresztur culture and the remains of Baden, Kostolac and Vatin cultures were revealed thus far, as well as and old Serbian necropolis.

Vinca and its Culture

Vinca is the largest and most comprehensively excavated Neolithic settlement in Europe. It was a metropolis with a flourishing culture, at the place where across the valleys of the Bolecica and Danube Rivers a joyful relief of Sumadija meets with the plain of Banat. Between 4500 and 3500 BC it was a major prehistoric settlement. Thus, Vinca is a notion signifying nowadays the peak of Neolithic farming settled culture in Europe.

Cultural layer of Vinca, some 10.5 m high, offers an unusually interesting and exciting sight. As an opulent carpet, it is woven vertically with red, yellowish, brown, ashy and black interlayers of remains of the ruined settlements, burnt huts, deep diches and filled-in holes and graves. Each of those interlayers, signifying various stages of life in Vinca, contains treasury of most versatile objects: stone and bone tools and weapons, pottery for everyday use, richly decorated ritual vases, a number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, jewellery of various rare and costly materials and many other items whether worked in Vinca or acquired from distant regions, from central Europe, lower Danubian valley or from the Mediterranean. In spite of the fact that the works on prehistoric Vinca settlement have taken many years, only its middle part was examined. However, thousands of items have been found along the excavated area, adorning many n museum collection today, their examination still going on with undiminishing interest. Thanks to the numerous and highly versatile items, and architectural relics and raw materials used, it is possible to reliably reconstruct the whole history of Vinca, its artefacts and beliefs of many generations inhabiting at.

The first chapter of the history of Vinca being preserved in fragments only is insufficiently clear. Based on scarce remains of the oldest settlements discovered at about 10.5 m below the surface, it might be concluded that Vinca was inhabited first at the time of decline of the middle Neolithic Age (the Starcevo culture), around 4800 BC.

The Yugoslav part of the then Danubian valley was densely populated, hence the establishment of the first settlement in Vinca should be probably linked with a smaller group of colonists, who in search of free farming land and pastures left some adjacent larger settlement located in the southern Banat. Although the settlement of those colonists in Vinca was relatively short-lived and small in scope, and although it is impossible to discover any new, specific expression in their achievement, they nevertheless left a document in Vinca, of extreme importance for the study of their physical appearance and spiritual culture. This is a large grave with an access path and nine skeletons, which was found in the centre of the oldest Vinca settlement in 1931. The finds, unique in the Neolithic culture of south-east Europe, show that the first farmers of the Danubian valley belonged to a peculiar anthropological type, characterised by features of the ancient European population combined with those of graceous Mediterranean people. The same blend of old Balkanic, autochthonous elements and Mediterranean are observed in the Starcevo culture, namely in the first Vinca inhabitants. Thus, the early dwellings in Vinca, like others of the time in the Danubian valley, have ellipsoidal bases dug into the loss and gabled road of switch, reed and straw, snugly fitted against the base.

Those tent-like huts, grouped according to a system in the oldest settlements of Vinca around the central one, provide for vidid reminiscence of architecture of the Danubian valley Early Mesolithic Culture (the culture of the Lepenski Vir). Columnal anthropomorphic figures of the time are ascribed to the same traditions, as well as whole ceramic dishes, the form of which bears clear reference to the older models of stone or wood. However, individual ornamental techniques applied on ceramic (for instance painted vases) as well as some rare materials used in jewellery (spondylus, paligorskite) indicate that the proponents of the Starcevo culture maintained relations with the inhabitants of the Aegean and wider East Mediterranean areas. Even more frequent have been contacts with the regions north of the Yugoslav Danubian valley. They are evidenced by small knives of volcanic glass (obsidian) which were obtained by the oldest inhabitants of Vinca from the upper Tisa (Tisza) valley.

Available archaeological material implies that the first colonists of Vinca have had good neighbourly relations both with the communities in the Pannonian basin and southern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The oldest settlement in Vinca was neither fenced nor fortressed, and the relics from the tent-like huts are associated with painstaking but serene living of peasants, whose daily life consisted of hard work, making stone tools and various ceramic dishes and naturally tending their land, animals, and catch. The population of the oldest settlement in Vinca, however, could not have enjoyed the fruit of their labour for long. The chain movements of the Neolithic population of Thracia and lower Danubian valley started already in the mid-5th millennium BC and somewhat later reached the areas around Vinca.

The turbulence was caused by a slow penetration of Anadole-Halcolithic Culture, type Can Hasan - Beycesultan, towards the Balkan peninsula going on in two directions: by road, from south-eastern Thracian towards the Danubian valley and by maritime communication from central Greece to Northern Dalmatia. The cultures of the Late Neolithic Age emerged on the whole Balkan peninsula and central Danubian valley. As a consequence of these flows the Anadolian forms were first confronted by and then assimilated in various forms, into the indigenous ones. Thus, in contact with new immigrants, the Starcevo Culture turned into a new Vinca Culture.

It was in those troubled times that Vinca was completely deserted, probably around 4500 BC. It is difficult to say how much time elapsed before reconstruction and establishment of new life in Vinca. It didn't take long, sure, because newcomers built a new large settlement immediately above the deserted tent-like dwellings. In new environment the newcomers were quickly assimilated with the neighbouring native population and remained there for almost 1000 years fostering and spreading a peculiar culture, the culture of Early Neolithic Age of the Central Balkan area, named after Vinca.

Spirit of new culture and new way of life is clearly demonstrated in architecture. Special attention was given to positioning of a dwelling, when a new settlement was built. Unfortunately, only the foundations remained preserved but it was established that they were all oriented towards southeast-northwest, they had quadrangle, almost square bases, vertical walls and gabled roofs. Lumber and clay were continued to be used as building materials, but the building process was enriched by new details and skills, such as levelling, stabilisation of the foundation, insulation, wall covering and painting.

The newcomers quickly accepted Vinca and its surroundings as their own land, the generations living and creating on that soil around 3500 BC, were their direct descendants. There was no disruption of life and culture, only their permanent enrichment, despite the fact what in the culture Vinca layer, at the depth of between nine and two meters, contains remains of many settlements. Thus, within the time span of a thousand years Vinca remained fenced settlement with straight streets, the same system of communication, but on the other hand with a noticeable extension of housing space and its functional layout. While initial dwellings, as a rule, were one-celled and sufficient for a small family, in later settlements large square buildings were discovered of about 40 to 60 m² with a number of rooms and built-in "furniture" (benches built onto the stove, braziers, waterwheels, tables). Continuity of this culture is abundantly manifested in movable archaeological finds, primarily ceramic works - dishes and anthropomorphic statuettes. The two big groups of finds which testify to a highly developed sense for artistic form, reflect, in a most sensitive way, all daily situations of numerous Vinca's generations, namely the dynamisms of the Vinca culture, on the whole. Stylistic properties of ceramics and anthropomorphic plastic clearly reveal the main stages of life in Vinca, namely the periods of the Late Neolithic in the central Danubian valley.

The establishment, development and the peak of the Vinca culture are illustrated in the finds of Vinca, located at the depth of nine and six meters. At this period, which by method of C-14 may be dated to approximately 4500 to 3800 BC, the inhabitants of Vinca and their co-tribes created a culture of a particular style, which radiated far and dominated over the largest part of the central and south-east Europe. The Vinca culture covered a territory larger than only other Neolithic culture in Europe around 4000 BC; its individual settlements, for instance Vinca, Potporanj, Selevac or Divostin, surpassed in scope and population not only the Neolithic settlements of the time, but the first towns which emerged later, in Mesopotamia, Aegea and Egypt. The communities of those large settlement used to adapt their main activities to the local conditions. Thus, more attention was paid to farming and stock - breeding in some settlements, to weaving and trade in others, while in those abounding in rare materials started mining and various arts and crafts.

Due to specialised activities all communities in the Vinca culture grew fast economically, differentiated socially and became rich. The communities in Sumadija, Banat and Srem had by careful land cultivation and cattle-raising created surpluses which enabled them to obtain raw materials they lacked in their own territory, primarily obsidian of Erdelj, precious raw material for sickles and precision tools, owned by the neighbouring ethno-cultural groups. On the other hand stability of economy enabled the Vinca communities to relieve some of their members of manual work and devote their efforts to discovery of local raw materials and then their processing. So, the Vinca people came to cinabarite, which was mined at Suplja Stena and minerals (alabaster, marble). Vinca became the biggest market in Southeast Europe not only because of an exceptional value of own products but rare materials or objects, which were brought in from Transylvania, upper Tisza valley, lower Danubian valley and even from the coasts of Aegean and Adriatic seas.

An extensive exchange of goods and development of communications released the creators of the Vinca culture from the clutch of a small plot of land and ancestral habit, gave wings to their imagination and let them hint at new worlds and take an attitude of trust towards nature, life and future. Vinca and some other Neolithic settlements near Vrsac (Potporanj), Kragujevac (Grivac, Divostin) Titova Mitrovica (Valac) and Pristina (Predionica) turned into major religious centres and simultaneously artistic retreat which influenced decisively visual arts in all Neolithic communities of Central and South-East Europe.

Hundreds and thousands of clay statuettes and ritual vases, discovered in the mentioned settlements, attest not only to creative imagination and gift but to a boom of magic-religious practices within the Vinca culture. Thematic variation of clay statuettes (naked or dressed figurines of women and men, standing, kneeling or sitting, statuettes with masks on their faces, hermaphroditic statuettes) and their stylistic advancement starting from naturalistic, to realistic through to quite abstract forms, are an evidence of the prevailing primitive magic power, namely the shaping of clear religious thoughts. Judging on the looks of clay idols and various culture objects, it was expressed in rituals and myths connected with the turn of seasons, sawing or harvesting times births and deaths, and permanent life cycle, visually most completely expressed in the presentation of a woman with a baby in her arms.

Those Vinca communities that had not opted for crop farming or stock-breeding but for mining and working new raw materials, created however, quite a different spiritual world. Those living between the heights of Kucajna and Deli Jovan Mountains near caves, big holes and hot springs had early guessed that in the depths of earth, in its complete dark, there grow and mature fantastic minerals and rocks.

Members of those communities were the first in Europe to penetrate into the spell of the underground world, take its fruit to the light of the day and with the help of fire, make them turn into new materials - into metals, in this case copper.

With the discovery of the great secret of transformation of substance, those first European miners and smiths got involved in the processes of cosmic life and linked with a special world of gods and heroes. After discovery of copper, their imagination populated the nature with an endless number of secret beings: dwarfs, fairies and pixies, who joined the demons of grain and ghosts of fruit-bearing trees. That peculiar secret world of theirs in the Vinca

culture was established at the onset of the 4th millennium BC, at the latest and persisted on the Balkan peninsula till the times of Christianity, the part of which was most probably built into the roots of the oldest recorded European mythology, in the ancient Greek myths about Demeter, Dionysus and Hephaestus the god-smith.

The Vinca culture was at the peak by about 3800 BC. Ruins of the settlement and archaeological items discovered between the sixth and the second meter of culture layer of Vinca, dated by C-14 method back to between 3700 and 3500 BC, revealed that the Vinca culture started loosing its significance progressively to die out, definitely.

The observations reveal first that the settlements belonging to this part of the culture layer are considerably smaller compared to the earlier ones. Then began the construction of new defence system. Although local manufacture of all types of tools and pottery went on, it is nevertheless characteristic that the number of imported items increased and models of other cultures copied, ever more frequently.

Obviously a radiating metropolis once, Vinca turned merely into a place which collected the elements from all parts of the world.

This general fatigue, expressed both in non-original ceramic production and in anthropomorphic statuettes, was initiated by the discovery and widespread use of metals, primarily copper and gold.

This was not, however, the discovery of the Vinca inhabitants but of the people around the Pannonian basin who, searching for raw materials, found copper and pure gold. The discovery of these metals spoiled the previous culture balances and started disintegration of the structure of the Neolithic world.

These developments affected deeply the material and spiritual culture of the Vinca population. At first, the stimulus from outside positively influenced them, since traditional elements combined with new style gave rise in Vinca to a short-lived cultural renaissance, characterised primarily by original forms of anthropomorphic plastic and new ornament techniques on ceramic.

The new stylistic synthesis resulted in preserved realistic forms, basically an anthropomorphic statuettes, but once three dimensional surfaces became flat, plastically modelled details were gradually schematised and turned into hardly understandable ornamental signs.

The consistently applied ornamental style was aimed at compensating, by a sort of drawing and shadowing, for the lost sense of the third dimension. Some statuettes were even painted, but it only stressed the pictural character of the new ornamental style.

Hence carved or painted details on the Vinca statuettes signify neither apparel nor tattooed signs, but emerged as a result of the development of stile which ranged from three dimensional realistic forms towards linear, abstract ones. Formation of that style has to be linked with the technique of cutting and adorning metal sheet and bones.

Similarly as during the earlier stages of the Vinca culture, clay determined the basic forms of anthropomorphic statuettes, so in the later one figurines of metal sheet and bones became the proponents of linear abstract style which was transposed to other materials with more or less success.

In contrast to the statuettes, dishes were largely unadorned. This apparently contradictory fact, actually goes in line with the basic stylistic concept to which the third dimension is completely alien, as is the spatial development of ornamental motives.

Consequently, only painted decoration came to the fore, done in pasteouse paint or incrustation, the rest of the techniques being largely neglected.

The uninterrupted adorning motives were no longer applied (current spiral, meander), but all the ornaments are either limited in space (metopic style) or associated with individual parts of a vase.

This strict tectonic style on ceramic, as well as ornamental abstract forms on plastic, are an expression of a serious crisis, instigated by introduction of metal, into still predominantly agrarian environment.

With the development of metallurgy of copper, new social relations were gradually taking shape, which contradicted the traditional way of life. The inhabitants of Vinca were not ready to accept progressive economic and gods, already present in the cultures of neighbouring area.

Being as it was, the old gods of Vinca had to be raised as high as possible in confrontation to alien divinity.

Hence new form of religious practice in Vinca, documented primarily by the known iconographic pattern of mother and child in her arms, the general female bread-winner and the great lady.

Those numens without real power or face, were burnt together with the huts of their creators at the assault of invading cultures of the Copper Age. That horizon marks the last major chapter in the history of Vinca, history of some fifteen centuries full of significant cultural achievement and exciting events.

Life went on in Vinca till the arrival of the Romans to our parts, but neither with the same intensity and new economic and social structures, nor on the same area. Today, Vinca is known for a series of finds dating back to the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages (including Old Serbian necropolis from Middle Age - note by PR).

However, these are only traces, often very important for an understanding of certain phenomena in prehistoric culture of the central Danubian valley, but they are only secondary to the Vinca history.

It seems that the Vinca soil has preserved its attractive power even in the civilisation of our age.

Next to the prehistoric settlement namely, there is nowadays an emposing building of the Boris Kidric Institute of Nuclear Sciences.

The Vinca Archaeology Park

The Master plan of Beograd puts the Danubian River bank around Vinca as an Archaeology Park. This future park will consist of the Museum of the Neolithic in the Central Danubian Valley, an International Centre for Neolithic Studies in the Central Danubian Region, facilities for conservation works and, of course, greenery. (The author of the Project Bratislav Stojanovic, an architect and town planner, member of the Archaeological Vinca Committee of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts).

The Museum should preserve a selected part of the excavation ("excavation as permanent exhibit"), provide for exhibiting space for items excavated in Vinca and in other Neolithic localities in the central Danubian region and an extra space for topical exhibitions. So designed, the Museum is partly an "architectural sheet" protecting and presenting the excavations - vertical profile of cultural layers from top to bottom, about 10 m height, and the oldest prehistoric settlement in Vinca. The visitors shall move along the ramps and stairs from one to the other exhibit; it is going to be a single space cut by paths and galleries, to give an impression about life going on at that place in the distant prehistoric past. The other part shall be a classical archaeological museum of selected exhibits, composed as a global and adjusted science/culture piece of information about archaeological finds in the central Danubian region.

The International Center should become a meeting place of co-ordination, exchanges and adjustment of scientific achievements in archaeology of the Neolithic Age of the south-east Europe, a venue of international congresses, symposia, seminars and the similar.

The main components of the Center should be a hall for plenary, gatherings, lectures, smaller halls for committees, offices for individual work, library, offices of international sponsors and for current activities of the Center. Beograd and advantages it offers, favour such activities, since it is a major center in this country and the seat of institutions such as the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Center of Archaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy, National Museum, the Museum of the City of Beograd, the Congress Sava Center in Novi Beograd and the similar.

Conservation and workshop facilities shall deal with the finds in the field, classify and reconstruct them, draw and make photos. They will house laboratories for determining absolute chronology by physical and chemical methods and a laboratory of paleozoological and paleobotanical analyses. Other workshops were planned, for conservation, photography, etc., along with the central archives, documentation, photo documentation, films and other archive documents.

The components of the Museum, and the Center will be housed in a single building. Although each is independent and may exist on its own merit, they are parts of synchronised whole of the Archaeology Park.

Green areas will cover most of the area (the total protected area is 6 km, at the upper level and about two along the river bank). The building itself with its semi-open and covered parts will be surrounded by greenery, cut by paths, as an aesthetic and dendrologic patch within a larger project of arranging the river banks and protecting the surroundings of Belgrade. Greenery would follow the countryside. In selecting the green cultures an attempt shall be made to maintain a sort of botanical continuity from prehistory to our times in this part of the Danubian valley.

The lower, river bank plateau, river dikes and the space of the vertical profile, will be turned into useful, grass areas under the planning concept for the Danubian banks. Thus, the Archaeology Park, although a whole in itself shall be an excursion and recreation site at the bank of one of the two Beograd rivers. Fishing will continue to be fostered, boating and excursion by ship. A tourist information stall at the bank is also a part of the picture.

The items the Vinca site will be exposed in the Park itself, either in the open or in sheds. They shall feature reconstructed historical houses or their parts, models of settlements and their parts, based on the knowledge arrived at during past and current excavations. The exhibit shall have an education purpose, it will be changed, namely replaced according to new developments.

Bibliography

1908 M. M. Vasic, South-Eastern Elements in the Prehistoric Civilisation of Servia, Annual of the British School at Athens XIV, Athens, 319-342.

1910 M. M. Vasic, Die Hauptergebnisse der prahistorischen Ausgrabung in Vinca in Jahre 1908, Prahistorische Zeitschrift II, Berlin, 1, 23-39.

1911 M. M. Vasic, Die Datierung der Vincaschicht, Prahistorische Zeitschrift III, Berlin, 126-132.

1932 M. M. Vasic, Preistorijska Vinca I, Beograd.

1936 M. M. Vasic, Preistorijska Vinca II-IV, Beograd.

1939 F. Holste, Zur chronologischen Stellung der Vinca Keramik, Wiener Prahistorische Zeitschrift XXVI/1, Wien, 1-21.

1950 V. Milojcic, Koros - Starcevo - Vinca, Reinecke Festschrift, Mainz, 108-118.

1951 M. Garasanin, Hronologija vincanske grupe, Ljubljana.

1957 D. Srejovic - B. Jovanovic, Pregled kamenog orudja i oruzja iz Vince, Arheoloski Vestnik VIII/3-4, 256-296.

1959. D. Srejovic - B. Jovanovic, Orudje i oruzje od kosti i nakit iz Vince, Starinar IX-X, 181-190.

1964 Z. Letica, The Neolithic Figurines from Vinca, Archaeology 17/1, New York, 26-32.

1972 I. Schwidetzky, Menschliche Skelettreste von Vinca, Glasnik antropoloskog drustva Jugoslavije 8-9, Beograd, 101-112.

1979 G. Marjanovic-Vujovic, Necropole Medievale Vinca, Inventaria Archaeologica, fasc. 22, Zagreb, Y 209-218.

1984 Vinca u praistoriji i srednjem veku, Katalog Galerije SANU 50, Beograd.

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